Letter to the NDP Leader from Three Iranian-Canadian Community Organizations Regarding the NDP Foreign Policy Stance
October 12, 2021
The Honourable Jagmeet Singh
House of Commons
Ottawa, ON K1A 0A6
Re: Your correspondences with the Iranian-Canadian Congress
We are a registered, not-for-profit society comprised of Canadians of Iranian origin from left to right and different walks of life. We are based in British Columbia and Ontario.
Our official mandate is to raise security and civil liberty concerns of Canadians to Canadian
institutions. One of our concerns is the looming influence of an undemocratic and violent
institution, the “Islamic Revolution Guard Corps” in Canada.
We are allied with other Iranian-Canadian organizations, including the Iranian-Canadian Press, and the Council of Iranian Canadians. A number of our members, supporters and allies reside in communities where the NDP has won seats, including in Port Moody and Vancouver-Kingsway.
Correspondences to you by an organization purporting to represent Iranian-Canadians called the Iranian- Canadian Congress (ICC) have come to our attention. Your responses to the ICC are published on the ICC website.
The correspondences and your response to them have raised concerns for many in the Iranian-Canadian community, including how Iranian-Canadians are being represented in Canada, as well as human rights, security, and civil liberties concerns.
Correspondences of the ICC
We are aware that the Iranian-Canadian Congress has purported in its correspondences to represent Iranian Canadians. The ICC does not represent most Iranian-Canadians, nor, due to recent developments, even a significant portion of Iranian-Canadians. We know this for numerous reasons:
* Some of the members of our organization, the AIC, were the original founders of the ICC about 12 years ago, and have witnessed the hostile take-over in recent years who represent the interests of the undemocratic regime in Iran as well as the “Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps” (IRGC).
* The ICC has allied itself with the National Iranian-American Council (NIAC). NIAC has been ruled by American judges to indeed have direct links with the regime in Iran.
* The ICC ex-Director Mehrnoush Ahmadi, a pro-Palestinian peace advocate and advocate for the rights of sexual minorities, has whistleblown against the ICC, stating, amongst other things, that the majority of ICC Board Members advanced a hidden agenda behind the scenes and off the books. When Ms. Ahmadi steered the ICC to follow its own mandate, the ICC would continue to work behind the scenes on its hidden agenda.
* The ICC was assigned an Elections Monitor because the proponents of the IRGC in the ICC engaged in massive voter fraud during ICC elections in order to get elected.
* After the Elections Monitor was assigned, the pro-IRGC ICC Board Members recruited non-Iranians to stack their numbers and votes, making false, defamatory statements about their opponents, stating to non-Iranian communities that “pro-war” individuals and proponents of an organization called the “Mujahedeen-e Khalgh” or “MEK” were going to take over the ICC if their non-Iranian friends did not join and vote in their favor.
* Ms. Ahmadi was the only person from a visible minority group that was part of the ICC Board of Directors, as she has identified as a sexual minority with a mission to educate the public on the rights and needs of sexual minorities. As you may or may not know, the government in Iran has a policy of executing and treating sexual minorities inhumanely. Her resignation was well received within the Iranian-Canadian community, and her exposure of the ICC’s hidden affiliation with the regime in Iran led to numerous further resignations from the ICC.
* Despite the Iranian-Canadian community comprising of various religious groups (e.g. Bahai,
Zoroastrian, Christian, Atheist/Agnostic and Sufi-Muslim), and ethnicities (eg. Kurdish, Azeri, Baluchi, and Arab), none of these minorities have been represented in the ICC.
* The spokesperson for the Canadian victim families of the aerial attack on flight PS752, amongst many notable other Iranian-Canadians have spoken against the ICC.
This track record of the ICC has become known in the Iranian-Canadian community, and clearly indicates that the ICC does not represent Iranian-Canadians. The majority of active members in the ICC are non-Iranian, and the ICC is now deplored by the majority of Iranian-Canadians, with ICC publications and propaganda being met with little to no support online. Numerous campaigns exist to raise awareness of the ICC’s true agenda.
We are hopeful that your party will no longer recognize this organization, nor respond to its
correspondences so long as they continue to deceptively purport to represent the Iranian-Canadian community.
Security and civil liberties concerns of your response to the ICC
The IRGC has long been the driving force for human rights abuses at home and abroad. This includes extreme repression of sexual, ethnic, and religious minorities, and justifying the rape of secular women. In recent years, including the years that Barack Obama was the President of the United States, the IRGC has taken over Iran’s economy, including closing down businesses, purging non-conservatives from management positions in Iran, as well as through directly engaging in money laundering and other criminal activity (Further sources are discussed below and can be found on the IRB website). Although the IRGC controls virtually all of Iran’s affairs, neither it’s leader (“the Supreme Leader”), nor the IRGC itself, have ever been voted into power by the Iranian people.
Any easing of tensions with the regime in Iran, including re-opening an embassy or diplomatic relations with the Iran regime, would necessarily entail opening the door to the IRGC. As the theocratic regime does not recognize Canadian citizenship of the many that left Iran, it has enforced its laws on Canadians visiting Iran and Iranian-Canadians whilst residing in Canada. The IRGC’s mandate is global not only to enforce its ideology on the Iranian diaspora but to spread its ideology globally as well. We can see how the IRGC has divided Palestine between secular and Islamist forces by its funding of Hamas, weakening the Palestinian state. The IRGC has created numerous civil wars in the Middle East in its efforts to export its ideology, weakening host countries such as Palestine, Syria, Lebanon, Afghanistan, Iraq and Yemen to its own benefit.
A well-regarded documentation center, the Abdolrahman Boroumand Centre for Human Rights in Iran, has found more than 540 cases of people outside Iran who have been successfully kidnapped or assassinated by the Islamic regime’s agents. Unfortunately, the tragedy is much greater than this as many violent crimes by the IRGC are undocumented or continue to be investigated.
The IRGC was found by the Ontario Superior Court to have intentionally killed 55 Canadian citizens, including children, in an aerial terrorist attack in January of 2020. The Canadian family members of the victims have overwhelmingly blamed the IRGC and have been threatened even within Canadian boundaries alongside numerous other human rights activists. The IRGC has sought to influence Iranian-Canadians through its embassy in the past, a contravention of international law.
We therefore have tremendous concerns, as do most Iranian-Canadians, with the ICC’s advocacy for opening an IRGC controlled Iranian embassy in Canada, and the commencement of relations with the regime in Iran, as it will open the door to insecurity for Canadians and their civil liberties.
We understand that your party has taken the position to open Canada’s doors to Iran’s current
establishment (and therefore the IRGC). This is concerning due to the ideological threat the IRGC poses to Canada, as well towards most Iranian-Canadians, as most Iranian-Canadians oppose the expansionist and far-right values of the IRGC.
Human rights concerns
We are also aware that some NDP Members of Parliament seek friendly relations with the IRGC with the best of intentions. We have read the parliamentary debates where your party members have stated it is discriminatory to cut ties with the IRGC on the one hand but not to cut ties with other countries with bad human rights records such as Saudi Arabia. On this point, we’d like to state the obvious that two wrongs don’t make a right. We support Canada’s stance on condemning human rights violations of any government. One way in which Canada could remedy this so-called discrimination is to reduce its military support of Saudi Arabia. The solution should not to be to reward and/or legitimize even worse human rights actors such as the IRGC. We also note that the IRGC is tasked with exporting and enforcing its revolution into Canada’s borders, which is it already active in doing so, whereas Saudi Arabia is not.
We note that your members may also believe that appeasement of the IRGC may have a taming effect on the IRGC and create progress in the human rights front. We note that the expansion of the IRGC has occurred despite decades-worth of appeasement policies in the United States, Europe, and Canada. We note that during times of appeasement by the Liberal government, Canada was not even able to have the body of a Canadian returned to Canada after being tortured in an Iranian prison.
We acknowledge that these are complicated subjects. Appeasement with the current establishment in Iran is at best a controversial position. Different countries have taken different approaches, and the current establishment in Iran is under constant pressure at home to reform in order to be accepted by the international community. It is evidence to many Iranian-Canadians who live and breathe these topics that establishing friendly relations with the current establishment in Iran at this time will only embolden the IRGC and give it the legitimacy it needs to continue its human rights abuses.
This does not mean, however, that we are pro-war nor that we believe in undemocratic tactics. We are not affiliated with the “MEK” nor any particular group and are independent leaders within our communities tasked to raise security concerns occurring within Canada’s borders. On foreign policy, we believe that where citizens of a country are robbed of the opportunity for democratic change, the international community has an obligation to support those citizens in their quest for democracy and human rights.
Our proposal
We at the AIC commend you for your domestic policies. Many of our members agree with your domestic, economic and social programs. Many in the Iranian-Canadian community simply hesitate to vote in your favor due to your seeking friendly relations with the IRGC and your informal affiliation with the ICC.
In our respectful opinion, your domestic, egalitarian mandate is far too important to be jeopardized by inadvertent support for a far-right organization such as the IRGC responsible for the cutting of union leaders’ tongues, and advocacy for executing sexual minorities and secular women.
We ask that you consider voting against relations with the current establishment in Iran. Alternatively, we ask that you at least consider abstaining from taking any position on this issue. This way, your party’s egalitarian principles do not risk being compromised or contradicted by your foreign policy. We assure you that the Iranian-Canadian community will greatly appreciate such a stance.
Last, we agree that these issues require further dialogue. We would like to invite you to our future panel discussions with the participation of experts on the effect of appeasement on human rights in Iran to further explore this issue with us.
Sincerely Yours,
Ram Joubin, Barrister & Solicitor
Vice-President
Alliance of Iranian-Canadians
www.iranian-canadians.ca
Avideh Motmaen-Far
President
Council of Iranian Canadians
www.facebook.com/CouncilOfIC/
Sara Akrami
Author and Translator
Iranian-Canadian Press
https://icpress.ca/
