—but he was silent about Iran’s own silence about human rights violations in places like Syria.
Sadeq Larijani, who heads the Judiciary and is the brother of Majlis Speaker Ali Larijani, also said, “We know that most of the developed countries that are talking about the issue of human rights and portray themselves as advocates of the issue are among the violators of human rights.”
Addressing the Conference of Prosecutors General of the Economic Cooperation Organization (ECO) in Tehran Monday, Larijani cited what he called the West’s silence about the suppression of the protesting people in Bahrain and the massacre of the Palestinian people by the Zionist regime of Israel, and said, “We should ask why Europe and the West are providing staunch support for terrorist groups and the occupying Zionist regime that is the very symbol of terrorism.”
Actually, the annual US human rights reports routinely criticize Israel’s human rights conduct in the Occupied Territories and the Americans have repeatedly criticized the Bahraini government’s approach to its Shia majority.
Larijani avoided mentioning that the Islamic Republic is silent on human rights violations in countries it does not want to offend, ignoring many years of Russian suppression of the Muslims of Chechnya and Chinese repression of the Uighur Muslims of Western China. Iran also has been totally silent about the Syrian practice of shelling its own cities to try to put down he rebellion there.
Larijani said those who chant slogans and claim to be the pioneering states in the protection of human rights act to the contrary.
The Islamic Republic, he said, has always lashed out at the western countries for using human rights issues as a tool and pretext for pressurizing independent states to conceal their own crimes and wrong deeds.