the world’s worst human rights offenders after a UN committee passed a resolution criticizing Iran’s human rights record.
Muhammad-Javad Larijani, secretary general of Iran’s High Council for Human Rights, called Canada’s government “racist in essence.” Canada was the chief sponsor of the resolution criticizing Iran’s record on human rights.
Larijani—who is the brother of Majlis Speaker Ali Larijani and Judiciary Chairman Sadeq Larijani—accused the West of double standards and constantly attacking Iran’s human rights records while failing to see their own flagrant rights violations involving women, ethnic minorities and others.
His comments came after a resolution condemning Iran’s “torture and cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment” of its people was adopted by the UN General Assembly’s Third Committee with a record 86 votes in favor.
The General Assembly itself will vote on the resolution in December. But since the membership of the Third Committee is the same 193 countries that comprise the General Assembly, the vote is unlikely to be much different.
Two other resolutions condemning human rights violations in North Korea and Myanmar were also adopted, but Larijani accused the West of “double standards” for singling Iran out.
“Why shouldn’t the US and Canada come under pressure for their numerous violations of human rights?” he was quoted by the official IRNA news agency as asking on Monday during a meeting of the Third Committee.
He then went on to list several instances of what he said were human rights violations by the US and Canada.
He said Islamophobia and encroachment on the rights of Muslims were “widespread” in the West, adding that substantial documentation exists of the violations of the rights of African-American women in prisons and in the US Army. He said unmanned US drone aircraft routinely violate human rights as they carry out targeted killing campaigns in Afghanistan and Pakistan, killing women and children.
Criticizing Canada, he said that incarcerated indigenous and black women far outnumber the majority white women, making the Canadian government “racist in essence.”
“Unfortunately, the human rights committee has issued no resolutions against these two countries,” he said.
He did not limit his criticisms to the US and Canada, however, opting to lash out at other countries – including Israel – that had voted in favor of the resolution.
“Most of the countries that were behind the anti-Iran resolution have an ignominious record and a dark past in this area,” he said.
He added that Iran was proud of its greatest achievement, its “religious democracy.”
Touting Iran’s cooperation with the UN on human rights, he said that senior-level UN human rights officials have the highest number of visits to Iran. He said his country also submitted regular responses to inquiries from the General Assembly’s human rights committee.
But the UN has complained that no UN human rights officials have been allowed to visit Iran for a half-dozen years and that most communications sent to Iran by UN human rights officers are not answered.