Locke Keith: Reports — Complaint Regarding the Medicines Regulations 1984—Consideration of Report of Regulations Review Committee Briefing from the New Zealand Baha’i Community—Consideration of Report of Foreign Affairs Defence and Trade Committee Report from the Parliamentary Commissioner for the Environment on Change in the High Country: Environmental Stewardship and Tenure Review and Related Briefing—Consideration of Report of Primary Production Committee Reserve Bank of New Zealand’s Financial Stability Report November 2009—Consideration of Report of Finance and Expenditure Committee 
Locke Keith: Reports — Complaint Regarding the Medicines Regulations 1984—Consideration of Report of Regulations Review Committee Briefing from the New Zealand Baha’i Community—Consideration of Report of Foreign Affairs Defence and Trade Committee Report from the Parliamentary Commissioner for the Environment on Change in the High Country: Environmental Stewardship and Tenure Review and Related Briefing—Consideration of Report of Primary Production Committee Reserve Bank of New Zealand’s Financial Stability Report November 2009—Consideration of Report of Finance and Expenditure Committee 
[Volume:659;Page:8430] 
KEITH LOCKE (Green) 
: 
 On behalf of the Green Party I would like to endorse the comments of John Hayes and Chris Carter on this matter and the Foreign Affairs Defence and Trade Committee that considered the briefing from the Baha’i community. It worked quite well and came to consensus conclusions. Many MPs around the country will have been lobbied by members of the Baha’i community. They are a very active community and are very strong in defending the rights of their co-religionists in Iran. The Baha’i faith is quite strong in Iran. In terms of the total Iranian population it is not large—about 350000 people—but I think it is the largest religious minority. 
As John Hayes pointed out it has a particular problem because it came out of Islam and its members are considered heretics by some of the more extreme orthodox Islamic leaders. Those leaders do not accept the Baha’i faith as a religion; instead they define it as a political movement and the Baha’i people suffer discrimination. It is not just informal discrimination but also systematic discrimination in the workforce in getting places in the education system and in certain social services provided by the State. We were told that about 220 Baha’i are imprisoned in Iran including seven of their leaders called the Yaran. Seven top leaders have been imprisoned there for over a year and there has been a particular international campaign to get them freed. The charges against them are quite extreme; they include “espionage for Israel insulting religious sanctities and propaganda against the Islamic republic.” These charges carry the death penalty. Even one of their lawyers has suffered. He was in prison for quite a while in the aftermath of the big protest that took place in Iran following the June presidential elections—the disputed presidential elections. That lawyer Abdulfatah Sultani has now been released but the seven Baha’i leaders are still in jail in Iran. 
As John Hayes and Chris Carter indicated we advocate that New Zealand continue to take up the case of Baha’is at bilateral meetings with the Iranian Government and in the United Nations where motions are put up regularly particularly by the Canadian Government. Post our report coming out the meeting that John Hayes talked about took place in November at the Third Committee of the UN General Assembly. It discussed and passed a motion expressing deep concern at the serious ongoing and recurring human rights violations in Iran. It urged the Islamic Republic to end the harassment intimidation and persecution of political opponents and it pointed out that five people were sentenced to death in the aftermath of the protests. I do not know whether any of the protesters have been executed yet but a lot of executions go on in Iran. It executes large numbers of criminals each year. Unfortunately it is one of the leading countries for executions. 
The motion that the UN carried also talked about increasing discrimination against persons belonging to religious and ethnic minorities. Some of the ethnic minorities there are Arabs Kurds and Azeris. I disagree a bit with Chris Carter that the Baha’i are the only religion persecuted in Iran. In fact some other religious adherents such as Christians are persecuted too. It is to a lesser degree than the Baha’i sure but it has been a fact including in some of the refugee cases in New Zealand that Christian converts from Islam going back to Iran could suffer persecution. A motion in the Iranian Parliament is seeking to determine that apostates—that is people who have converted from Islam to Christianity—could be subject to the death penalty. That has not gone past the first reading in the Iranian Parliament yet but it just shows that there is a prejudice and climate of persecution against more than the Baha’i. That being said though the Baha’i are the main targets. The other thing the motion at the UN pushed for in November was the right of UN inspectors to look at the human rights situation but that request was turned down as it has been for several years. 
The whole question about the Baha’i is relevant to the general and growing opposition to what is essentially authoritarian rule and rule from a grand leader like the Islamic leader Khamenei. Those demonstrations are still continuing and about 6 months ago this Parliament after those demonstrations took place in June and there was persecution of those demonstrating endorsed unanimously a motion I put forward to convey the concern of this Parliament to the Iranian authorities. It was very good that we moved that motion but since then the situation has not really improved. Human Rights Watch put out a report on 11 November that talked about the fact that there are credible verified reports of torture rape and ill treatment in detention and show trials without due process and that thousands of people are arbitrarily arrested and they disappear or are held incommunicado. Journalists human rights defenders students and other groups have been targeted and people have been beaten and shot for their protests—not a very good record at all. 
Then just recently over the last few days protests have re-erupted led by students in the main from their university bases in Teheran but also in other cities. They had coordinated demonstrations across the country on 8 December to mark the anniversary of the killing of three students by security forces back in 1953. The fact that the students went back to that date is quite interesting because since 1953 they have suffered after the overthrow of Mohammed Mosaddeq who was the first real democratically elected leader of Iran and who was overthrown essentially by the American Central Intelligence Agency. There is a lot of history and documentation of that. The Shah ruled that country with an iron hand tortured and executed people and refused to have any opposition. Now under the Islamic Republic there has been repression as well yet the students went back to mark a particular series of protests back in 1953. But the revolutionary guards who serve the regime plus the military have surrounded campuses over the last few days and have prevented the students from getting out to join others in the community in protest. The authorities have even gone to extreme lengths over the last couple of days to shut down the whole mobile phone network and the Internet to stop students and other protesters communicating with each other. 
There are very brave people in Iran despite all the repression. They are standing up and demonstrating knowing that they could be arrested could be tortured could be killed etc. So I think that it is very relevant we are having this discussion tonight and I support the report of the Foreign Affairs Defence and Trade Committee. Thank you.