UN Mission Urges Iran To End Crackdown On Dissent

The United Nations Human Rights Council held another session on Iran on Wednesday to discuss the regime’s crackdown on dissent. 

Calling for restraint by the Islamic Republic, a fact-finding mission mandated by the UN urged the regime to stop executing people sentenced to death for taking part in anti-government protests.

The death of 22-year-old Mahsa Amini in September 2022 while in the custody of the country's morality police unleashed a wave of mass protests across Iran, marking the biggest challenge to the Islamic regime since its establishment in 1979. 

Member countries and several NGOs took turns about the bleak situation of human rights in Iran, with the regime complaining about every critical proposition that was uttered during the session. 

As is customary in such summits, the representatives of the countries from the free world condemned the atrocities by the Islamic Republic while the regime’s allies such as China, Venezuela, Zimbabwe and Cuba came out in support of Tehran and its actions. 

The regime has killed more than 500 people since the protests began and arrested well over 22,000 people but its allies tried to justify its actions, with several repeating Iran’s propaganda lines that the popular uprising was in fact an “orchestrated” effort by "enemy" countries. 

In reaction to all those who supported Iran’s crackdown and called the report biased, members of the fact-finding mission and other countries asked the regime to allow UN observers to enter the country and gather data firsthand about the events. Iran has not allowed UN human rights rapporteurs to visit for decades and has not cooperated with any of the international organizations that sought to gather information about its human rights practices.

Sara Hossain, Chairperson of the Independent International Fact-Finding Mission on the Islamic Republic of Iran, said Iran's government had announced that 22,000 people had been pardoned in connection with the protests, suggesting that a greater number of people were arrested as part of the heavy-handed crackdown. 

“No official and disaggregated data exists on the nature of the accusations against them, or on those convicted, still detained or charged for their involvement in the protests,” she said, expressing concern that “the conditions of these pardons, namely that protesters were reportedly made to 'express remorse' and to effectively admit guilt through signing written undertakings pledging that they would not commit 'similar crimes' in the future.

Together with fellow members of the mission, Shaheen Sardar Ali and Viviana Krsticevic, Hossain said, “Ten months on (since the death of Amini) Jina Mahsa’s family’s right to truth and justice remains unfulfilled and we are concerned that domestic investigations have fallen short of international human rights norms and standards, including the requirements of promptness, independence, and transparency.”

She also condemned the “lack of transparency around the investigations into her death” as well as "the arrest and continued detention of the two women journalists, Nilufar Hamedi and Elahe Mohammadi, who first reported on the event.”