Human rights in Iran continue to be violated today on the same basis that they have always been violated. With that observation, every day of the year should be Human Rights Day in Iran. Just as it has been for 32 years since the Islamic revolution of 1979 and during the years prior to that.

 

There are many countries and organizations which have for years been monitoring human rights conditions in Iran. But ever since the country’s nuclear policy turned into an international issue, the concern with human rights has been relegated to a secondary position and there is much less concern for it now. If human rights are mentioned they are pursued only so far as to not threaten the economic relations and benefits derived from dealings with the Iranian government, something that the Iranian nation has well understood. This is why Iranians have generally not joined Westerners in the latter’s pressures of Iran over the nuclear issue because they believe that their pain is not the nuclear issue but the lack of human rights in the country. This is precisely the pain that Westerners either do not see or if they do, they their discussion with hundreds of “ifs” and “buts”, or which they want to address through this bilateral dialog. And that is if the whole issue of human rights is not forgotten at the nuclear talks.

 

In contrast, the victims of human rights violations and the activists argue that when the Iranians and Westerners sit at the nuclear talks doesn’t the Islamic republic always lecture the others that their own record of human rights is worse than their own and then present hundreds of examples to support this contention? They cite Guantanamo, Western complicity in the violations of human rights of Palestinians, Iraqis, Afghans, etc and in this way prove themselves righteous by rejecting the claims of others. So if this issue could be resolved through such bilateral talks, human rights conditions would have been better in Iran today, rather than being worse than ever in the past.

 

It is really not even necessary to review the complete record of Iran’s human rights violations since the 1979 Islamic revolution to see how differently various countries have applied or relaxed their pressure on the Islamic republic over the case of Sakineh Ashtiani. One only has to look at the violations of human rights in Iran after the 2009 presidential elections to clearly see how indifferent governments have been on this issue. [1]

 

Even as tens of non-violent demonstrators in Iran are killed and thousands arrested, put into solitary confinement cells and tortured; when tens of people are executed and thousands given unlawful sentences; when tens of publications are banned and tens of students exiled and when Iran is named to be the largest prison for journalists and the country holding the second highest record of executions, Western governments merely condemned these events and expressed their regret over them. In contrast, when Sakineh Ashtiani’s issue was born and international organizations and foreign governments not only rose to react to it with full force but even some European foreign ministers became fully active over it – and the Iranian government wanted to demonstrate to the world that it will not bow to such pressures by executed another prisoner named Shahla Jahed – the question that human rights activists ask is that is the life of thousands of political detainees  during the last 18 months who have been shoved into tiny prison cells, tortured, summarily tried, and illegally sentenced to long term prison time less valuable than one suspect named Sakineh Ashtiani[2]?  Shouldn’t have European government’s shown as much “practical sensitivity” regarding the thousands of political detainees  held in Evin as they have over the case of Sakineh Ashtiani?

 

Of course some such sensitivity did emerge last week when the UN General Assembly passed a resolution condemning the violations of human rights in Iran, one new aspect of which is that the Secretary General has to prepare a report on the conditions of human rights in Iran every three months and present it to the General Assembly. The question still remains whether this resolution and the subsequent reports will force the government of the Islamic republic to stop its human rights violations.

 

As the Secretary General of the UN defends his “soft policy” on human rights and says that his organizations is after finding the “best solution” to attain its goals on human rights[3], one should look at the number of executions, political arrests, summons to security centers, etc in Iran during the last few weeks since the UN Resolution against Iran to understand the impact of the “soft policy” of the UN on the Islamic republic and its attitude towards it.

 

Does one really believe that a government that calls the UN Security Council resolutions – not those of the General Assembly - on Iran’s nuclear program to be “worthless pieces of paper” will care about the “soft policy” of the UN on human rights?