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UN Diary: Will the UN resolution save Hajieh Esmailvand?

By Ayesha Javed Akram

A week after the United Nations chided Iran for its human rights record, the country hasn’t stopped bickering about what it calls a western agenda.

The Third Committee of the UN General Assembly adopted a US-backed resolution critical of Iran’s human rights record on Nov 17. The Canadian-drafted measure was passed 69-55 with 51 abstentions.

The resolution called upon the Iranian government to fully implement the ban on torture announced in 2004 and “to expedite judicial reform, abolish executions and pursue penitentiary reform.”

Since Canada announced its intentions to pursue the resolution, Iran has been launching attacks against Ottawa’s human rights record. “Some think that Canada may have reached a level of human rights record that allows it to point its finger,” Mostafa Alaei, director of the department of human rights at the Iranian Foreign Ministry, told a General Assembly committee earlier this month. “Astonishingly, we found otherwise. We have obtained piles of credible and reliable information suggesting that the violation of human rights in Canada is alarming.”

In numerous statements, Canada has dismissed Iran’s attempts to claim moral equivalency. “Iran’s response clearly shows that it is feeling the pressure of Canada’s leadership at the UN in focusing attention on Iran’s dismal human rights record,” Pierre Pettigrew, Canada’s Foreign Affairs Minister, told CanWest News Service.

Canada and Iran have been at loggerheads since Zahra Kazemi, an Iranian-born photographer with Canadian citizenship, died in Iranian custody in 2003. Since then, Ottawa has been making concerted efforts to bring about international condemnation of Iran’s human rights records.

On the eve of the General Assembly’s approval of the resolution, Allan Rock, Canada’s ambassador to the United Nations, reiterated the need to continue pressuring Iran. “While no country can claim a perfect human rights record, there are cases that particularly merit this Committee’s attention – cases where governments have condoned and often been the instrument of human rights violations,” said Rock. “It is important for the international community to be able to speak out about such cases.”

Though the resolution was co-sponsored by 44 countries, Canada’s staunchest ally against Iran is the United States.

Speaking to reporters after the Third Committee approved the resolution, Deputy US Representative to the United Nations, Ambassador Anne Patterson said: “It’s quite a victory for the Iranian people because it brings to life the fact that there’s no free expression in Iran.”

The most surprising critics of America’s attempts to draw attention to Iran’s human right abuses have been Tehran’s liberals. “It is hard not to see America’s focus on human rights in Iran as a cloak for its larger strategic interests,” wrote Shirin Ebadi, Iranian human rights advocate, in the London-based The Independent.

Ebadi won the 2003 Nobel Prize for peace and is founder of the centre for the defence of human rights in Tehran.

In the article, Ebadi severely criticised what she calls American hypocrisy. “Given the long-standing willingness of the American government to overlook abuses of human rights, particularly women’s rights, by close allies in the Middle East such as Saudi Arabia, it is hard not to see the Bush administration’s focus on human rights violations in Iran as a cloak for its larger strategic interests.”

Most of the media coverage of the resolution has been centred on gauging the reasons for America’s recent interest in Iran’s human rights abuses. In the midst of these controversies, little attention has been paid to the text of resolution.

The resolution acknowledged slight improvements in Iran’s human rights condition but said this limited progress was undermined by a serious clampdown on the independent media. The resolution noted unjustified closures of newspapers and blockings of websites, and urged Tehran to allow journalists the freedom to fulfil their duties.

In a report presented earlier this year, the UN’s Special Rapporteur on Iran, Maurice Copithorne said almost the entire reformist press in Iran had been shut down.

The resolution also called upon Tehran to ensure “full respect for the right to due process of law including access to counsel by those detained.”

In particular, the resolution decried executions of people under the age of 18. Human Rights Watch said Iran executed at least four juvenile offenders in 2004 and up to 30 juvenile offenders are on the country’s death row.

Citing Iran’s discriminatory practices, the resolution urged Iran to adopt policies that eliminate discrimination of women and religious minorities.

In August, Human Rights Watch registered the deaths of 17 Kurds at the hands of security forces in Iran’s Kurdish region.

Almost all Muslim countries, including Algeria, Afghanistan, Azerbaijan, Bangladesh and Pakistan voted against the resolution. Muslim member states said such a resolution would undermine potential within the system and serve to polarise and politicise human rights at the United Nations.

Patterson expressed displeasure at the small vote-margin “The vote was a little narrow for comfort. We believe that the human rights machinery in the United Nations needs wide-scale reform. It was revealing that countries that spoke in favour of Iran, like Zimbabwe, Venezuela, Cuba and Sudan, are major human rights violators.”

While debates and discussions over the resolution continue, Amnesty International worries change may not come soon enough to save the live one Iranian woman.

Hajieh Esmailvand has been convicted of adultery and orders have been given to stone her to death. Amnesty International says Esmailvand has been a prisoner in the northwestern city of Jolfa since 2000 and is scheduled to be executed on Dec 21. *

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