The Canadian Press, Ottawa, September 11, 2012 – For years, a group of Iranian Canadians held protests around Ottawa and elsewhere, stubbornly demanding the closure of the Iranian embassy and the severing of diplomatic ties.
They held another demonstration on Monday – this one a demonstration of affection, featuring a bouquet for Foreign Affairs Minister John Baird and an impromptu sort of conga line on the lawn in front of the Department of Foreign Affairs.
About three dozen members of different human rights and resistance groups were celebrating the government’s decision last week to eject Iranian diplomats and shutter the Canadian embassy in Tehran.
Iranian Canadians referred to it as a “nest” of terrorism. Their protests against the Iranian embassy reached a high point in 2003, after the death of Iranian-Canadian photojournalist Zahra Kazemi in an Iranian prison.
Those in the crowd rejected the criticism – levelled by some over the past week – that Canada is putting the lives of citizens arrested in Iran in more danger in the absence of any consular presence.
“We haven’t been able to achieve anything, even the smallest thing, to bring the body of (Kazemi) back to Canada,” said Shahram Golestaneh, with the Iranian Democratic Association.
“What else are we supposed to achieve with this regime? I believe this is a step in the right direction, maybe nine years late, but better than never …
“The very least that it does is send a signal to the oppressed Iranian people.”
Mah Etemadi said Iranian operatives connected to the embassy called her, asking if she wasn’t interested in returning home to Iran.
Then the calls started to her family back home.
“When you’d refused, they go further, they harass your family inside Iran. Mostly it’s by phone calls, but if it goes further it’s capture and torture,” said Etemadi, a supporter of the National Council of Resistance.
Now the groups are focused on a new pitch to the federal government, and that’s to remove the People’s Mujahedin of Iran (PMOI) from its list of recognized terrorist organizations.
The PMOI had a tumultuous history, being one of the major actors in the overthrow of the Shah of Iran in 1979.