Iran

Zarif: Double-standards rife in UNHRC

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Iran’s Javad Zarif has told a meeting of UNHRC double-standards and selectivism infest the Council policies.
Zarif addressed a meeting in Geneva of United Nations Human Rights Council on Monday, slamming the double standards regarding the condemnation of anti-Semitism and Islamophobia; “while anti-Semitism and racism have been condemned accurately, the obvious cases of wide-spread Islamophobia and disregard and desecration of the Islamic sanctities are tacitly supported under the banner of freedom of expression,” Zarif told the meeting. “Despite its many accomplishments, the UNHRC has been still infested with old and false mentalities of monopoly since long, which effectively turns cooperation into political action in favor of vested interests,” he added.

“There is a universal acknowledgement that political vested interests, double-standards and selectivism are still rife in the specific mechanizations of the UNHRC; these deadly compounds, while have tainted the principles and the essence, have very devastating impact as well,” Zarif noted. “Islamophobia and disregard of Islamic sanctities are not only tolerated, but also they are supported in broad daylight as freedom of expression,” he said.

Zarif posed the question that why considerable numbers of extremist groups promoted fundamental ideologies and fanaticism, committing horrible acts of violence in EU and in unprecedented scale in Iraq; “quite incidentally, they are the second generation of the western democratic citizens as well; is not this horribly disturbing that the ISIL terrorists who cut throats of the innocent civilians in cold blood, speak European languages with native accent,” he asked rhetorically.

“The regional and global powers have created and fostered ISIL on human rights grounds; the high rate of recruitment [of civilians] by these groups indicate a systematic flaw, which isolates individuals and groups as social outcasts, groups and individuals who are born and educated in western democracies,” said the FM, “both creation and emergence of these groups are the outcome of short-sighted strategic and security interests of global hegemonic powers, and these interests have been justified with the pretexts of human rights,” he emphasized.

“70 years ago, the founding fathers of the UN created the UN to save the posterity from the wrath of wars and to emphasize upon the commitment to fundamentals of human rights,” Zarif said, believing that the mission would not be realized unless all cooperated and rejected the policies of coercion and threat.

“This well-thought prescience is manifest in many parts of the UN Charter,” Zarif concluded.

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