UN REMOVES Iran from women’s rights body following regime’s morality police protest crackdown
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Majidreza Rahnavard (left) had been sentenced to death by a court in the city of Mashhad for killing two members of the security forces with a knife and wounding four others, the judicial news agency Mizan Online reported. The hanging also came just four days after Mohsen Shekari (right) was executed on Thursday.
Two protesters were killed in Nasiriyah in clashes with security forces at a demonstration after an activist was sentenced to prison, authorities said.
This is breaking news, more to follow…
The United Nations today removed Iran from its women’s rights body over the Islamic regime’s brutal crackdown on protests.
Twenty-nine members of the UN Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC) voted to expel the Islamic republic from the United Nations Commission on the Status of Women (UNCSW).
Eight countries voted against and 16 abstained. A simple majority is required to adopt the measure proposed by the United States.
The commission meets annually every March and aims to promote gender equality and the empowerment of women.
Member countries vote on the removal of Iran as a member of the Commission on the Status of Women at the United Nations headquarters in New York City on Wednesday.
The decision comes after Tehran executed a second man on Monday in connection with protests that have rocked the regime for months, defying international outcry over the use of capital punishment against those involved in the movement.
The protests were sparked by the death in custody on September 16 of Mahsa Amini, a 22-year-old Iranian-Kurdish, arrested by morality police for allegedly violating the Islamic Republic’s strict dress code for women.
Majidreza Rahnavard, 23, had been sentenced to death by a court in the city of Mashhad for killing two members of the security forces with a knife and wounding four others, the judicial news agency Mizan Online reported.
It was the second execution in less than a week of people involved in protests against Iran’s ruling theocracy.
Mizan posted footage of Rahnavard’s execution, showing a man with his hands tied behind his back hanging from a rope attached to a crane.
He was executed just over three weeks after his arrest in November, human rights groups said.
The hanging also came just four days after Mohsen Shekari, also 23, was executed on Thursday on charges of wounding a member of the security forces in the first death penalty case against a protester.
He admitted to beating a member of the Basij militia with a knife and blocking a road with his motorcycle along with one of his friends.
Human rights groups said Shekari was tortured and forced to confess.
The executions drew a sharp rebuke from the United States, with State Department spokesman Ned Price saying they “underscore how much Iranian leaders fear their own people.”
The director of the Oslo-based Iran Human Rights group, Mahmood Amiry-Moghaddam, said Rahnavard “was sentenced to death on the basis of coerced confessions after a… show trial.”
The UN human rights commissioner’s office said it was “shocked” by the news of Rahnavard’s execution.
Professor Javaid Rehman, the UN special rapporteur on human rights in Iran, this week called on the international community to put pressure on the regime to prevent further executions.
US Ambassador to the United Nations Linda Thomas-Greenfield told ECOSOC ahead of the vote that removing Iran from the committee was the right thing to do, describing Tehran’s membership as an ugly stain on the commission’s credibility. .
Iran, 17 other states and the Palestinians argued in a letter to ECOSOC on Monday that a vote “will certainly create an unwanted precedent that will ultimately prevent other member states with different cultures, customs and traditions… from contributing to the activities of said Commissions.’
His letter urged members not to support the ballot project to avoid a “new trend to expel sovereign and legitimately elected states from any body of the international system.”
Only five of the signatories to the letter are currently ECOSOC members and were able to vote on Wednesday.
Iran’s ambassador to the UN, Amir Saeid Iravani, called the US move illegal and described the US as a bully.
Activists and rights groups had said Tehran’s role in the commission on the status of women should not be seriously considered, considering that regime forces have killed and beaten women peacefully calling for gender equality.
The nationwide protests sparked by Amini’s death have turned into a popular revolt by angry Iranians from all strata of society, posing one of the most significant legitimacy challenges for the Shiite clerical elite since the Islamic Revolution in 1979.
Iran calls the protests “riots” and says they have been encouraged by its foreign enemies.
The protesters deny any foreign agenda and say they are fed up after decades of social and political repression by leaders they see as corrupt and out of touch.
At least 494 protesters have been killed since September and more than 18,000 have been arrested, according to Human Rights Activists in Iran, a group that has been closely monitoring the unrest.~
It says at least 62 members of the security forces have been killed. Iranian authorities have put a much higher death toll for security personnel, blaming the attacks on separatists and anonymous militants.
The Geneva-based UN Rights Council voted last month to appoint an independent inquiry into Iran’s deadly crackdown on protests, passing the motion to cheers from activists.
Tehran accused Western states of using the advice to attack Iran in a “appalling and shameful” move.
The UN says more than 300 people have been killed in the crackdown, including at least 40 children.
Doctors told The Guardian that women are being singled out at protests, with security forces firing shotguns into their faces, breasts and genitals.
The Tehran regime has jailed hundreds and has begun what is expected to be a campaign of public executions.
Amnesty International believes that 20 more people are at risk of execution for alleged protest-related crimes
Security forces have suppressed the demonstrations, and rights groups accuse them of firing live ammunition, pellets and tear gas at protesters, as well as beating and arresting them.
EU ministers meeting in Brussels on Monday stepped up sanctions against Iran over the crackdown.
Targets of the new EU sanctions included state broadcaster IRIB, its director and a TV news presenter for broadcasting forced confessions from detainees.
Army commander-in-chief Abdolrahim Mousavi, deputy interior minister and regional commanders of the Revolutionary Guard Corps also faced asset freezes and visa bans.
Iran tried to preempt the EU move by imposing its own sanctions against the heads of the UK’s national spy agency and military, along with British and German political figures.
Iran is already the world’s most prolific user of the death penalty after China, says Amnesty International. However, public executions are highly unusual in the Islamic Republic, with the IHR describing one in July as the first in two years.
Iran’s use of the death penalty is part of a crackdown that IHR says has led to the deaths of at least 458 people by security forces.
According to the UN, at least 14,000 have been arrested.
Prior to the two executions, Iran’s judiciary said it had handed down death sentences to 11 people in connection with the protests, but activists say around a dozen more face charges that could see them also receive the death penalty.
The Supreme Court on Wednesday halted the execution of a third individual, Mahan Sedarat, according to Mizan, the official judiciary news agency.
Earlier this month, Sedarat’s family told the reformist Shargh newspaper that his death sentence had been upheld.
He was charged with wounding someone with a knife, acting against national security, setting a motorcycle on fire and destroying a mobile phone. His family said he denied the charges.
Like the other two, he was found guilty of ‘moharebeh’, a Farsi word meaning ‘to make war against God’, which carries the death penalty.
He was tried in the Revolutionary Court, which normally holds trials behind closed doors and has been the subject of strong international criticism.
Italy’s foreign minister said on Wednesday he would summon the new Iranian ambassador to condemn “in the strongest terms” the continued violation of fundamental rights and freedoms in Iran.
“I want to summon the designated Iranian ambassador as soon as he has presented his credentials to the head of state,” Antonio Tajani told parliament.
Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi vowed on Friday to press ahead with a security crackdown on protesters a day after the execution of a man over recent anti-government riots drew a chorus of Western condemnation.
“The identification, trial and punishment of the perpetrators of the martyrdom (murder) of the security forces will be carried out with determination,” Raisi said at a ceremony honoring the security forces killed during the protests, according to state media. .
Amnesty International has said Iranian authorities are seeking the death penalty for at least 21 people in what it calls “sham trials designed to intimidate those taking part in the popular uprising that has rocked Iran.”