NCRI – U.S. Secretary of State Kerry submitted the 2012 Country Reports on Human Rights Practices to the U.S. Congress.
In its annual human rights report, the State Department criticized a host of new restrictions on advocacy groups including laws banning free speech, assembly and religion. Even worse, it noted that human rights, political and labour leaders in more countries were facing harassment, arrest and even assassination.
The report warned that a number of countries including Iran under mullahs’ rule are turning up pressure on human rights and other activists, decrying what it described as a global crackdown on the “lifeblood of democratic societies.”
Secretary of State John Kerry said in the preface of the report that “governments that threaten regional and global peace, from Iran to North Korea, are also egregious human rights abusers, with citizens trapped in the grip of domestic repression, economic deprivation, and international isolation.”
Trends cited in the report included “uneven progress in the Middle East as protests turned to politics, with increased violence against women and religious minorities. The worst cases were civil war-wracked Syria, where 70,000 people have been killed over the past two years, and Iran, which executed 523 people last year and whose government attacks journalists, students, lawyers, artists, women and ethnic activists.”
