[mobglob-discuss] Alicia Barsallo on the death of Zahra Kazemi

[Alan Ward]

LETTER TO THE EDITOR
OPEN LETTER

TO PRIME MINISTER JEAN CHRETIEN
      & THE GOVERNMENT OF CANADA


While Canada plays games with labels, calling Iran a “safe” country
and sending Iranian refugees back to persecution, torture and death,
evil hands continue in their work.

ZAHRA KAZEMI was killed after her arrest on June 23rd by unimaginably
brutal methods.  And a son–her son–has been left to mourn the painful death
of a courageous journalist mother, a woman who cared about the world
enough-who cared about all of us enough–to leave the safety of her life in
Canada and fight injustice with her camera.

Kazemi's life–and the loss of it-sharply points to the hypocrisy in calling
a place
like Iran “safe.”

Her death sharply points out the sort of landscape that women–like
Iranian women–must endure in a quarter of the world.

Kazemi is a symbol of what we must achieve and what we must condemn.

I hope that Prime Minister Chretien, who made us proud by courageously
refusing to give political endorsation to the US war on Iraq, will make us
proud–and very much prouder-this time in the aftermath of Zahra Kazemi’s
death.

The responsibility must be placed where the responsibility lies:  not on a
few
brutalized goons, but on the Iranian religious fundamentalist regime that
has
consistently suppressed fundamental civil liberties and human rights in that
country.

Prime Minister Chretien, we expect you to hold the Iranian government
responsible
for Zahra Kazemi’s death.

We expect you, as the highest elected leader of this nation, to deliver the
message,
loud and clear, that Canada will not tolerate the state murder of one of her
citizens.



                For the Vancouver-Kingsway NDP Executive,


Alicia Barsallo