Iran Defends Human Rights Record Before U.N. Council

Nick Cumming-Bruce
2/15/2010
New York Times
Original Source: http://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/16/world/middleeast/16geneva.html

GENEVA — Brushing aside allegations that it has resorted to torture, executions and mass detentions to crush political opposition, Iran made a defiant appearance before the United Nations’ human rights body here on Monday, saying that it promoted and defended human rights and that Western critics were exploiting the issue for political ends. 

Iran is “in full compliance with the relevant international commitments it has taken on in a genuine and long-term approach to safeguard human rights,” Mohammad Larijani, secretary general of Iran’s High Council for Human Rights, told the United Nations Human Rights Council, which was conducting its first review of the country.

“The situation of human rights has been consistently used as a tool to apply pressure against us” by some Western governments, Mr. Larijani said.

In an apparent riposte to comments by Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton earlier Monday that Iran was “moving toward a military dictatorship,” Mr. Larijani said Iran “is becoming one of the prominent democratic states in the region.”

Michael H. Posner, an assistant secretary of state, told the council that since disputed presidential elections in June, Iran had suppressed the protests of millions of Iranians, “often resorting to violence,” resulting in detentions, injuries and deaths. Mr. Posner, the top United States official for human rights, also condemned growing restrictions on freedom of expression and called for immediate action by Iran to end torture. 

Iran’s statement to the council was “strikingly at odds with the reality on the ground,” Mr. Posner said later, adding that the challenge now was to “figure out what we can do to help those people that are being tortured in the prisons.”

“We’re going to continue to press it as many other governments are,” Mr. Posner said.

Britain’s ambassador to the United Nations in Geneva, Peter Gooderham, called on Iran to invite Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon to investigate post-election violence and assess the state of human rights and to accept a visit by the United Nations’ top human rights official, Navi Pillay.

“Grave human rights violations continue to be committed,” Mr. Gooderham said.

France’s ambassador, Jean-Baptiste Mattei, saying that Iran had launched “a bloody repression” of its own population, also called on Iran to accept an independent international investigation.

At a follow-up Human Rights Council session on Wednesday, Iran is scheduled to state which recommendations it intends to pursue. But officials have already ruled out the notion of an external investigation.

“That’s totally out of the question,” Seyyed Hossein Rezvani, the Iranian Foreign Ministry’s deputy director-general for human rights, told The Associated Press, saying that Iran had numerous domestic mechanisms for handling such issues.

Iran, which is expected to seek membership of the 47-member Human Rights Council in elections in May, may seek to be receptive to some requests, human rights organizations said.

In his statement to the council, Mr. Larijani said Iran had fully cooperated with the United Nations’ human rights mechanisms and had invited Ms. Pillay, the human rights commissioner, to visit the country. Ms. Pillay’s spokesman, Rupert Colville, confirmed that Mr. Larijani had issued the invitation on Friday. Ms. Pillay responded that she would be unable to visit before 2011 and suggested that a team from her office be allowed to visit Iran first. Mr. Larijani had not yet responded to that suggestion, Mr. Colville said.

Human rights groups said Iran’s claims of cooperation with the United Nations were exaggerated. No Human Rights Council official has visited the country since 2005, and numerous requests from special investigators remained unanswered, said Hassiba Hadj Sahraoui, deputy director of Amnesty International’s Middle East program.

“What we heard today was blanket denials and a lot of cynicism,” Ms. Sahraoui said, adding that Mr. Larijani’s report on human rights was less revealing than information provided by authorities in Tehran, where official figures show that 47 people have died in political violence and up to 5,000 people have been arrested. Figures recorded by Amnesty International also show two people have been executed for political offenses and nine others sentenced to death, she said.

But, she added, “what we heard today was everything is fine.”