by Ismail Salami
The not-very-independent UN body has made a mockery of justice by soldering a resolution on the so-called human rights violations in Iran.
The farce becomes more markedly absurd when you consider the plethora of human rights abuses going unpunished in the world with the UN laying a lid of ignorance on these blatant violations.
Late Tuesday, the United Nations voted to slam “Iranian human rights abuses”, singling it out for “executing upwards of 1,000 political opponents and prisoners in the past year”.
Iran has strongly lambasted the UN resolution, saying that “the UN’s legal mechanisms have turned into a tool in the hands of the West.”
The irony of the resolution is that the measure was initially drafted by Canada which has itself a disgracing history of human rights abuse against the aborigines in the country. Further to that, Ottawa has constantly and vehemently thrown its full-throated support behind Tel Aviv in its inconceivably ruthless crimes against the people of Palestine.
In July 2014, when Gaza was being pounded by Israeli bombs and the Palestinian women and children were consequently incinerated and brutally slaughtered, when human rights were being trampled in its most pernicious forms, Canadian government brazenly backed the Israeli regime and instead rubbed salt in Palestinian wounds. Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper issued a statement and said, “The indiscriminate rocket attacks from Gaza on Israel are terrorist acts, for which there is no justification…. Failure by the international community to condemn these reprehensible actions would encourage these terrorists to continue their appalling actions. Canada calls on its allies and partners to recognize that these terrorist acts are unacceptable and that solidarity with Israel is the best way of stopping the conflict. Canada is unequivocally behind Israel.”
Yes, Canada is unequivocally and cravenly behind Israel. These are strange times. Those who are harbingers of terror and atrocity become the emblems of innocence and the downtrodden people of Gaza become terrorists. These remarks by Mr. Harper only relegate him to a very lowly level of humanity and leave no room for his exoneration from complicity in the crimes perpetrated at the hands of the Israeli regime against the Gazans.
Ahmed Shaheed, the UN Special Rapporteur on Human Rights in Iran has even voiced his praise for Canada’s determining role in conducing to this mockery of justice about Iran, saying, “Canada’s leadership in this regard is highly appreciated.”
In May 2014, Canadian Liberal MP Irwin Cotler who served as the Minister of Justice and Attorney General of Canada from 2003 until 2006 embarked on a series of programs known as Iran Accountability Weeks in which they heard “testimonies highlighting Iranian political prisoners and other victims of Iranian human rights abuses.” Among those who testified was the notorious terrorist MKO leader Maryam Rajavi accompanied by a UN rights official and pundits from a hawkish American think tank.
Interestingly, Mr. Shaheed was a participant in the event. Although he says he asked his name to be withdrawn from the panel, there is barely an iota of truth in it as in his report on Iran. The sheer presence of Maryam Rajavi in the anti-Iran mudslinging campaign sheds light on the very nature of the UN-released resolution against Iran.
Besides, it is not a closed book to anyone that Irwin Cotler is a fervent advocate of Tel Aviv and his insistence on having Rajavi on the anti-Iran panel reveals the dirty hands behind the report. So, the pieces of the puzzle come together to make a meaningful whole in this regard.
Over the past three decades, the MKO has initiated a series of deadly attacks on Iran and the Iranian population and has so far assassinated 12000 Iranians including the nuclear scientists. It is interesting to note that the assassinations of prominent Iranian characters including the politicians and scientists are basically conducted in cahoots with Israeli Kidon, the assassination unit within Mossad.
In 1986, the MKO headquarters were transferred to Iraq during the Iran-Iraq war and Saddam took them under his wings and funded them financially and militarily to fight against Iran. Long listed as a terrorist organization by the international community, the cult was delisted on September 28, 2012 by the US Secretary of State as an extension of their adage that a terrorist in need is a friend indeed.
Some of their sabotaging activities are as follows:
- The series of mortar attacks and hit-and-run raids during 2000 and 2001 against Iranian government buildings; one of these killed Iran’s chief of staff
- The 2000 mortar attack on President Mohammad Khatami’s palace in Tehran
- The February 2000 “Operation Great Bahman,” during which MEK launched 12 attacks against Iran
- The 1999 assassination of the deputy chief of Iran’s armed forces general staff, Ali Sayyad Shirazi
- The 1998 assassination of the director of Iran’s prison system, Asadollah Lajevardi
- The 1992 near-simultaneous attacks on Iranian embassies and institutions in 13 countries
- Assistance to Saddam Hussein’s suppression of the 1991 Iraqi Shiite and Kurdish uprisings
- The 1981 bombing of the offices of the Islamic Republic Party and of Premier Mohammad-Javad Bahonar, which killed some 70 high-ranking Iranian officials, including President Mohammad-Ali Rajaei and Bahonar Support for the 1979 takeover of the U.S. Embassy in Tehran by Iranian revolutionaries
- The 1970s killings of U.S. military personnel and civilians working on defense projects in Tehran
Viewed from an entirely different angle, the measure very bizarrely coincides with the nuclear talks between Iran and the world six world powers and the November 24 deadline. So, the move may be seen as a last-ditch effort by pro-Israeli lobbies to proceed with their scenario of Iranophobia on the one hand and to sabotage the nuclear talks and bring them to standstill on the other hand.
The UN consciously or unconsciously plays in the hands of the pro-Israeli pressure groups in Canada and only puts on an ugly show of duplicity in imposing a ruling against the Islamic Republic.
Dr. Ismail Salami is an Iranian writer, Middle East expert, Iranologist and lexicographer. He writes extensively on the US and Middle East issues and his articles have been translated into a number of languages.
