We are building an Action-Network: Saskatoon Amnesty International Group 33 and the local Iranian Paivand committee have initiated a network that focuses on human rights abuses in Iran. These include the use of the death penalty and torture (to force confessions in the absence of credible evidence), sham trials, illegal detentions lasting for months or years prior to appearing in court, an ongoing crackdown on young women and their families who challenge hijab rules, the brutal actions of morality police during peaceful protest, and the systemic oppression of all religious and ethnic minorities and political opponents. Find out more about Amnesty International’s reports and urgent actions regarding Iran at Human rights in Iran Amnesty International

Our purpose is to coordinate diverse voices in wide-ranging actions that complement those of like-minded groups abroad to bring a halt to the killings, to quash the convictions, to employ fair trial procedures, to prosecute whoever is ordering and committing acts that according even to Iran’s own laws are illegal and immoral.

Our methods include public education, letter-writing and petitioning on the model of the annual Amnesty ‘Write for Rights’ campaign, holding discussions with MPs, officials at Global Affairs Canada, and the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights.

We have been exchanging information with the World Coalition Against the Death Penalty and Stop Execution Now Iran with their hundreds of associations, NGOs, and human rights groups from every region of the world.

We hosted on the university campus the film Seven Winters in Tehran (2023). It presented the case of a 19 year old woman who killed a man, an ‘upstanding’ citizen, while resisting his attempt to rape her. Reyhaneh Jabbari’s family made every attempt to save her life but were pitted against a system that is determined at all costs to uphold male honour. Reyhaneh was moved from one prison to the next, was kept in isolation and tortured. The sentence for qisas crimes like hers is ‘an eye for an eye, a life for a life.’ The dead man’s family was given the chance to forgive her but chose to be the agent of her death.  

The discussion that followed centred on the question: ‘What can we do?’

Reyhaneh Jabbari in Court

Whoever is interested (wherever you live) in learning more about what we’re doing or wanting direct involvement in our actions, please notify David Hedlin at dhedlin@amnesty.ca. Our list of Iranians from Ottawa, Toronto, Quebec City, Montreal and members from Amnesty groups across Canada is growing. We are also talking with labour, professional, academic and faith groups about their support.
.~ David Hedlin: dhedlin@amnesty.ca