Canada: Two Iranian activists barred from entering country
May 08, 2009
Leading dissidents from Iran were insulted and humiliated by visa officers at the Canadian Embassy in Tehran before two were barred entry to Canada for a conference at York University, organizers said yesterday.
The two are Reza Alijani, a journalist and scholar who has been jailed several times by the Iranian government for his work and who has been honoured by Reporters Without Borders, and Shadi Sadr, a feminist lawyer who has travelled widely as part of her 'One Million Signatures' campaign against the stoning of women in Iran. They were among 35 international scholars and activists invited to a conference last weekend on secularism and fundamentalism to mark the 30th anniversary of the Iranian revolution.
York University political scientist Saeed Rahnema, a conference organizer, said it is 'ironic at a time when Canada is involved in Afghanistan fighting fundamentalism that the government denies people visas to discuss secularism versus fundamentalism in Islam.'
The Toronto Star
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