From Tehmina Mustapha
TEHRAN: Iran will reject a newly-appointed independent United Nation’s investigation into the country’s repression of anti-government protests, the foreign ministry said on Monday, as demonstrations showed no signs of abating.
“Iran will have no cooperation with the political committee formed by the UN Rights Council,” ministry spokesman Nasser Kanaani said. The UN Rights Council voted on Thursday to appoint a probe into Iran’s deadly crackdown on protests.
Volker Turk, the UN rights commissioner, had earlier demanded that Iran end its “disproportionate” use of force in quashing protests that erupted after the death-in-custody of 22-year-old Kurdish woman Mahsa Amini on Sept 16.
Activist news agency HRANA said 450 protesters had been killed in more than two months of nationwide unrest as of Nov 26, including 63 minors. It further said 60 members of the security forces had been killed and 18,173 protesters detained.
Challenging the Islamic republic’s legitimacy, protesters from all walks of life have burned pictures of Khamenei and called for the downfall of Iran’s Shia Muslim theocracy.
The protests have particularly focused on women’s rights — Amini was detained by morality police for attire deemed inappropriate under Iran’s Islamic dress code — but have also called for the fall of Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.
The unrest has posed one of the boldest challenges to Iran’s clerical ruling elite since it came to power in the 1979 Islamic revolution, though authorities have crushed previous rounds of major protests. Iran has blamed foreign foes and their agents for the unrest.
Iran has proof that Western nations were involved in protests that have swept the country, Kanaani said on Monday. “We have specific information proving that the US, Western countries and some of the American allies have had a role in the protests,” he said, without giving details.
Iran has given no death toll for protesters, but a deputy foreign minister, Ali Bagheri Kani, has said that about 50 police had died and hundreds been injured in the unrest — the first official figure for deaths among security forces.
He did not say whether that figure also included deaths among other security forces such as the Revolutionary Guards.
Thursday, the spokesman for the Iranian Foreign Ministry debunked the US president’s bogus support for the women of Iran, saying the US regime’s cruelty and sanctions have affected even Iranian patients and children.
“President of a regime that for +40 years has left no stone unturned in showing enmity & cruelty toward Iranian nation & had no mercy in imposing economic terrorism even against Butterfly kids, claims to ‘stand with women of Iran’,” Nasser Kanaani said in a tweet on Thursday, referring to the American sanctions that have blocked the export of special bandages to Epidermolysis Bullosa (EB) patients in Iran. He also noted that the US policy of maximum pressure and sanctions on Iran has not excluded even Iranian women and mothers.
In a statement on the occasion of international day for the elimination of violence against women on November 23, US President Joe Biden claimed support for the women of Iran. Thursday, Iran criticized the UN Human Rights Council for passing a resolution calling for the creation of a fact-finding mission to look into claims of human rights abuses relating to recent riots in the nation.
Posing a tweet on Thursday, the Iranian Foreign Minister Hossein Amirabdollahian said that the German government has been using unfair sanctions for years to violate human rights.
“The regime in Berlin, as the main provider of CWs (chemical weapons) to Saddam, and other opportunists have conducted massive HR (human rights) violations through unjust & inhumane sanctions,” Iranian Minister said, referring to chemical weapons that were used by the former Iraqi President Saddam Hussein against Iran during the eight-year Iraqi imposed war in the 1980s (known in Iran as the Sacred Defense).
“Now, they are abusing HR mechanisms to perpetrate more HR violations, all in the name of a farce “solidarity” with Iranians,” Amirabdollahian continued. “Even worse and more shameful, they’re doing this for cheap domestic games. Iran, as a strong and stable country, is fully committed to human rights but won’t allow foreign meddling in its internal affairs,” he added.
“In the name of false “solidarity” with the Iranians, they are now hypocritically misusing “human rights” mechanisms to commit even more human rights violations against our people,” he went on to say. Earlier Thursday, the UN Human Rights Council voted to establish an independent international fact-finding mission to investigate alleged human rights violations in Iran related to riots.
