Saturday, November 26, 2005

Tehran's beam

In a piece of chutzpah worthy of note it appears that the British Ambassador to Tehran, Sir Richard Dalton, has been summoned to their foreign ministry to be dressed down.
"Director General of Iran's Foreign Ministry for West Europe Affairs, Ebrahim Rahimpour, expressed concern about the violation of the rights of minorities especially Muslims residing in Britain and other EU states".
What might be relevant in this attack is that three days ago the British Embassy in its position of EU presidency launched an attack on Iran's human rights record.

A sort list of Irans violations of basic human rights can be found here, the UN declaration of the 2nd November

"The continuing harassment, intimidation and persecution of human rights defenders, non-governmental organizations, political opponents, religious dissenters, political reformists, journalists, parliamentarians, students, clerics, academics and web bloggers, including through undue restrictions on the freedoms of assembly, opinion and expression, the use of arbitrary arrest, targeted at both individuals and their family members and the unjustified closure of newspapers and blocking of Internet sites, as well as the absence of many necessary conditions for free and fair elections, including by the arbitrary disqualification of large numbers
of prospective candidates, including all women, during the Presidential elections of June 2005;"


or maybe,
"The continuing use of torture and cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment such as flogging and amputations;"

or could it be,
"The continued carrying out of public executions, including multiple public executions and, on a large scale, 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,
... in spite of the announcement of a moratorium on juvenile executions;"


or just possibly,
"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 and Sunni Muslims, the escalation and increased frequency of discrimination and other human rights violations against the Bahá’ì, including cases of arbitrary arrest and detention, the denial of freedom of religion or of publicly carrying out communal affairs, the disregard of property rights, the destruction of sites of religious importance, the
suspension of social, educational and community-related activities and the denial of access to higher education, employment, pensions, adequate housing and other benefits and recent violent crackdowns on Kurds;"


Hat Tip Iran News Blog


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