Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman Bahram Ghasemi made the remarks in reaction to the latest report of the Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in the Islamic Republic of Iran Ahmed Shaheed delivered to the 71st session of the United Nations General Assembly.
“Created in accordance with a UN Resolution based on political attitudes and prepared in line with foreign policy goals of specific countries, the report by the Special Rapporteur would not only fail to improve the situation of human rights in the world, but would also result in weakening of these rights,” highlighted the official noting that the failure comes as a result of a political and selective approach especially at a time when the international community witnesses gross violations of human rights by some other countries and the terrorists they support particularly in Yemen and Syria.
He further reiterated that “Islamic Republic of Iran, who has always remained committed to human rights of its citizens in accordance with religious, legal and international obligations, deemed the mandate to assign a Special rapporteur on the situation of human rights inside the country as fundamentally unjustified, senseless and destructive.”
“Moreover, procedures for preparing reports on a country need to be fair, non-discriminatory and non-political,” he emphasized.
FM spokesman also recalled that Human Rights Council has been established to prevent double standards and the Universal Periodic Review (UPR) mechanism of the United Nations (UN) Human Rights Council (HRC) is based on equal responsibility of all countries; “accordingly, such mechanisms should not be weakened through parallel measures like politically-motivated resolutions of some Western governments.”
Bahram Ghasemi emohasized Iran’s willingness to work constructively with international mechanisms adding “although Iran deems assigning of a special rapporteur as unjustified and destructive, representatives of Iran and relevant authorities have held meetings with Ahmed Shaheed aiming to show compliance with the UN human rights system and to correct the reporting approach as well as to prepare the report based on reliable information.”
“The rapporteur’s approach, while pointing to several instances of human rights development in Iran, has unfortunately used vague terms and expressed baseless concerns on the basis of unverified data mainly to draw a distorted picture of the situation of human rights in Iran.”
“All members of the international community need to attach great importance to promotion of human rights, which can only be achieved through cooperation and dialogue as well as equal and unselective treatments,” maintained the Iranian FM spokesperson concluding “accordingly, the Islamic Republic of Iran has had constructive cooperation with human rights organizations and a number of countries in the form of bilateral talks on human rights.”
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