They Deserve Each Other

By Joseph Klein
April 10, 2006
FrontPageMagazine.com
Original Source: http://www.frontpagemag.com/Articles/ReadArticle.asp?ID=21981

Iran has put itself forward as a candidate for a seat on the new United Nations Human Rights Council in its inaugural election of forty-seven members scheduled for May 9th. Insiders believe that Iran will be voted in by the General Assembly, because it is grouped with the Asian bloc of nations that are allotted thirteen seats on the forty-seven seat Council. Although members will be voted on individually, each region has a fixed number of guaranteed seats in order to ensure equitable geographic distribution. So far, only nine countries in the Asian bloc, including Iran, China, and Pakistan, have decided to declare their interest for any of the reserved thirteen “Asian” seats.
The fact that Iran is even eligible to run, much less have a serious chance to win, shows how dysfunctional the Council is from the get-go.  For that reason alone, the United States’ decision not to run for a seat this year is the right one.  We certainly do not want join a human rights organization that would count Iran as one of its members.  If Iran does get on the Council, we should go further and withdraw all support, including any contribution to new funding for the Human Rights Council’s operation, currently estimated to be in the neighborhood of $4.5 million dollars.  The Council should not get a dime of our money until it proves that it is not simply a clone of the discredited UN Commission on Human Rights that it is replacing.  The first step is for the General Assembly to send Iran a clear message on May 9th, and reject its candidacy by an overwhelming majority. 
Iran has one of the worst human rights record in the entire world.  In order to protect itself from serious condemnation, Iran hopes to emulate the example of its fellow repressive regimes like Sudan, Zimbabwe and Cuba who have avoided challenges to their human rights records in the past by taking over the machinery of the Human Rights Council’s predecessor, the UN Commission for Human Rights.
The Iranian fanatics who run their country have rejected the principle of universality of human rights as spelled out in the United Nations Declaration on Human Rights.  Ever since the 1979 Islamic revolution that turned Iran into a theocratic state, Iran has led the battle at the UN to modify the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.  Iran wants to join the new UN Human Rights Council in order to use it as a vehicle to insinuate their own notion of human rights, which subordinates individual freedoms of religion and expression to the severe strictures of the Sharia (Islamic law).   Freedom of speech and the press, for example, would give way when it becomes detrimental to the fundamental principles of Islam, as in the case of those controversial Danish cartoons that were considered defamatory of the Prophet Mohammed.  
The father of the 1979 Islamic revolution in Iran, Ayatollah Khomeini, declared that Islam is everything, it means everything…”  Commenting on modern day standards of human rights, he is reported to have said that “what they call human rights is nothing but a collection of corrupt rules worked out by the Zionists to destroy all true religions.” 
Islam – at least the twisted version of Islam preached by Khomeini and his followers - considers only its male followers as true human beings who would be entitled to any ‘rights’ at all.  The regime has persecuted non-Islamic (and even unacceptably moderate Islamic) religious groups.  Women and children are treated like nothing more than chattel.   Infidels - i.e., non-believers – are not human beings at all and thus entitled to no more rights than a camel or other beast of burden.   

Yet Khomeini – who started Iran down this path - is the same Islamo-fascist whose ascent was once praised by Kofi Annan’s chief speechwriter, Edward Mortimer, with words used originally to describe the liberation of the Bastille at the outset of the French Revolution: quite the most glorious morning in the history of mankind.”   Kofi Annan has been all too happy to continue appeasing the religious fanatical regime that has followed in Khomeini’s footsteps.  For example, he appointed one of its government representatives to the UN Working Group for Internet Governance even though Iran has clamped down hard on its citizens’ use of the Internet.  Annan also appointed former Iranian president Mohammad Khatami as a member of the high-level UN group established to promote an alliance of civilizations between the West and the Islamic world, where he serves while Iran’s current President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad shows what he thinks of such an alliance by threatening Israel with extinction.   

Iran’s response to such appeasement is more bullying.  It has defied international consensus against its nuclear ambitions.  Worse still, despite the Security Council’s lack of any meaningful response to Iran’s provocative actions to date, Iranian prison officials have reportedly threatened political prisoners with execution if the Security Council should one day show some backbone.  In one instance, according to a report from the National Council of Resistance of Iran’s Foreign Affairs Committee, prisoners were told: “Don’t ever think that by going to the Security Council, we’ll leave you alone.  If something happens to us, we will cut you to pieces.”  Some of these prisoners are members of the People's Mojahedin Organization of Iran, part of the National Council of Resistance of Iran, which was the source of evidence in 2002 revealing Iran's nuclear program to the outside world.  The National Council of Resistance of Iran’s Foreign Affairs Committee reported last month that Valiollah Feyz-Mahdavi -  a 28-year-old member of the People’s Mojahedin Organisation of Iran - has already been sentenced to death and is slated to be executed in early May.   

Consider the irony here.   In the very month that Iran is seeking election to the UN Human Rights Council, it is reportedly planning to execute a political prisoner for daring to stand up to the Iranian regime and expose its perfidious ways to the world.  Along with two other political prisoners – one of whom has since been executed – Feyz-Mahdavi is said to have written a letter to Kofi Annan on January 24, 2005, calling on Annan to set up a special fact-finding mission to “investigate the plight” of political prisoners.  The plea has fallen on deaf ears.

When Iran’s megalomaniac President Ahmadinejad attended last fall’s UN General Assembly world Summit session in New York, a leader of the National Council of Resistance of Iran, Maryam Rajavi, was there to lead a large protest against his presence.  Appealing to the conscience of the world’s leaders, she posed a number of questions and pointed out examples of appeasement of the repressive theocracy that are worth quoting at length:

“I ask heads of state and world leaders who have come together at the UN,
How long more are you going to tolerate this inhuman regime which has trampled upon all international laws among the family of nations? 
How long more are you going to accept this medieval regime whose presence as a member state of the UN is contrary to the UN Charter? 
How long more are you going to allow the mullahs' regime to violate all provisions of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, make a mockery of all international covenants, but continue to remain a member of the international community? 

The Iranian people demand the immediate expulsion of the mullahs' regime from the United Nations. The International community must respect this demand.

Do we not see that the policy of appeasement which sought to moderate this regime through economic and political incentives has led to major catastrophes? 
Instead of becoming moderate, the mullahs have appointed a notorious terrorist as President and formed a cabinet consisting of the most infamous henchmen, declaring war on the Iranian people and the world community; 
They have stepped up repression inside the country; 
They have expanded terrorism and kidnappings; 
They have escalated their meddling in Iraq; 
They have breached their agreements with the European countries over the nuclear program and are taking the final steps to arm themselves with atomic weapons. 
Allow me to reiterate that there no longer exists any justification to continue the policy of appeasement and there are no excuses to preserve the mullahs' regime… The Iranian people demand a halt to any assistance to the ruling theocracy. All restrictive pressures imposed on the Iranian nation and its resistance that sought to preserve this regime must be ended.”
Let us answer Ms. Rajavi’s pleas with real action for once.  If the new Human Rights Council is to be anything other than a mockery of the principles for which it is supposed to stand, the General Assembly must send a strong message to human rights abusing countries – Iran in particular – that they are not welcome to join.  Only then, would it be appropriate for the United States to contribute.