Mrs. Maryam Rajavi: Resolution underlines need to refer clerical regime’s human rights violations to the UN Security Council
NCRI – The UN General Assembly passed a resolution today condemning the brutal and continued violations of human rights in Iran with 75 votes in favor. The resolution strongly condemns the continuing use of torture and cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment, continued carrying out of public executions, and, on a large scale, other executions, and, in particular, deplores the execution of persons who were below 18 years of age at the time their offence was committed, and also continued violations of freedom of assembly, opinion and expression, violations of the rights of women and religious and ethnic minorities. The resolution was approved despite the clerical regime’s use of all its diplomatic resources, with assistance from a number of other state violators of human rights, to prevent a vote on the measure.
Mrs. Maryam Rajavi, the Iranian Resistance’s President-elect congratulated the Iranian people on the approval of this resolution. She added that this resolution while it only reflects a small portion of the clerical regime’s crimes against the Iranian people indicates the international community’s recognition of the unprecedented intensification of human rights violations in Iran. The resolution indicates the grave failure of the so-called human rights dialogue with the theocratic regime in Iran and underlines the need to refer the regime’s atrocities to the UN Security Council.
Mrs. Rajavi stressed that as the Iranian Resistance had pointed out from the day Mahmoud Ahmadinejad took office, the regime has intensified its war and suppression on the Iranian people and has declared war on the international community by pursuing its export of terrorism and fundamentalism and its nuclear weapons program. She added that referral to the United Nations Security Council is thus evermore necessary.
The UN General Assembly resolution condemns the continuing use of torture and cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment such as flogging and amputations; the continued carrying out of public executions, and other executions in the absence of respect for internationally recognized safeguards, and, in particular, deplores the execution of persons who were below 18 years of age at the time their offence was committed.
The General Assembly also condemned the persistent failure to comply fully with international standards in the administration of justice and, in particular, the absence of due process of law, the refusal to provide fair and public hearings, the denial of the right to counsel and access to counsel by those detained, the use of national security laws to deny human rights, the harassment, intimidation and persecution of defence lawyers and legal defenders, the lack of respect for internationally recognized safeguards, inter alia, with respect to persons belonging to religious, ethnic or national minorities, officially recognized or otherwise, the application of arbitrary prison sentences, and the violation of the rights of detainees, including the systematic and arbitrary use of prolonged solitary confinement, the failure to provide proper medical care to those imprisoned and the arbitrary denial of contact between detainees and their family members. Also condemned are the continuing discrimination, and other human rights violations against persons belonging to ethnic and religious minorities, recognized or otherwise, including Arabs, Kurds, Baluchi, Christians, Jews, Sunni Muslims, and the Bahá’ì. The resolution decides that the General Assembly should continue its examination of the situation of human rights in Iran at its next session the following year.
Last month the resolution was approved in the UN General Assembly’s Third Committee with a majority in favor, 54 against, 46 abstentions. The General Assembly approved the resolution today with 75 in favor, 50 against, and 43 abstentions.
Secretariat of the National Council of Resistance of Iran
December 16, 2005
