UNITED NATIONS — A host of “systemic and systematic violations of civil, political, economic, social and cultural rights” continue to plague Iran despite the election of the purportedly reformist President Hassan Rouhani.
That’s part of a stinging assessment of the current human rights landscape according to Ahmed Shaheed, the UN’s Special Rapporteur on human rights in the Islamic Republic of Iran.
Despite the Teheran government’s new “softer image” to the outside world after the aggressively confrontational era of former president Ahmadinejad, and the seemingly diplomatic flexibility on the country’s embryonic nuclear weapons program, there’s little question that this country of 76 million people suffers from widespread human rights abuses based on gender, religion, and obviously political opinion.
Ahmed Shaheed’s report to the UN General Assembly focuses on key issues such as gender discrimination. The UN rights Rapporteur retains “considerable concern about laws and regulations used to perpetuate discrimination against at home, in education and in the workplace, and about the governments continued failure to reconsider policies in this area.”
For example, the document states that the regime “restricts female access to higher education, while … all 30 women who registered as candidates for the June 2013 presidential elections were disqualified.”
Equally the report focuses on the “plight of journalists” where some 600 reporters are what is defined as an “anti-State” network, fifteen journalists have been arrested since January 2013, up to five million websites are reportedly blocked.
During Iran’s disputed 2009 presidential elections, a upsurge of domestic pro-democracy sentiments known as the Green Revolution, was largely ignored by the Obama administration.
In a separate report the media watchdog group Reporters without Borders listed the Islamic Republic of Iran at near bottom of the list for press freedoms. Of 179 countries surveyed in the Press Freedom Index 2013, Iran ranked 174 just after Cuba and Mainland China. The report adds that Iranian authorities also harass relatives of suspect media.
Religious persecution continues in the Islamic Republic as well. Minority groups including Baha’i, Christians and even Sunni Muslims “continue to face severe restrictions of their rights to freedom of expression, assembly and association. Ethnic minorities also face rights violations.”
Prison conditions remain harsh as expected. The report states that the Islamic Republic continues to use widespread executions as a way to intimidate the population. “Some 724 executions took place between January 2012 and June 2013, including a number of public executions,” according to Dr. Shaheed. There have been reports of secret executions including those of “hundreds of Afghan citizens.”
As would be expected, Iranian diplomats scoffed at the report as a “non-objective and counter-productive exercise.” The Teheran regime views the document as “unfair allegations and accusations.”
Dr. Shaheed, a former Maldives Foreign Minister, despite his UN mandate, has predictably been blocked from access in visiting Iran.
The UN Rapporteur stresses, “The sober reality of human rights in Iran presents a powerful reminder that human rights reform must be a central aspect of the new government’s legislative agenda and of any dialogue between the new government and the global community.”
He adds that while the Report focuses on a domestic reform program, “any renewed or revitalized dialogue between Iran and the international community, must include and not seek to sideline the issue of human rights.”
This emerges as a key point as U.S. and Western negotiations over Iran’s nuclear program are expected to focus on policy modalities and are likely to conveniently overlook the wider context of the Teheran’s regime’s domestic abuses.
Such horrific human rights transgressions, part of the Islamic Republic’s political essence since the rule of the Ayatollahs, have been a stain upon the Persian people.
John J. Metzler is a U.N. correspondent covering diplomatic and defense issues. He writes weekly for WorldTribune.com. He is the author of Transatlantic Divide ; USA/Euroland Rift (University Press, 2010).
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