Addressing 1,400 lawmakers from around the world at a gathering in Quebec City, Baird said Baha’is and Christians in Iran were “consistently threatened with death and torture, simply for believing.”
He labeled the government in Tehran “evil,” using a word Prime Minister Stephen Harper recently used three times in one speech about Iran. That word has been virtually abandoned in the United States after the strong and negative reaction in 2002 to President George W. Bush’s phrase “axis of evil” to describe Iran, Iraq and North Korea.
Baird said “the evil regime in Iran … remains the most significant threat to global peace and security.”
Iraj Nadimi, head of the eight-member Iranian delegation at the gathering, threw up his arms in a display of protest, and held up a small sign identifying his country.
Later, he accused Baird of meddling in Iran’s sovereign affairs, likening the remarks to Tehran using the forum to promote the independence of Quebec from the rest of Canada.
Commentators said that an official calling for the independence of Quebec or Kurdistan would indeed be meddling in another state’s business, but calling for a state to abide by commitments its has made in agreements it has signed is not meddling.
In his speech, Baird called on delegates to return home after the conference of the Inter-Parliamentary Union (IPU) to press their respective governments to throw support behind a human rights resolution on Iran that Canada sponsors late each year at the United Nations General Assembly.
“This regime stands for everything we parliamentarians should stand against,” he said.
In a meeting with reporters after his speech, Baird dismissed the Iranian delegation’s reaction to his comments, saying, “Sometimes the truth hurts.”
He said, “Staying silent is never an option when people stone women, when they hang gays, when they incite genocide, when they say they want to wipe the Jewish people and the Jewish state off the map.” Iran has never said it wants to wipe the Jewish people off the map.
Baird said, “It is never good for anyone in civilized society to stay quiet. It is tremendously important as an international community that we speak with one voice.”