Canada on Friday imposed new sanctions on Russia, Iran and Myanmar, citing alleged human rights abuses by their governments.
The measures included sanctions against 33 current or former senior Russian officials and six entities implicated in alleged “systematic human rights violations” against Russian citizens protesting the country’s invasion of Ukraine, Canada’s foreign ministry said in a statement. a note.
Since the Russian invasion on February 24, Canada has imposed sanctions on more than 1,500 people and entities from Russia, Ukraine and Belarus.
Sanctions have also been imposed on 22 people in Iran, including senior members of the judiciary, prison system and law enforcement, as well as political leaders such as senior advisers to Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and state media figures, the statement added.
The sanctions against Iran were imposed a day after Iran hanged a man convicted of stabbing a security guard and blocking a road in Tehran, according to the semi-official Tasnim news agency, the first execution of the kind for the most recent anti-government riots.
Nationwide protests erupted after the death of 22-year-old Iranian Kurdish woman Mahsa Amini in police custody on 16 September.
“There is still a lot to do, but Canada will never stop fighting for human rights,” said Canadian Foreign Minister Melanie Joly.
Along with Iran and Russia, Canada has also imposed sanctions on 12 individuals and three entities in Myanmar who perform key functions on behalf of the country’s military, facilitating the supply of weapons to the military and enabling military violence, Canada said.
The military seized power in Myanmar last year in a coup. Human rights activists say the junta now regularly uses the death penalty as a “political tool”.
More than 16,500 people have been arrested and more than 13,000 of them are in detention since the coup, according to a human rights organization that documents human rights abuses by the Burmese military.
