As executions and human rights violations escalate, Tripp is prone to getting used as state propaganda.
January 29, 2024 – A coalition of worldwide human rights organizations, together with the Center for Human Rights in Iran (CHRI), at the moment known as on the Acting United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights. Nada Al Nassif He has postponed his journey to Iran, which was scheduled for February third.
In a joint letter signed by 25 worldwide organizations and printed at the moment, the teams confused their duty to forestall the authentic engagement of the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) from changing into a way to undermine essential mechanisms for selling human rights in Iran.
“To keep away from this, we strongly urge you to rethink the timing of this go to and implement robust methods to mitigate the dangers,” the letter stated.
“The sharp enhance in executions within the Islamic Republic is a matter of deep concern, with 4 Kurdish political prisoners executed at the moment and greater than 50 hanged within the first month of this 12 months. Visits with out partaking with the households of these on demise row, prisoners of conscience and civil society sign tacit approval of the state’s repressive insurance policies, together with the imprisonment and execution of dissidents and political prisoners.
Undertaking the go to earlier than the discharge of the UN Independent Fact-Finding Mission’s first report on atrocities dedicated by the Iranian authorities through the 2022-23 nationwide protests, because of be introduced through the fifty fifth session of the UN Human Rights Council (HRC) in just a few weeks, would additionally jeopardize the mission’s mandate.
“This go to is being shamelessly used as a PR ploy, a pretense of cooperation with the UN, simply earlier than the publication of the Fact-Finding Mission’s first report, regardless of the Iranian authorities’s constant refusal to cooperate with the Fact-Finding Mission from the beginning,” warned CHRI Executive Director Hadi Ghaemi.
“The Islamic Republic is able to cynically manipulate this go to by UN officers and use it as a instrument to whitewash its personal poor human rights file,” he added.
Read the total letter under.
An open letter to the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, Volker Turk, and the Deputy High Commissioner for Human Rights, Nada Al Nassif
Monday, January 29, 2024
High Commissioner, Deputy High Commissioner,
We, civil society organizations working to advertise human rights within the Islamic Republic of Iran, are deeply involved by the introduced go to of Deputy High Commissioner for Human Rights Nada Al Nassif to the Islamic Republic of Iran from 2-5 February 2024.
However, on this specific case, the timing of this go to, the circumstances below which it can happen and the style by which it can happen increase very severe issues. We respectfully ask that you just pay attention to those issues and rethink the chance, timing and method of this go to.
First, the timing of this go to is of utmost concern to us: as scheduled, the go to will happen simply weeks earlier than the beginning of the fifty fifth session of the UN Human Rights Council (HRC), threatening to disrupt an important session to listen to studies from and focus on the way forward for two present mandates on human rights in Iran – the UN Special Rapporteur on Human Rights in Iran and the UN Independent International Fact-Finding Mission on the Islamic Republic of Iran.
In this context, we firmly imagine that the OHCHR has a duty to make sure that its authentic engagement actions aren’t used to undermine different mechanisms which might be important to the promotion and safety of human rights in Iran. To keep away from this, we urge it to rethink the timing of this go to and to develop a powerful technique to mitigate this danger.
Second, we’re involved that below present circumstances the go to is unlikely to provide any optimistic outcomes. We wholeheartedly agree together with your evaluation that the demise penalty and the rights of girls and ladies should be urgently addressed. However,
It should be famous that the Iranian authorities have proven no political will to deal with these long-standing points. The go to comes amid a worrying surge in executions, because the High Commissioner rightly highlighted in his latest statements.[1]This follows the execution final week of a younger man with mental disabilities and a Kurdish prisoner convicted in reference to their participation within the 2022 protests, together with the execution of 4 Kurdish prisoners early at the moment. All had been sentenced to demise after grossly unfair trials and regardless of repeated requires a moratorium on executions. The go to additionally takes place in a context marked by a lethal, violent and illegal crackdown on the ladies, life and freedom motion throughout the nation, and a worsening of degrading and discriminatory legal guidelines and insurance policies concentrating on girls and ladies. Public statements by Iranian officers, in addition to legislative and administrative actions, clearly display a complete rejection of requires human rights reform on these two points. Iranian authorities have additionally extensively used Iran’s repressive equipment to curtail civil house, censor dialogue of those points, and persecute girls human rights defenders and anti-death penalty activists, as has been abundantly documented by your workplace. Symbolic of this persevering with persecution is the continued imprisonment and up to date new sentence of Nobel Peace Prize laureate and anti-death penalty and ladies’s rights activist Narges Mohammadi. We add that Iran has refused to debate particular features of the demise penalty and ladies’s rights through the assessment of its periodic report by the UN Human Rights Commission in October 2023, and has did not acknowledge any reference to human rights or gender equality within the UN Sustainable Development Cooperation Framework Convention (UNSDCF), which Iran just lately signed.[2] It raises very severe questions on whether or not the Iranian authorities have a honest dedication to meaningfully tackle these human rights points via their engagement with the United Nations.
In these circumstances, we are able to solely be skeptical in regards to the tangible outcomes and advantages of a high-level go to to Tehran in direction of bettering the human rights of the Iranian individuals, until it additionally features a robust monitoring part and ensures of entry for impartial civil society actors and human rights defenders, together with unmonitored entry to arbitrarily detained human rights defenders and facilitating their launch.
We imagine that these components totally justify the necessity for an inner Iranian go to, versus different modes of engagement comparable to OHCHR’s present ongoing and common engagement with Iranian officers in Geneva.
For all these causes, we respectfully invite the High Commissioner and the Deputy High Commissioner to rigorously rethink the chance, timing and modalities of their go to.
Sincerely,
Abdulrahman Boromand Iranian Center for Human Rights
Ahvaz Human Rights Organization
All human rights for all individuals in Iran
ArcDH – Association for the Defense and Revenge of the Azerbaijani People – Iran
Article 19
Association for Human Rights of Azerbaijanis in Iran (Afraz)
Balochistan Activist Campaign
Balochistan Human Rights Organization
Iranian Center for Human Rights
Human Rights Center
Ensemble Contre La Payne de Mort (ECPM)
Femena
Harvskoye
Impact on Iran
Iran Human Rights
Iran Human Rights Documentation Center
Justice for Iran
Kurdistan Human Rights Association – Geneva
Kurdopa Human Rights Organization
Rasunk
Siamak Porzand Foundation
Iranian unification
Unrepresented Nations and Peoples’ Organization (UNPO)
Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom (WILPF)
6rang (Iranian Lesbian and Transgender Network)
[1] https://www.ohchr.org/en/statements/2024/01/un-high-commissioner-human-rights-volker-turk-alarmed-sharp-spike-use-death
[2] https://unsdg.un.org/sites/default/files/2022-11/UNSDCF_Iran%20Republic%20of-2023-2027.pdf