Brandon Silver, international human rights lawyer, 2024 Magnitsky Award laureate, and the Director of Policy & Projects at the Raoul Wallenberg Centre for Human Rights, addressed the 17th Annual Geneva Summit for Human Rights and Democracy on February 18th, 2025.
Full Remarks:
Congratulations President-elect Edmundo González and leader María Corina Machado on receiving the 2025 Courage Award, and on your important calls to action and the three points that President González highlighted, and the need for the freedom of his compatriots and colleagues currently hiding in the Argentinian embassy, and being denied their fundamental rights of safe passage to seek asylum abroad. We must support them in their struggle for freedom and all the brave Venezuelans who continue to take the streets, including as María Corina Machado emphasized, as over 70% of those allowed to vote that supported her and Edmundo González, who are the democratic voice of Venezuela and we are delighted that they are here with us today.
And may I also congratulate each and every one of our brave speakers on their courage, despite enduring the unspeakable, to be on this stage and to find the words to describe the indescribable, which should be a clarion call for us all. Maryam, mourning the heinous murder of her child Abolfazl by the terrorist regime in Tehran. Tehran has the highest rate of child executions in the world, and the story that she shared is one of many families who are suffering and need the support of the international community. We heard from Niemat Ahmadi, who shared the story of the murder of her loved ones and the ongoing genocide, the second genocide in our lifetimes, of the people of Sudan. And we heard from Rahima Mahmut, on the plight of the Uyghurs and Namkyi of Tibet. We heard about the situation in Vietnam and in Cuba, and we heard of the political prisoners on the front line of fighting the impunity that allows for this injustice to prevail.
Their fight is the fight for our common humanity, a fight against injustice, and a fight that requires the support of each and every person, individually and collectively in this room and at the United Nations and in alphabetical order, quickly list some of the dissidents we heard of today, but again, each of these dissidents are emblematic of 1000’s of others who are suffering in silence and who represent the struggle for freedom, humanity, democracy in our times, the greatest human rights struggles and defining challenges of our era. So Raif Badawi, whose wife, Ensaf was a speaker at this podium a few years ago, and his family was unable to join, caught between the desert storms and the storms of Canada that precluded their being here, but where Raif suffered a sentence simply for being a blogger calling for tolerance and pluralism, of 10 years in prison and a thousand lashes. And while his prison sentence has expired, he should not be forgotten, because he is suffering possibly an even worse fate for a blogger and someone who champions freedom of expression, having his voice snuffed out with threat of being sent back to prison if he speaks out and being deprived of his right to come to Canada to join his wife and children who await being reunited with him.
Also, Dr. Wang Bingzhang, whose son, Times was here on the stage, sharing their plight to return their father to Canada as well, a McGill graduate who decided, instead of pursuing his medical career, to become the leader of the Chinese pro-democracy movement, and who remains today the longest held political prisoner in the world, sentenced to a torturous sentence of life imprisonment in solitary confinement, and who has suffered multiple strokes and ailments as a result of that and who must be liberated immediately.
We had an empty chair in honor of Rahil Dawut, a Uyghur scholar and community leader disappeared by China. And as well, an empty chair for Swedish-Iranian Doctor Ahmad Reza Jalali, and likewise, for Maria Kalesnikova, the Belarusian opposition leader whose sister, Tatiana Khomich was a speaker here in previous years, and where she is being persecuted for her campaign to be the voice of the Belarusian people. Likewise, we heard from Sebastian Lai, the son of Jimmy Lai, who, at 77 years of age, is in solitary confinement in Hong Kong, as his lead counsel says, running a newspaper and speaking to journalists, talking to politicians about politics and speaking to human rights organizations about human rights, so for exercising these very basic and fundamental rights, he is suffering in torturous conditions in Hong Kong and is currently undergoing a sham trial, which makes it a particularly propitious moment for us to intervene and pressure Hong Kong authorities to secure his release. He is a British citizen. He could have fled, he could have left, but he decided to stay and be a lightning rod as a prominent Hong Konger to be the voice of the people and deflect the attention from all those who were being persecuted in the streets. And as well, Mahmoud and Maryam Mehrabi, we heard from their sister Mahan, they’re being persecuted for supporting the “Woman, Life, Freedom movement” in Iran.
And finally, Dawit Isaak, whose daughter Betlehem was here on this stage, describing the conditions of the world’s longest unlawfully detained journalist in a society, a government that is persecuting innocent people forced conscription as Bethlehem described with repression that has been described as matching or exceeding North Korea, and yet there is no international condemnation commensurate with the scope and scale of those crimes and which calls out for justice.
So again, with each of these cases and causes referenced at the summit, there are thousands of others languishing in pain with wives and loved ones they’re struggling to return to, and they deserve all of our support. Their continued imprisonment is not only an indictment of the governments imprisoning them but an indictment of all the democracies that are not working to secure their freedom. Their sham trials bring shame not to those falsely accused, but on the international community that far too often stands silent. It should be the names of these political prisoners that are echoing in the halls of the United Nations next door, not the voices of those persecuting them. So the founding resolution of the United Nations Human Rights Council actually states this expressly. It says that all those elected to the Council must abide by the high standards of human rights norms and that those engaged in widespread and systematic human rights abuses can be removed.
And thanks to the work of this Geneva summit for human rights and the 30 international co sponsors, and especially Hillel Neuer, who’s been the champion of these campaigns, Russia was removed from the UN Human Rights Council for the first time ever, and Iran with again, the support of Nazanin Afshin-Jam, and other brave and courageous activist, was removed from the Women’s Rights Council. With enough effort and collective campaigning, we can ensure that it’s the voices of dissidents that prevail over demagogues and dictators.
So that’s a call to action for us all to build off of these previous successes, to ensure that for any state holding any of the dissidents whose family members took the stage earlier today, that they be subject to the same pressure campaigns and efforts to remove them, to hold the United Nations to its founding principles and mandate, and to ensure that they see these imprisoning states see arbitrary detention And hostage-taking as a liability and not as leverage. But until then, all democratic nations should be raising these cases publicly, prominently, and persistently, whether in government statements, in diplomatic interventions at the UN such as Universal Periodic Review, there are dedicated spaces for this, where governments, when called upon stay silent, they should be saying the names of every dissident whose names were spoken in this room and the halls of the UN as well. While the dictators are in those rooms, every democracy should be repeating these names every time one of those dictators takes the podium at the UPR and in other moments. And certainly, as well, in direct representations with the imprisoning states, there’s a lot of bilateral relationships that far too often, are focused on profit over principle in every country, whenever they’re meeting, with one of these governments, should be raising the names of these dissidents.
So it should not be these dissidents sitting in prison, but those imprisoning them. There are international crimes that are in breach. As President Edmundo González stated, There are international treaties and norms that most of the world, both Democratic states and those violating rights, all proclaim that they adhere to, and they must be held accountable to them. So the International Criminal Court, for example, instead of taking action for the over 15,000 politically motivated arbitrary arrests in Venezuela that President González described, instead of taking action on that, they cut a deal with the dictator to cooperate.
So we must put pressure on these international institutions to uphold international law, adhere to their mandate, and issue international arrest warrants for these international crimes. But where the international community is not doing what they can. Our democratic states must do what they should. Most of our rule of law nations have specific provisions, like universal jurisdiction that allow for prosecutions of these crimes. The International Criminal Court isn’t acting. We must act, submit evidence, provide witnesses to independent prosecution services, to Departments of Justice, to ensure that none of these dictators can travel to a free nation without seeing the inside of a courtroom.
Because again, while impunity prevails, a lot of these dictators are vacationing, enjoying the beaches, the banks, and the businesses of our democratic nations, while denying their compatriots and their fellow citizens the very same rights that they like to enjoy in democracies abroad. And that gives us leverage, so long as they like to hide their ill-gotten gains in our democracies and send their families to study in our schools while they target the families of dissidents, as we heard again from President González in the targeting of his son in law, Rafael Tudares, we must hold them accountable and subject them to targeted Magnitsky sanctions, as Nazanin Afshin-Jam mentioned in summarizing the panel of Iranian dissidents and the call to action that those crimes call out for, we have laws in our countries that allow for visa bans, business dealing prohibitions, asset forfeitures, but we’re not using them.
So every single one of these dictators, when they try to travel abroad, should be subject to arrest warrants and to targeted Magnitsky sanctions. And one example, we saw Vladimir Kara-Murza on the stage earlier with Yevgenia, which is a case study on the effective use of targeted sanctions. Not only was Vladimir an architect of these sanctions to ensure that dictators are held accountable, but for the first time, these sanctions were actually used in the case of a political prisoner. Canada sanctioned the corrupt judges and jailers, prosecutors and police who were involved in his sham trial, and then the UK and the US, and the EU followed. It shows that these measures work. I remember Vladimir reporting that these sanctions struck fear in the heart of his persecutors, but sadly, this was not only the first case, but the only case where these sanctions were used. They should be universalized and implemented across the board, wherever there is a case of a dissident, immediately we should be looking at what are the names of those persecuting them, and how do we hold them accountable, with sanctions and prosecutions being foremost amongst that tool set. And oftentimes, as we heard again from the brave group of Iranians and from Reza Shah, terrorism is something that is used by the regimes persecuting these dissidents, but quite perniciously, often weaponized against them in a legal format. So while regimes subject them to terrorism, these very same victims are charged with terrorism.
But yet these perpetrators are welcomed in our jurisdictions. Each and every one of these jurisdictions should be rightfully and legally describing these perpetrator regimes as terrorist entities. The Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps was finally listed in Canada as one but they can operate freely here in Switzerland. So while a lot of these brave Iranians went to the Palais des Nations to testify, brave the states to testify, the IRGC can come here and harass them and target them, which they do. Switzerland must designate the IRGC, the UK, which has seen Iranian journalists last year’s Courage Award recipients subject to assassination attempts, allow that to happen with impunity. The UK must designate the IRGC and the EU. That is a national next step that we must hold our governments accountable to.
And likewise, we heard about the situation in Sudan, the RSF should be designated, and while Putin is being invited back to the G7 by some malign actors and cease-fire discussions, as Vladimir Kara-Murza described, are being imposed without Ukraine at the table, we cannot forget about the brave Russian dissidents subject to Russian state terrorism, the Russian state apparatus should similarly be designated as a terrorist entity, and Russian dissidents cannot be forgotten amidst these discussions, likewise with prisoners of war, as Vladimir described under the third Geneva convention, and all those who aren’t even covered by some of these conventions, because the crimes they are subject to, subjected to, are so heinous that civilians, including, 1000’s of children have currently been disappeared and are being held and must be a part of these ceasefire discussions.
So while it can be easy to cede to cynicism and despair after going through the list summarizing all the atrocities we’ve heard today, the situations of political prisoners, and the government inaction that underpins and even enables it all, I conclude this conference with hope. Again, citing Vladimir, who used to say this as an historian, but can now say it as someone with the lived experience of having endured it, history shows that freedom prevails, and as Martin Luther King Jr, would often say the arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends towards justice. And I would add that it’s because of the brave and noble and inspiring individuals who took to this stage earlier today and who are on the front lines all those dissidents fighting for our collective, shared values and for humanity as a whole. It’s because of them that that arc continues to bend and it’s because of good policies and campaigns like the kind that Nazanin, and Hillel lead, that it brings that arc of justice, ever closer to reality.
So may all the testimonies, we heard today, be not only an act of remembrance, but a remembrance like all these brave heroes we must always act.
Thank you.
17th Annual Geneva Summit for Human Rights and Democracy, U.N. Opening, Monday, February 17, 2025
