IRAN - Tehran slams UN report on human rights violations.
June 22, 2021: Tehran slams UN report on human rights violations. Iran on Tuesday criticized as politically motivated a United Nations report that described the human rights situation in the Islamic Republic as “disturbing.” "The report presented today is based on an entirely political mandate initiated by a group of like-minded, or rather 'similarly-biased', countries that have long instrumentalized human rights as part and parcel of their adversarial agenda against Iran," Esmail Baghaei Hamaneh, Tehran’s envoy to the United Nations Human Rights Council, told the council on Tuesday. The UN Secretary-General’s report on human rights in Iran over the past year concluded that, while Iran is facing deteriorating conditions under economic sanctions and the coronavirus pandemic, “authorities have shown no willingness to adopt meaningful reforms,” stated the UN’s High Commissioner for Human Rights Michelle Bachelet. “Overall, the report finds a disturbing human rights landscape for Iranian women and men of every religious faith, ethnic origin, social class and other status,” she said. Tehran’s envoy Hamaneh said the UN report was not prepared in good faith. He said the United States, which unilaterally withdrew from the nuclear deal and imposed harsh sanctions on Iran, is one of the driving forces behind the criticism of Iran’s human rights record. The report is “compiled inevitably to satisfy the mandate devised by a few Western states to pressurize and demonize Iran,” he said, adding that the government is committed to protecting human rights and fulfilling its international obligations. International monitors are concerned that human rights could further erode in Iran under President-elect Ebrahim Raisi who played a role in a 1988 prison massacre. Raisi has defended his record. “All that I have done through my years of service has always been towards defending human rights,” he said in a press conference on Monday.
https://www.rudaw.net/english/middleeast/iran/230620211 (Source: Rudaw)
|