'Minister failed me,' Kazemi's son says

[CHIMO]

OTTAWA - Zahra Kazemi's son left a meeting with Foreign Affairs Minister Pierre Pettigrew angry and unhappy Tuesday after failing to get a commitment for government action in his mother's death.

Before the meeting, Stephan Hachemi held a news conference to demand that the government take Kazemi's case to the International Court of Justice and expel the Iranian ambassador. He also wanted Canada to demand the immediate return of his mother's body.

Hachemi said he expected immediate answers to his demands.

When he emerged more than two hours later, Hachemi said Pettigrew "did not commit himself to any of the proposals I made to him." He described the meeting as "totally unhappy."

http://www.cbc.ca/story/canada/national/2004/07/27/hachemi_040727.html

http://www.thestar.com/NASApp/cs/ContentServer?pagename=thestar/Render&c=Page&cid=972514081251

[jeff30997]

1. Pettigrew is an asshole.

Iran is laughing at us.

[Hand]

2. Oh, he is?

That's good to know--I'd kind of suspected as much. Thanks for the confirmation!

:hi:

[Canuckistanian]

3. I second that

Useless wanker.

[iverglas]

4. the dilemma of dual citizenship

Kazemi wasn't just a Canadian citizen -- she was also, still, an Iranian citizen. This is a really tricky situation.

People with dual citizenship reap numerous benefits from it. Many of them use their Canadian passport (say) to enter Canada, and their Iranian passport (or the passport of whatever other country they still have the citizenship of) to enter their country of birth. In so doing, they can certainly be said to be confirming their intent to be treated as a citizen of that country while they are there. (I don't know what passport Kazemi entered Iran on, but it wouldn't be determinative anyhow.)

A problem arises when a person is not permitted to give up his/her citizenship of birth on acquiring another one. Canada allows citizens to renounce their citizenship if have another one or they get another one by so doing -- this principle, of the ability to renounce citizenship but only if the person has another citizenship, is a subject of an international treaty to reduce statelessness:
http://www.unhchr.ch/html/menu3/b/o_reduce.htm
Canada is a party.

The US, on the other hand, allows US citizens outside the US to renounce citizenship on a whim. This can result in statelessness and is frowned on by the international community. Canada has had its share of stateless former-US citizen nutbars, who have renouced their US citizenship at the US embassy here. (The US has to take them back, under immigration treaties, but if they get back in here again illegally -- not all that difficult, since US citizens have never needed passports to enter Canada -- the US won't take 'em back agaon.)

This opinion piece in the Globe and Mail is informative:
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/ArticleNews/TPStory/LAC/20040716/CODUAL16/TPComment/TopStories
(may have to register)

The conventional wisdom is expressed in a 1930 treaty: A state "may not afford diplomatic protection to one of its nationals against a state whose nationality such person also possesses." Iran is not a party to this treaty, and Canada, once a party, denounced it in 1996. Still, some lawyers argue (probably wrongly) that this "non-responsibility" principle reflects "customary" international law, binding on all nations.

This non-responsibility doctrine is a dangerous concept in a world where people regularly cross borders. It is rendered even more troubling by an international legal system that does not regulate how and when states assign citizenship. In international law, choosing to bestow citizenship is mostly the prerogative of each state. This approach seems proper until you consider its flip side: There is no requirement that states permit emigrants to renounce their citizenship. International law allows, in other words, "clinging" nationalities.

The end result is the proliferation of dual nationality: a person who is the naturalized citizen of one country and the citizen (usually by birth, and sometimes involuntarily) of another. And with this dual nationality come the problems faced by Ms. Kazemi and others such as Maher Arar: Dual nationality combined with an unalloyed "non-responsibility" doctrine mean that these people are robbed of the international protections their Canadian citizenship might bring.

Iran can perfectly well say "she was ours", and can maybe perfectly well say to Canada "bug off".

And that would mean that Iran hasn't committed the kind of offence against Canada -- treating a Canadian citizen in a way that violates Canada's national prerogatives -- that would justify a rupture in diplomatic relations.

The author of that piece argues that Canada should assert its jurisdiction over Kazemi if a case is brought in the International Court of Justice. But we have to recognize that what is needed is new law; the existing law just doesn't cover the situation.

[LeftistGorilla]

5. I don't know if...

anything less then an invasion would satisfy Stephan Hachemi...