Two North American politicians – one from the U.S., one from Canada – have launched an initiative to advocate on behalf of that country’s political prisoners.

The runup to the election saw a crackdown on “political activists, trade unionists and students,” with Amnesty International director for the Middle East and North Africa blasting “Iran’s continued and brazen flouting of human rights standards.”

In response Illinois Senator Mark Kirk and Canadian MP Irwin Cotler are recruiting parliamentarians around the world to represent different imprisoned dissidents:

Accordingly, we have launched the Iranian Political Prisoners Global Advocacy Project, where parliamentarians “adopt” Iranian political prisoners and advocate on their behalf. While the Iranian government seeks to silence dissenters, we are determined to make their voices heard. Each victim of repression must be recognized as a real person enduring mental and often physical anguish in a society where human rights and democracy itself have been imprisoned.

To that end, each parliamentarian participating in this project will endeavor to make known the story of his or her adopted prisoner as part of the struggle to set them free.

We will be advocating on behalf of Nasrin Sotoudeh, as well as the seven imprisoned leaders of the Iranian Baha’i community. As a lawyer, Ms. Sotoudeh represented political prisoners – including women, lawyers, journalists and children sentenced to death – until, while visiting one of her clients in Tehran’s notorious Evin Prison in 2010, she was arrested on trumped-up charges of “propaganda against the regime” and became one of Evin’s inmates herself.