OTTAWA –
Many of the world’s female foreign ministers will focus on the ‘brutal’ crackdown in opposition to protesters in Iran throughout a digital assembly this week hosted by Canada, Canadian Minister of Foreign Affairs Melanie Joly stated in an announcement on Wednesday.
Joly and 14 others will meet just about on Thursday at 8 a.m. ET to tackle unrest ignited by the loss of life final month of Iranian Mahsa Amini whereas being held by Tehran’s morality police. The incident has been a flashpoint for one of many boldest challenges to the Islamic Republic because the 1979 revolution.
“My counterparts and I’ll collect to ship a transparent message: the Iranian regime should finish all types of violence and persecution in opposition to the Iranian folks, together with their brutal aggressions in opposition to ladies specifically,” Joly stated.
“Canada will proceed to stand by the brave Iranians who’re preventing for his or her human rights and standing up for his or her moms, sisters, wives and daughters. Women’s rights are human rights,” she stated.
Foreign ministers from Germany, Chile, New Zealand and Norway are among the many 14 who will be a part of Canada, a authorities supply stated. France will be a part of the decision, however Foreign Affairs Minister Catherine Colonna won’t be able to, stated the supply.
During the assembly, officers will hear from ladies of Iranian heritage and focus on the state of girls’s and human rights in Iran, Joly’s workplace stated, including that it might give them a possibility to coordinate efforts and focus on “methods to improve their collective help for the Iranian folks.”
Canada had joined different nations, together with the United States, in imposing sanctions on Iran.
While the present unrest doesn’t seem shut to toppling the Iranian authorities, the state of affairs has raised worldwide issues as talks on Iran’s nuclear capabilities seem at a stalemate and Tehran has moved to help Russia’s invasion in Ukraine in defiance of the West.
Iran has accused international locations who’ve expressed help for the protests of meddling in its inner affairs.
The focus on Iranian ladies continued on Wednesday, as climber Elnaz Rekabi, who induced controversy by competing in a world occasion and not using a head overlaying, returned to Iran.
Amini, who hailed from Iran’s Kurdistan area, died Sept. 16 after being detained three days earlier by morality police in Tehran for her “inappropriate apparel.”
Iran’s non secular leaders have tried to characterize the unrest as a part of a breakaway rebellion by the Kurdish minority threatening the nation’s unity, moderately than a protest in opposition to clerical rule.
Other international locations anticipated to take part within the assembly are Albania, Andorra, the Central African Republic, Chile, Iceland, Kosovo, Libya, Liechtenstein, Mongolia and Panama.
(Reporting by Steve Scherer; Writing by Susan Heavey; Editing by Alex Richardson and Bill Berkrot)