Iran raps UN’s Israel-sponsored rights bill

Iran’s deputy representative to the United Nations has dismissed as biased and politically-motivated a recent UN resolution on the situation of human rights in the Islamic Republic.

Addressing a session of the UN General Assembly’s Third Committee on Tuesday, Gholam-Hossein Dehqani denounced the draft resolution as an “insincere move” presented by Canada, a country “with hardly defendable human rights records.”

He said the resolution “only reveals once again the lack of honesty on the part of those self-proclaimed champions of human rights that submitted it.”

Canada and other sponsors of this resolution “have been foolhardy enough to include among sponsors those who not only grossly violate human rights but also have and continue to commit atrocities against civilians, with impunity,” he said.

Dehqani regretted that Israel as the “greatest violator of human rights in the world” is among the co-sponsors of this resolution, saying Iran is singled out because “it refuses to succumb to the political pressures of the main sponsors of this draft.”

“Human rights are once again being abused to pursue unjust interests of those who traditionally and historically supported colonialism, slavery, racism and apartheid,” he said.

“The level of complacency shown by the main sponsor and many of the co-cosponsors with dark human rights records is striking,” Dehqani added.

Dehqani said the sponsors of the anti-Iran resolution “continue to be largely heedless to the alarming growth of marginalization, social exclusion, disenfranchisement, cultural chauvinism, unabated xenophobic tendencies, racial hatred and racism as the breeding grounds for atrocities and terrorism in their own societies.”

He further enumerated several measures taken by the Islamic Republic in line with international standards of human rights, saying Iran has always sought “respectful dialogue without recrimination or blame game.”