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Not even the assassination of 85 Canadians by the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps by dropping a plane from the sky is enough for Trudeau to intervene.
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May 25, 2022 • 14 hours ago • 5 minutes of reading • 40 comments Iranian striker Mehdi Taremi reacts after Morocco scored during the Group B football match of the 2018 World Cup in Russia between Morocco and Iran in St. Petersburg on June 15, 2018. Terry Glavin denounces the fact that Soccer Canada is paying the Iranian football federation $ 400,000 to play in Vancouver next month. Photo by GIUSEPPE CACACE / AFP / Getty Images
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While Prime Minister Justin Trudeau was in Vancouver this week pretending that it was not his job to override the obscenity of the $ 400,000-funded organization of Soccer Canada, which was funded by the state of Khomeinist torture. Iran could conduct a profitable public relations exercise in the form of a “friendly party” in Vancouver next month, my thoughts went directly to Alireza Saghafi. I don’t even know if he’s still alive.
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You shouldn’t be surprised if you’ve never heard of Alireza Saghafi. Saghafi, president of the Center for Workers’ Rights in Iran and a journalist, is 68 years old and very ill. The last one I heard was about to die in a prison cell in Karaj, an industrial city a short drive northwest of Tehran.
The main reason why you probably don’t know who Alireza Saghafi is or what is happening to her is that the Islamic Republic of Iran ranks 174th out of 180 countries in the World Reporters’ Freedom of the Borders Press Freedom Index. It is becoming increasingly difficult to know what is happening in the country. Persecuted trade unionists, Democrats and feminists in Iran live in fear of being imprisoned for engaging in any communication with the outside world. A mutual friend says, “While Mr. Saghafi and his fellow activists would prefer to see articles about Mr. Saghafi’s work and written activities rather than his health, the labor movement in Iran cannot be allowed. the luxury of losing its leader. “
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I don’t even know if Alireza Saghafi is still alive
Recently, the regime has sharpened its talent for sadism and cruelty by resolving “repressing resistance in prison by killing sick prisoners,” according to Alieh Motalebzadeh, vice president of the Association for the Defense of Freedom of the Press in Iran. . And that seems to be exactly what the regime intends to do with Alireza Saghafi.
Six weeks ago, due to his deteriorating health: his heart was failing and his blood pressure was on the roof, Saghafi was taken to the State Medical Office for an examination. Doctors there found him in critical condition and assessed that he should be hospitalized immediately. But authorities refused. Hours later, he was taken back to Kachuei Prison in Karaj.
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Last month, in a report entitled “In the death waiting room: deaths in prison after deliberate denial of medical care in Iran’s prisons”, Amnesty International detailed the cases of 96 people who they have died in prisons in Iran for the past 12 years. It is Amnesty’s effort to illustrate how the authorities “routinely cause or contribute to deaths in custody, even by blocking or delaying prisoners’ access to emergency hospitalization.” The 96 cases were only “illustrative”, Amnesty explained, and the actual number is probably much higher. “This is because human rights violations in Iran are often not reported because of well-founded fears of retaliation.”
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Terry Glavin: The Iranian judicial assassination ritual may have just claimed another victim
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There is nothing so glamorous about Saghafi that it has caught the attention of Foreign Minister Melanie Joly, and the cause of workers’ rights in Iran is not fashionable enough for Trudeau to recognize it with, say, ” kneel down “. Saghafi is an old-fashioned car mechanic and “proletarian self-taught man,” as self-taught working-class intellectuals were called. A prominent member of the Iranian Writers’ Association, Saghafi was the editor of the newspaper Rah Ayendeh until the Islamic Ministry of Culture and Orientation ordered its closure in 2010.
Saghafi has been in and out of prison with so many absurd charges over the years, it’s dizzying. He is currently serving a one-year deferred sentence after his arrest on March 11 on a 2019 charge of “propaganda against the state,” which appears to have arisen from things he is said to have said or written. at the head. until the mass protests of May Day, the regime crushed, killing hundreds of workers and arresting thousands. Saghafi is also awaiting a court ruling on a three-year sentence dating back to 2008, apparently for the crime of having attended the annual conference of the International Labor Organization in Geneva.
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Of course, Canada can’t do much about it. No reasonably vigilant observer of Ottawa’s politics should expect the Prime Minister’s Office to even dismiss something on Twitter about someone as dirty as Alireza Saghafi. It bears no resemblance to the appearance of Wang Yi, China’s foreign minister, with whom Joly had a very pleasant conversation last month.
Saghafi bears no resemblance to the Wang Yi aspect
It’s so nice to have the nasty kidnapping of Beijing hostages by Michael Kovrig and Michael Spavor behind us, Wang and Joly agreed. “I’m glad this issue is over and we’re moving forward,” Joly said. “My goal is to make sure we reconnect.” The ongoing slavery of millions of Uighurs by the Muslim minority in Xinjiang, the brutal evisceration by the Chinese Communist Party of Hong Kong’s embryonic democracy, Xi Jinping’s illegal annexation of the South China Sea, their persistent threats to Taiwan’s sovereignty … Hey, past.
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As for the Vancouver football game, not even the killing by the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps of 176 people, including 85 Canadians, with the explosion of a Ukrainian sky plane in 2020, is enough for Trudeau to intervene (the Iranian football team is closely linked to the IRGC, which claims increasing control over Iranian sports teams). First, Trudeau said it was a Soccer Canada decision. He then said that it would be up to the Canada Border Services Agency to examine members of the Iranian team and their official environment, as if this were not the CBSA’s job with all international travelers.
Perhaps Ottawa’s indifference is because with Iran, as with China, “this issue is over and we are moving forward,” as Joly said after his talk with Wang Yi.
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Tell him to stop this indecency
Only public outbursts seem to move the Trudeau government to act in accordance with the “Canadian values” it likes to talk about. Perhaps one could be encouraged to see an “angle of equity, diversity, and inclusion” at the Vancouver football game: for 40 years, Khomeinists have banned women from attending football matches in Iran. Only since 2018, when the FIFA International Football Federation forced the issue, have a small number of Iranian women been allowed to attend some football matches in arbitrarily and ad hoc separate seats. In 2019, football fan Sahar Khodayari died in a fire after being sentenced to prison for dressing as a man to enter a stadium. Two months ago, women received a pepper spray after being blocked at the gates of a World Cup qualifier in Mashhad.
As for Alireza Saghafi, perhaps a better course than one of these letter-writing campaigns to Iran’s supreme leader Ali Khamenei, asking him to show mercy, would be a campaign to tell Trudeau that it’s not good enough to pretend that Iran’s football game in Vancouver is none of our business. Is.
Tell him to stop this indecency. It is an offense against Canadian values. And while you’re at it, say a word to Alireza Saghafi.
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