Iran: A Call to Focus on Human Rights

Writing at Foreign Policy’s Middle East Channel, Dokhi Fassihian calls on President Obama to lead the international community in focusing attention on human rights violations in Iran: “…since the Green uprising started last summer, not a single resolution has been presented (in the U.N. Human Rights Council) by the United States or European states on the brutal repression taking place in Iran.” He goes on to explain that the U.S. ignored Iran’s human rights record because it wanted to engage the regime on nuclear issues: ”The idea of including human rights as an additional issue on the P5+1 agenda was…rejected for fear of compromising the negotiations. The lack of a strong international response served as a green light to Iran’s leaders that there would be no serious consequences for more brutality against its population.”

Evidence of ongoing Iranian human rights abuses has been prevalent of late. Lawyer and women’s rights activist Nasrine Sotoudeh was arrested on September 4th. Her husband says, “I do not know what the accusations are. But last week when the security men came to seize the hard drives of the computers the search warrant read, ‘Nasrin Sotoudeh, accused of acting against national security and collusion.’ But the search warrant did not clarify collusion with whom or which country.” Persian2English passes on a report that a young Kurdish man was beaten to death after being arrested for possession of alcohol and Sakineh Mohammadi Ashtiani, the woman sentenced to be stoned to death for adultery, reportedly received 99 lashes for having her picture taken without her hair covered.