MONTREAL — Liberal MP and human rights activist Irwin Cotler is calling on the international community to collaborate and combat the genocidal ambitions of “Ahmadinejad’s Iran” through an international petition he presented last week in Ottawa.

Irwin Cotler

Titled “The Danger of a Nuclear, Genocidal and Rights-Violating Iran: The Responsibility to Prevent Petition,” the 85-page document, according to Cotler, lists measures that the United Nations, as well as state parties to the Genocide Convention, the European Union, the International Court of Justice and others, can legally undertake to prevent President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s Iran from committing mass genocide and to hold the country to account.

“This is the most comprehensive, complete and current compilation of witness testimony and documentary evidence that has ever been gathered,” he told The CJN.

“It makes it clearer than any other petition or document before, that Iran is in standing violation of international legal prohibitions against the development and proliferation of nuclear weapons… [and] that Iran has already committed the crime of incitement to genocide.”

The measures in the petition include remedies through domestic and international law, as well as a range of economic and investment sanctions and other initiatives.

Cotler characterized Iran as showing a “toxic convergence” of three threats: nuclear ambition, incitement to genocide and “massive” domestic human rights violations.

Cotler timed the petition’s announcement to coincide with the 61st anniversary of the Genocide Convention and with the eve of the anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

The 60 signatories who had endorsed the petition as of last week included prominent jurists, politicians, and human rights figures, such as former UN Human Rights high commissioner Louise Arbour; Nobel laureate Elie Wiesel; former UN mission commander for Rwanda, Senator Roméo Dallaire; Harvard law professor Alan Dershowitz; former prime minister John Turner; former Swedish deputy prime minister and genocide expert Per Ahlmark, and several Iranian human rights scholars.

The litany of Iran’s transgressions cited in the petition – the “precursors to genocide” – is exhaustive, including demonization of Israel, Holocaust denial, anti-Semitism, genocide incitement, nuclear threat, systematic and widespread killings and torture, assaults on women’s rights, and murder of political dissidents.

The petition also delineates a “12-point framework for remedy and redress” to counter the Iranian threat. It includes 12 “generic sets of remedies” that countries can follow, as well as “threat-specific remedies” for states and institutions to use.

As the petition specifies, states such as Canada could file an “inter-state complaint” before the UN Security Council for sanctions and account, Cotler said.

“This has been done for the nuclear issue, but it also has to be done for the genocide issue,” Cotler said.

He noted that the genocide issue will not reach the International Criminal Court unless the UN Security Council refers it there.

The petition also recommends that other nations try to pass legislation similar to Cotler’s own private member’s bill, the Iran Accountability Act.

“Canada has the opportunity to exercise moral, political, intellectual and juridical leadership, to take the lead in the international community,” he said.

Other examples from the 12 points include “targeted, calibrated sanctions” to make it harder for Iran to produce nuclear weapons, such as prohibiting the “supply, sale or transfer” of materials that could aid uranium enrichment; targeting refined petroleum imports; curbing energy investment; focusing on Iran’s banking industry; sanctioning Iranian companies that facilitate domestic repression; targeting the Iranian Revolutionary Guard, and denying landing permission to the Iranian transportation industry.

Cotler said the next step would be for signatories to the petition to advocate for measures in their own countries. Cotler expected to seek Israeli support this week during a trip there and said there would be a campaign in 12 countries, including the permanent members of the UN Security Council  – the United States  France, Britain, Russia and China – as well as Germany, to have the petition supported and implemented.

In the petition’s executive summary, Cotler notes that the occurrence of state-sanctioned genocides in Rwanda, the Balkans and Sudan’s Darfur region “reminds us of three historical lessons” that justify action vis-à-vis Iran.

They are the need to heed incitement to genocide; the danger of indifference and inaction, and the “culture of impunity that attends all these threats.