Review of human rights in Iran and Saudi Arabia; meeting with Ahmad Shaheed

Ahmad Shaheed, UN Special Rapporteur on human rights in Iran, welcomed discussion of human rights issues related to Saudi Arabia and said: “If human rights issues in other countries are taken seriously, others also think more about their conduct.”

Mr. Shaheed, who participated in a session on human rights in Iran and neighboring countries, told BBC Persian: “If there are clear policies for everyone that show human rights are being taken seriously, then you can say everyone got the message.”

Referring to his title and mandate, he said that examining the human rights situation in Iran’s neighboring countries is not his responsibility, but he said that in his view, if the human rights issue is given attention across the entire region, everyone benefits from it.

The session “Human Rights in Iran: In Regional Context and Constructive Criticism” was held in Washington and hosted by the Atlantic Council think tank.

Ahmad Shaheed responded at the session to the question of why, despite numerous cases of human rights violations in Saudi Arabia or Turkey, the UN has not appointed special rapporteurs for these countries. He said these countries acted “wisely” and allowed the UN to go to those countries for investigation and there is cooperation between them.

He said Iran had not answered UN questions on human rights issues for years and has only recently started responding: “When there is no contact with a country and when they provide no information, concerns arise, especially when the Iranian people themselves ask the UN to establish a mechanism to address these issues.”

At this session, issues such as “heavy sentences for journalists” as well as detention of Iranians with dual nationality were discussed, and questions were raised about the rights of ethnic and linguistic minorities.

‘Human rights are not comparative’

Barbara Slavin, Director of the Iran Section at the Atlantic Council, said: “Iranians always protest that when human rights are discussed, American allies like Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Israel and Turkey are overlooked. That’s why we asked Sarah Leah to be present at this session to discuss the entire region.”

Sarah Leah Whitson, Director of the Middle East and North Africa Division at Human Rights Watch, said at the session that the effectiveness of sanctions against human rights violators increases when not limited to one specific country.

Ms. Whitson also said that like Iran, in Saudi Arabia critics and their lawyers are prosecuted and punished, and this practice is not exclusive to Iran.

Beyond Saudi Arabia’s internal human rights issues, she also referred to this country’s attacks on Yemen and said Yemen’s bombings have caused a “catastrophe”: “Saudi airstrikes in the past year have caused sixty percent of the killings in Yemen. Approximately three thousand five hundred people.” According to Ms. Whitson, Saudi Arabia uses “illegal” weapons such as “cluster bombs” in Yemeni urban areas, in places like markets.

However, Ms. Whitson said she disagrees with comparing countries on human rights: “If ten thousand people are tortured in one country, it doesn’t make you feel better about a hundred people being tortured in another country.”

She said human rights are not relative and cannot be measured quantitatively.

Saudi Arabia and Iran ‘both should be accountable’

Ms. Whitson said that a session of this kind is good for giving a picture of the human rights situation in a region but no comparison is made.

Hadi Ghayemi, from the International Campaign for Human Rights in Iran, another participant in the session, said that when speaking of a country in a region like the Middle East, “we cannot examine that country completely separately from its regional conditions.”

Mr. Ghayemi, regarding the response of Iranian officials to human rights reports, said: “Iran’s Foreign Ministry always dismisses human rights concerns and asks why you don’t pay attention to Saudi Arabia.”

He said one of the features of this session is for the Iranian government to see that if we are talking about Iran, there are also organizations that are active on Saudi Arabia and Yemen.

Mr. Ghayemi said Saudi Arabia and Iran each have their own place and both should respond to human rights concerns.

Source: BBC Persian