Rights group urges Tehran to let in human rights observers
Published: Tuesday, June 10, 2008
16:02GMT—12:02PM/EST
IRAN – UN – HUMAN – RIGHTS
Washington, 10 June (IranVNC)—Iran should allow special observers into the country to report on the situation of human rights there, an international human rights group said yesterday at the headquarters of the United Nations Human Rights Council [UNHRC] in Geneva.
In a panel discussion entitled “Challenges Facing Human Rights Defenders in Iran,” Abdolkarim Lahiji, head of the Paris-based International Federation for Human Rights [IFHR], urged Iran to cooperate with foreign rights groups and allow observers into the country to accurately report on human rights conditions.
“In many countries, in order to perform investigations in connection with human rights conditions, independent human rights organizations are allowed to enter those countries, where they go and research and present reports,” Amir Kabir University of Tehran’s student newsletter [AUT News] quoted Lahiji as saying.
Iran’s cooperation is on par with countries like Burma, Turkmenistan, Cuba and Syria, Lahiji said, noting that “even Saudi Arabia and Libya” have cooperated with international organizations.
“On this issue, we hope that Iran will distance itself from Burma, and at least join the ranks of countries like Saudi Arabia,” he added.
Center for the Defense of Human Rights
But rights groups based in Iran have more access to information not readily available to outside groups, and Lahiji said these groups can help “fill in the gaps” in the reports they write.
One of Iran’s largest human rights groups, the Center for the Defense of Human Rights [CDHR], which was represented at the meeting by Nobel Peace Prize winner, Shirin Ebadi and the CDHR's spokesperson, Nargis Mohammadi, published its annual review of human rights in Iran last month.
Mohammadi said there were “widespread and systematic human rights abuses” in Iran during the last year, according to an interview with Radio Farda published yesterday.
And Ebadi, who heads the center, told reporters in Geneva that Iran has not lived up to its international commitments to protect the rights of its citizens.
“You all know that the government of Iran is a signatory to the Convention on the Rights of the Child and Human Rights and that it has vowed to enforce them,” AUT News quoted Ebadi as saying in a news conference in Geneva.
“But we have not seen these vows in the laws, and there are many laws that violate human rights,” she added.
The New York-based Human Rights Watch and International Campaign for Human Rights in Iran also attended the meeting.
Source: Amir Kabir University of Tehran's student newsletter, Radio Farda
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