Tehran, Iran – The Iranian state has rejected a decision by the United Nations’ Human Rights Council that strongly condemned the “violent crackdown on peaceable protests” by safety forces that left hundreds lifeless.
After an in depth assembly and discussions in Geneva on Friday, 25 members of the council, together with France, Japan and South Korea, voted in favour of the censure decision.
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Seven votes towards, together with from China, India and Pakistan, in addition to 14 abstentions, amongst others from Qatar and South Africa, did not cease the decision.
The human rights council referred to as on Iran to cease the arrests of individuals in reference to the protests, and to take steps to “forestall extrajudicial killing, different types of arbitrary deprivation of life, enforced disappearance, sexual and gender-based violence” and different actions violating its human rights obligations.
Iran stated that the Western-led sponsors of the emergency assembly on Friday had by no means genuinely cared for human rights in Iran, or else they might not have imposed sanctions which have devastated the Iranian population over the previous decade.
Ali Bahreini, Iran’s envoy within the assembly, reiterated the state’s declare that 3,117 folks have been killed throughout the unrest, 2,427 of whom have been killed by “terrorists” armed and funded by the USA, Israel and their allies.
“It was ironic that states whose historical past was stained with genocide and battle crimes now tried to lecture Iran on social governance and human rights,” he stated.
The US-based Human Rights Activists Information Company (HRANA) says it has confirmed at the least 5,137 deaths throughout the protests, and is investigating 12,904 others.
UN particular rapporteur on Iran, Mai Sato, has stated the demise toll may attain 20,000 or extra as experiences from medical doctors from inside Iran emerge. Al Jazeera has been unable to independently confirm the figures.
UN human rights chief Volker Turk instructed the council that “the brutality in Iran continued, creating situations for additional human rights violations, instability and bloodshed” weeks after the killings on January 8 and January 9, when a communications blackout was additionally enforced.
Turk identified that executions for homicide, drug-related and different prices proceed throughout Iran, with the state executing at the least 1,500 folks in 2025, marking an infinite 50 % improve in contrast with the yr earlier than.
Payam Akhavan, a professor and former UN prosecutor of Iranian-Canadian nationality who was at Friday’s assembly as a civil society consultant, referred to as the killings “the worst mass-murder within the modern historical past of Iran”.
He stated as a prosecutor on the Worldwide Felony Tribunal within the Hague, he had helped draft the indictment for the Srebrenica genocide by which some 8,000 Bosniaks have been killed in July 1995.
“By comparability, at the least twice that quantity had been killed in Iran in half the time. This was an extermination,” he stated.
The adopted UN council decision additionally prolonged the mandate of the particular rapporteur for an additional yr, whereas including two extra years to the mandate of the unbiased fact-finding mission that was fashioned to analyze killings and rights abuses throughout Iran’s nationwide protests in 2022 and 2023.
Extra movies emerge regardless of web blackout
In the meantime, the web blackout continues to be enforced amid rising frustration and anger from the general public and companies alike.
World web observatory Netblocks reported that worldwide web remained successfully blocked on Saturday regardless of temporary moments of connectivity.
Some customers have been capable of overcome the digital blackout over latest days for brief durations of time utilizing quite a lot of proxies and digital non-public networks (VPNs).
The restricted variety of customers who’ve managed to get on-line, whether or not through the use of a mix of circumvention instruments or leaving the nation’s borders, proceed to add horrifying footage of killings throughout the protests.
Worldwide human rights our bodies like Amnesty Worldwide and Human Rights Watch have attested that most of the reviewed movies present state forces firing reside ammunition at protesters, together with from heavy machineguns.
The state rejects all such accounts, claiming that safety forces solely fired at “terrorists” and “rioters” who attacked authorities workplaces and burned public property.
Risk of battle looms
The forwards and backwards over certainly one of Iran’s bloodiest chapters since its 1979 revolution continues as the specter of battle looms giant over the embattled 90-million-strong nation as soon as once more.
US President Donald Trump has repeatedly threatened to intervene in Iran if it kills protesters. Washington is shifting the USS Abraham Lincoln supercarrier, together with its strike group of supporting vessels, in the direction of the Center East in a transfer that has raised fears of extra US strikes on Iran within the aftermath of the 12-day war with Israel in June.
Extra US army plane, together with fighter jets, have additionally been deployed to the area regardless of interventions from regional powers in an try to stop an escalation.
Prime Iranian authorities proceed to ship defiant messages to US President Donald Trump amid the speedy army buildup.
“He [Trump] actually says many issues,” Majid Mousavi, the brand new aerospace chief of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), instructed state tv on Saturday. “He could be sure that we are going to reply to him within the discipline of battle”.
“He can say higher issues even when he’s making an attempt to flee the desires of others who wish to impose issues on him,” stated Ali Shamkhani, a high safety official and consultant of Supreme Chief Ayatollah Ali Khamenei within the newly fashioned Supreme Defence Council.
One in all Iran’s high judicial authorities additionally shot again at Trump after the US president final week referred to as for the tip of Khamenei’s 37-year-rule within the nation.
“These acts of insolence and audacity are, in our view, tantamount to a declaration of all-out battle, and primarily based on this method, within the occasion of any aggression, US pursuits all over the world shall be uncovered to menace by supporters of the Islamic Republic of Iran,” stated Mohammad Movahedi, the hardline cleric who heads the prosecutor common’s authority.
