Iranian foreign ministry in a tweet named several human rights and international human rights violations by the United States.
The tweet was published on the occasion of the American Human Rights Week.
Targeted assassination of Lt. Gen. Qasem Soleimani, freezing Afghan people’s assets, violating the rights of American black citizens, and violation of health rights are several cases mentioned in the tweet.
According to a report, Saeed Khatibzadeh, the spokesman for the Iranian Foreign Ministry, said Sunday slammed Washington for using human rights as a tool to achieve its objectives.
The United States is exploiting human rights as a weapon to achieve its interests, according to the spokesperson, who asserted that the sublime concept has been degraded to a plaything by Washington.
“Unfortunately, this approach has degraded the sublime concept of human rights to a plaything,” Khatibzadeh underscored while addressing a conference of Iranian non-governmental organizations with consultative status with the United Nations Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC).
The Iranian diplomat went on to say that human rights is one of the most significant victims of international relations at this very time.
“Due to the approach adopted by the centers of power in the world, the issue of human rights has been turned into a political tool to advance those centers’ goals,” he noted.
“The United States uses human rights as a tool in its foreign policy toolbox in order to achieve its goals,” Khatibzadeh continued, slamming the U.S. for its distorted approach to human rights.
Iran has often warned the U.S. and its Western allies against using human rights as a tool to undermine independent countries.
In relevant remarks last week, the secretary of Iran’s High Council for Human Rights Kazem Gharibabadi blasted the U.S. and Western European bloc for politicizing human rights and using it as a tool to exert pressure on non-aligned countries.
“The Western European countries and the United States have this selective approach, unfortunately,” Kazem Gharibabadi pointed out.
“So, the countries that are not allied to these states are under political pressure in international human rights mechanisms and structures because they are going to abuse human rights as a political tool to achieve their own foreign policy goals,” he underlined.
The United States has a long history of domestic and international human rights violations.
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Despite major protests around the country following the deaths of African-American men George Floyd and Daunte Wright by white police officers last year, a report released in late December indicated that the number of Americans murdered in confrontations with U.S. police has not dwindled.
It was earlier reported that, a 2014 edition of the report on human rights violations in the United States was released in a special ceremony held at Tehran University.
The 115 page document has been compiled by Iran’s International Human Rights Center.
In the report, the Tehran-based rights group elaborates on different aspects of human rights violations across the United States in 2014.
Violation of prisoners’ rights, breach of privacy rights, violation of the rights of minorities, breaches of immigrants’ rights, racial discrimination, violation of children’s rights, violation of freedom of speech, and sexual violence against women in the American society are among the issues raised in the report.
The document has been released in three languages.
The English version of the report is available at http://www.usviewer.com/uploads/pdf/hr/en.pdf.
The United States, which has already been criticized for politicizing the issue of human rights, is one of the major self-proclaimed defenders of human rights.
Excessive use of force by the US police against protesters, people of color in particular, are among the thorny issues staining the country’s rights record.
According to a report, The United Nations says United State of America is violating Human Rights.
The U.N. Human Rights Council adopted a scathing report today, consisting of 348 recommendations that address myriad human rights violations in the United States.
The report came out as a part of a mechanism called the Universal Periodic Review (UPR), which examines the human rights record of all U.N. member states. The council questioned the United States on its record earlier this week.
Although many of these recommendations in the report are redundant or too general to offer tangible solutions to the human rights situation in the U.S., they echo many of the concerns raised by U.S. civil society groups like the ACLU, who attended the review and offered concrete recommendations to reverse policies that are inconsistent with international human rights principles.
For example, the report adopted a recommendation made by Sweden to “halt the detention of immigrant families and children, seek alternatives to detention and end use of detention for reason of deterrence.” The report also adopted several recommendations calling on the Obama administration to independently investigate allegations of torture documented in the recent Senate torture report and provide reparations to victims. Denmark, for instance, recommended that the United States “further ensure that all victims of torture and ill-treatment — whether still in US custody or not — obtain redress and have an enforceable right to fair and adequate compensation and as full rehabilitation as possible, including medical and psychological assistance.”
In addition, the report included many fitting recommendations to address police brutality and excessive use of force as well as ending racial profiling against minorities and immigrants. Mexico recommended that the U.S. “adopt measures at the federal level to prevent and punish excessive use of force by law enforcement officials against members of ethnic and racial minorities, including unarmed persons, which disproportionately affect Afro American and undocumented migrants.” Ireland, for its part, directly touched on the broken trust between American law enforcement and communities of color and recommended that the U.S. “continue to vigorously investigate recent cases of alleged police-led human rights abuses against African-Americans and seek to build improved relations and trust between U.S. law enforcement and all communities around the U.S.”
While in some areas, like LGBT rights and freedom of speech, the United States’ human rights record fares far better than other parts of the world, in many areas — including national security, criminal justice, social and economic rights, and immigration policy — the U.S. has an abysmal record compared to other liberal democracies.
This report sends a strong message of no-confidence in the U.S. human rights record. It clearly demonstrates that the United States has a long way to go to live up to its human rights obligations and commitments. This will be the last major human rights review for the Obama administration, and it offers a critical opportunity to shape the president’s human rights legacy, especially in the areas of racial justice, national security, and immigrants’ rights.
The Obama administration has until September to respond to the 348 recommendations. At that time, the administration will make a direct commitment to the world by deciding which of the 348 will be accepted and implemented over the next four years, and which will be rejected. While many of the recommendations fall outside the constitutional powers of the executive branch — such as treaty ratification and legislative actions on the national, state, and local levels — the Obama administration should use its executive powers to their fullest extent to effectuate U.S. human rights obligations.
The U.S. record for implementing U.N. recommendations has thus far been very disappointing, but if President Obama really cares about his human rights legacy, he should direct his administration to adopt a plan of action with concrete benchmarks and effective implementation mechanisms that will ensure that the U.S. indeed learns from its shortcomings and genuinely seeks to create a more perfect union.
