By Irwin Cotler and Alan Dershowitz
Irwin Cotler, the former minister of justice and attorney general of Canada, member of Canadian parliament and co-author of this piece, is introducing legislation in Canadian parliament called the “Iran Accountability Act.” While it expressly holds Iran to account – for its genocidal threats, nuclear ambitions and domestic repressions – it can also function to hold any signatory to the Genocide Convention to account. All signatories to the 1948 Genocide Convention (including the United States) have a responsibility to prevent genocide – and to punish incitement to genocide – that they have largely ignored in the case of the world’s greatest threat. The IAA, while a Canadian initiative, is a template model as to how to fulfill these responsibilities and take a stand against Iranian criminal actions.
We were in Geneva when the President of Iran, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, stepped to the podium at the United Nations and delivered an address at a conference ostensibly aimed at fighting racism. With that speech – fettered with anti-Semitic comments and rooted in the very intolerance the Durban Review Conference was supposed to be combating, the whole delivered on the day of Holocaust remembrance in Geneva – the use and abuse of the United Nations reached a new, shameful low. Read more ...
Irwin Cotler, the former minister of justice and attorney general of Canada, member of Canadian parliament and co-author of this piece, is introducing legislation in Canadian parliament called the “Iran Accountability Act.” While it expressly holds Iran to account – for its genocidal threats, nuclear ambitions and domestic repressions – it can also function to hold any signatory to the Genocide Convention to account. All signatories to the 1948 Genocide Convention (including the United States) have a responsibility to prevent genocide – and to punish incitement to genocide – that they have largely ignored in the case of the world’s greatest threat. The IAA, while a Canadian initiative, is a template model as to how to fulfill these responsibilities and take a stand against Iranian criminal actions.
We were in Geneva when the President of Iran, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, stepped to the podium at the United Nations and delivered an address at a conference ostensibly aimed at fighting racism. With that speech – fettered with anti-Semitic comments and rooted in the very intolerance the Durban Review Conference was supposed to be combating, the whole delivered on the day of Holocaust remembrance in Geneva – the use and abuse of the United Nations reached a new, shameful low. Read more ...
Source: FrontPage Magazine
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