March 26, 2021
Iran had the world’s second worst human rights record in 2020, after China, a report by United Nations Watch says.
Cameroun, Venezuela, Saudi Arabia, Zimbabwe, Cuba, Turkey, North Korea, and Russia were next in the ranking drawn up by UN Watch, a non-governmental organization based in Geneva “whose mandate is to monitor the United Nations’ performance by the yardstick of its Charter.”
Reporting on Iran’s human rights record, UN Watch said: “[Iran] executed wrestler Navid Afkari and journalist Ruhollah Zam for criticizing the regime, funded Syrian mass murder and Hezbollah terror, arrested women for not covering their hair, bombed passenger jet killing 176 passengers, covered it up, massacred peaceful protesters.”
The downing of the airliner, which was not intentional, might not be considered a human rights violation by many others.
The section on China said: “[China] herded 1 million Uighurs into camps, jailed human rights activists, crushed Tibet, silenced courageous men and women who sounded the alarm on the coronavirus like Dr. Li Wenliang and citizen journalist Zhang Zhan and suffocated freedom in Hong Kong.”