The Danger of a Nuclear, Genocidal and Rights-Violating Iran:
The Responsibility to Prevent Petition
At a press conference in Jerusalm, Cotler accused the Iranian government of violating international law regarding nuclear weapons development, incitement to genocide, state-sponsored terrorism and human rights. Other speakers at the press conference included Harvard University law professor Alan Dershowitz, who spoke from the US, British MP Denis MacShane who spoke from London, Bassam Eid, executive director of the Palestinian Human Rights Monitoring Group, and Prof. Suzanne Stone of the Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law. The petition includes a "road map" of sanctions and remedies that the world should apply against the Iranian government to force it to cease its alleged violations of international law. Professor Irwin Cotler, a member of the Canadian Parliament and a former Attorney General of Canada, is one of the world’s leading experts and practitioners of human rights law. He has served on the Standing Committee on Foreign Affairs and its Sub-Committee on Human Rights and International Development, as well as on the Standing Committee on Justice and Human Rights. In 2000, he was appointed Special Advisor to the Minister of Foreign Affairs on the International Criminal Court. He has defended dissidents and prisoners of conscience, most notably Andrei Sakharov and Natan Sharansky, Jacobo Timmerman, Said-Eddin Ibrahim from Egypt, Nelson Mandela from South Africa, Maher Arar and others. In Israel, he has been a spokesman for the immigration rights of the Falashamura. "For sanctions to be effective," Cotler said, "What is needed is the will to act, and what has been absent so far has been political will with respect to each of the threats." Dershowitz warned that "today is a true test of whether international law will survive and whether the rule of law will prevail... This is the time. This is the moment in which the international community must act to prevent genocide." The speakers stressed that taking action against Iran was not an option but an obligation of the international community. Neither Cotler nor Dershowitz ruled out the possibility of military action against Iran, but said that, before reaching that point, all peaceful attempts to curb the Iranian government must first be tried. "Iran has already committed the crime of incitement to genocide," said Cotler. "We do not have to wait and should never wait for the actual beginning of atrocities before taking action." Cotler is travelling all over the world to discuss his call for sanctions with various world leaders. Recently, he has visited Austria and Germany, and he said he planned to put special emphasis on 13 countries, including South Africa, the US and Canada, which have a special connection to the issue. He said his own political party in Canada, the Liberal Party, had endorsed the petition and that the Canadian parliament was due to release a statement on the matter. Others who have signed the petition to date include Per Ahlmark, former deputy prime minister of Sweden; Kamal Hossain, former minister of justice and minister of foreign affairs of Bangladesh; John Turner, former Canadian prime minister; author Elie Wiesel; Romeo Dallaire who was the UN Commander in Rwanda; Gregory Stanton, former president of the International Association of Genocide Scholars; and Sein Win, prime minister of the Burmese government in exile. A full list of signators will be found in the linked pdf text of the resolution. GPN will be reporting on further signators to the petition in coming issues. The Cotler petition extends and expands previous briefs prepared by Justus Weiner of the Jerusalem Center of Public Affairs and Gregory Gordon of University of North Dakota. GPN believes that the petition serves as a template for advancing the temporal locus of action based in genocide law from proof of intent after the event to deterrence based on predict and prevent before the event. The petition draws on the Genocide Convention, the Nuremberg Trials, the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court, and the Rwandan precedents for prosecuting incitement to genocide. The Cotler resolution was widely reported in the world press.
