making it harder for the Islamic Republic to claim that it is being judged by non-Islamic standards.
Only two days after the appointment was announced, however, a Majlis committee said the UN investigator should be banned from entering the country—despite the fact that the government told the UN some weeks ago that it would allow the investigator in.
Named to the post Friday was Ahmed Shaheed, the former foreign minister of the Maldives, a very small island state in the Indian Ocean that is best known in Iran for having been thrashed at soccer by Iran 17-0 in a World Cup preliminary match in the 1990s. At the time, that was the record score in an international soccer game.
Shaheed, 47, resigned as foreign minister in 2007, accusing conservative elements in the government of stalling on democratic reforms. When the government was defeated at the polls the next year, he was named foreign minister again by the new government and continues to serve in that post.
Shaheed is renowned in the Maldives for his strong advocacy of human rights and democracy. A few years ago, the chief justice of the Maldives denounced the UN Declaration on Human Rights and was repudiated by Shaheed. That suggests that Shaheed is very well-placed to go toe-to-toe with Iran and its claims that international standards on human rights are grounded in Western culture and thus not applicable to the Muslim world.
The UN had a special rapporteur on Iran from 1984 to 2002 when the post was allowed to expire. It was re-authorized in March by the UN Human Rights Council at the urging of the United States and several other countries despite Iran’s strong objection.
Deputy Mohammad-Karim Abedi, spokesman for the Majlis Human Rights Committee, said the committee had voted to recommend that Shaheed be barred from entry. “There should be no permission issued for the UN human rights envoy’s entry into Iran,” Abedi said. “Instead of focusing on Iran, the UN Human Rights Council should consider the breaches of human rights in America, the Zionist regime and Britain,” he said. He appeared ignorant of the fact that the council just completed a long review of human rights compliance in the United States. The council created the rapporteur for Iran in part because it was not getting the kind of cooperation from Iran that it got from the United States.
(Some international news report said the Majlis voted by keep Abedi out of Iran. That is not correct. It was a vote by a Majlis committee, not the Majlis as a whole, and is only a recommendation.)
Bahman Keshavarz, the head of Iran’s National Union of Court Attorneys, said locking the door on Shaheed would not stop him from doing his work. Keshavarz said Shaheed would still be able to phone and email people inside Iran and could spend more time interviewing Iranians abroad. The implication was that Iran might be smarter to allow Shaheed in where officials would be better able to influence his view of Iran.
It appeared that Shaheed intended to continue as foreign minister while simultaneously serving as UN rapporteur for human rights in Iran. The rapporteur’s post is not a full time job.