OTTAWA, Canada—A group of international scholars, politicians, and activists issued a scathing report in Ottawa on Tuesday condemning Iran’s president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad for what they describe as his flaunting international norms regarding nuclear arms, human rights, and terrorism.

The report’s authors claim the document contains the most up-to-date, comprehensive, and authoritative witness testimony and documentary evidence to date regarding Iran’s pursuit of nuclear weapons.

Canadian member of Parliament and professor Irwin Cotler said Ahmadinejad’s Iran “has emerged as a clear and present danger to international peace and security, to regional and Middle East stability, and increasingly and alarmingly so, to its own people.”

The threat posed by Iran is a “toxic convergence of four distinct—yet interrelated—dangers,” says the report’s findings. Those dangers include Iran’s pursuit of nuclear weapons, genocidal incitement of hate against Israel, state-sponsored terrorism, and the systematic and widespread abuse of the Iranian people.

The report documents some of the disturbing events unfolding in Iran today including a parade following the successful testing of a Shahab-3 missile capable of striking Israel. The same type of missile was carried in a parade with a slogan across it reading, “Israel must be wiped off the map,” says the report.

Cotler said Ahmadinejad had led Iran toward genocide while inflicting harsher persecution of its own people.

That point was highlighted by Nazanin Afshin-Jam, president and cofounder of Stop Child Executions.

While Iran is second in the world for the number of executions it carries out, following China, it is the world’s leading executioner of children.

“There are currently 160 children waiting on death row in Iran for quote unquote crimes such homosexuality and sex outside of marriage.”

Others are charged with apostasy, the formal renunciation of one’s religion.

Afshin-Jam, who had to flee Iran as a child when her father was almost murdered by the Revolutionary Guard, said she receives hundreds of e-mails per week from Iranians describing the painful repression they are suffering on a daily basis.

“The situation has deteriorated in Iran with more sham trials, more forced confessions, more torture, including systematic rape in prisons.”

She said even recently, one year after the protests following the last election that saw Ahmadinejad win a questionable victory, there have been another 1,000 arrests of students involved in the protests.

“My main message here today is that 70 million people in Iran are living in a police state.”

Also present at the press conference was Caspian Makan, former fiancé of Neda Agha-Soltan, the iconic Iranian protester whose death by the bullet of an Iranian militiaman, was captured on video and broadcast around the world. Her name, Neda, translates as “voice” or “divine message.” Her death became a rallying point and symbol for Iranian protesters.

Makan said the only way to stop the Iranian regime is a complete oil embargo to cripple Iran financially.

The report lays out an 18-point strategy for how to deal with Iran including using international and domestic law to stop and combat Iran’s state-sanctioned incitement to genocide and to redress the human rights violations in Iran.

It also calls for sanctions against companies that enable Iran’s domestic repression, including those that sell the country surveillance equipment and technologies used to monitor or control Internet traffic.

Besides calling for real enforcement of often ignored sanctions against Iran, the report suggests targeting the country’s gasoline imports which Cotler described as an “Achilles heel” for the country. Despite being a major oil producer, Iran imports approximately 30 to 40 percent of its domestic gasoline production.

The report was issued by the Responsibility to Prevent Coalition, a consortium of international law scholars, human rights advocates, former government leaders, parliamentarians, and Iranian activists for democratic reform.

By Matthew Little
The Epoch Times