Deputy of Human Rights Headquarters: Iran's Goal is to Remove the UN Special Rapporteur

A senior official in the judiciary of the Islamic Republic on Wednesday, December 8, directly attacked the UN Special Rapporteur on human rights in Iran, stating that Tehran's goal is to 'remove' this official. According to the Tasnim news agency, Kazem Gharibabadi, Deputy for International Affairs at the Human Rights Headquarters of the judiciary, also mentioned that another goal of Iran is to abolish 'international human rights resolutions against Iran.' This appears to be the first time a member of the Islamic Republic has directly attacked the UN Special Rapporteur assigned to address issues in Iran. Since 2011, when the UN first appointed Ahmad Shaheed as the human rights rapporteur for Iran, Tehran has never allowed a human rights rapporteur to visit the country. The current UN rapporteur for Iran is Asma Jahangir, a Pakistani lawyer, who began her work in the fall of 2016 and has been accused by Iran at least once of accepting bribes and corruption. The state news agency IRNA claimed in March 2017 that Saudi Arabia invited Ms. Jahangir to secretly visit the country and, in exchange for $200,000, to take a stance against Iran. Furthermore, Iranian officials, particularly in the Foreign Ministry and the judiciary, have repeatedly questioned international human rights reports, describing them as biased and 'political,' asserting that the content of these reports is not true. For instance, Bahram Qasemi, the spokesman for the Iranian Foreign Ministry, on October 26, called the latest report by the UN Special Rapporteur regarding the human rights situation and the rights of ethnic and religious minorities in Iran 'biased' and lacking 'legitimacy.' Nevertheless, this is the first time an Islamic Republic official has spoken about efforts to eliminate this title. The Deputy of the Human Rights Headquarters of the judiciary stated, according to Tasnim, that Iran does not 'need' the UN Special Rapporteur at all. This is while, in addition to the UN Human Rights Council, which appoints the special rapporteur, several human rights organizations and defenders of workers' and journalists' rights have accused Iran for years of systematically violating individuals' rights. According to Reporters Without Borders, Iran is one of the five largest prisons for journalists in the world. Iran and China top the list of countries in the world in terms of the number of executions, and human rights organizations and transnational entities have repeatedly warned and criticized the high number of executions in Iran. On Wednesday, Kazem Gharibabadi also accused the European Union of using human rights as a 'political' tool to 'pressure the Islamic Republic.' He further stipulated that discussions about human rights with European countries 'are conditional on the EU's support for Iran's human rights positions.' In the realm of human rights, European countries, including Germany and France, have always been among the biggest critics of the Islamic Republic and have repeatedly protested the human rights situation in statements.