Five Civil Activists Warn About Iran’s Exploitation of UN Special Rapporteur’s Visit
Five civil and professional activists have written to the UN special rapporteur on “coercive and unilateral sanctions,” urging him to meet with independent activists in Iran and inquire about their views on the country’s conditions.
Giti Poorfarzal, Ahmadrezal Haeri, Keyvan Samimi, Sadra Abdollahi, and Jafar Azimzadeh wrote to Alena Douhan that if she does not meet with independent activists from the Islamic Republic, it will raise the suspicion that she either does not want to or is not permitted to hear the views of critics of the Islamic Republic.
They added: “The undemocratic structure, systematic corruption, and governmental inefficiency have resulted in economic pressure on people and clear and egregious violations of human rights in Iran.”
According to a UN statement, Alena Douhan is scheduled to meet in Iran not only with government officials but also with representatives of international and regional organizations, financial institutions, non-governmental groups, and civil society groups.
The five professional and civil activists, however, warned that in Iran there are dozens of organizations named as civil groups and “apparently civil institutions” that are in practice “created by the government and solely reflect the positions of the Islamic Republic,” and therefore, engaging with their representatives cannot provide accurate data about the condition of Iranian society to the UN representative.
Ms. Douhan arrived in Tehran on Saturday and is scheduled to remain in Iran for approximately two weeks (until Ordibehesht 28) to investigate the effects of unilateral sanctions on people’s rights.
She is scheduled to present her findings and recommendations in a report to the fifty-first session of the Human Rights Council in September of this year.
Donald Trump’s administration in the United States, after withdrawing from the nuclear agreement known as the JCPOA, imposed harsh unilateral sanctions on the Islamic Republic’s government in an attempt to bring its officials back to the negotiating table to reach a “better” agreement.
Government officials in Iran have repeatedly cited these unilateral sanctions as the reason for shortages of vital goods in the country, including medicine, and have called for their removal.
For instance, in December 2020, Abdolnasser Hemmati, then governor of Iran’s Central Bank, claimed that the government was unable to purchase vaccines due to “American sanctions,” a claim that was refuted days later by Nasser Riahi, head of the Drug Importers Union in Iran.
However, in February of the same year, Joe Biden, the US President, issued an order for “immediate” review of unilateral or multilateral trade and economic sanctions to avoid their “unwarranted” impact on the fight against coronavirus.
Alena Douhan’s visit comes at a time when the Islamic Republic has not granted any UN special human rights rapporteurs, including Javaid Rehman, the right to travel to and enter Iran, and has repeatedly accused them of “politicization.”
Mr. Rehman, the UN special rapporteur on human rights in Iran, in his latest report published in February 2022, asked the international community to hold Islamic Republic officials accountable for multiple human rights violations, including “arbitrary” executions in 1988 and the suppression of November 2019 protests.
One day before Ms. Douhan’s visit to Iran, eleven human rights organizations stated in a declaration that in protest against the Islamic Republic’s instrumental use of the UN reporting system, they were reminded that issuing her travel permit was done with the intention of diverting the world from addressing human rights violations.
Earlier, Shirin Ebadi, Nobel Peace Prize laureate, also urged officials of the UN to condition the conduct of this visit on “allowing the special rapporteur on human rights to enter Iran,” referring to Iran’s approval of the visit of the “UN special representative to investigate the damage of sanctions.”
Source: Radio Farda
