January 28, 2008 | 10:30 pm

U.N. finally holds Iran accountable for human rights abuses

Posted by Karmel Melamed

Follow JewishJournal.com on

For nearly six decades the United Nations General Assembly has been notorious for passing ridiculously anti-Israel resolutions condemning supposed human rights violations by Israel. This is accomplished with the help of a large group of Arab and Islamic member countries such as Iran. Yet the U.N. rarely if ever condemns Islamic countries such as Saudi Arabia and Iran for human rights violations. So when the U.N. General Assembly last November approved a resolution condemning Iran for it’s human rights violations and mistreatment of religious minorities including Jews, this international body finally acknowledged the brutality of Tehran’s regime.

Also known as U.N.G.A. A/c.3/62/L.43, the resolution received the support of 72 members of the 192-member General Assembly, with 50 voting against it and 55 abstaining. The Canadian-led resolution, which was co-sponsored by most Western member states, expressed concern about violations of the rights of minorities, non-Shiite worshippers, and the restrictions on freedoms under Iran’s radical fundamentalist Islamic regime. The resolution was a part of a package of four resolutions on the human-rights violations in Burma, North Korea, and Belarus. More importantly, this resolution represented a stark contradiction to the Geneva-based Human Rights Council, which in its first year of existence focused exclusively on violations committed by Israel.

While this resolution on human rights violations in Iran is not binding, it is an excellent symbolic move by the U.N. to hold the Islamic fundamentalist leaders in Iran accountable for their reign of terror. Finally this international body has acknowledged through this resolution the discrimination and human rights violations Jews, Christians and people of the Bahai faith encounter every in Iran. While Christians, Jews and Zoroastrians are given a few rights as minorities by Iran’s Islamic constitution, folks of the Bahai faith receive none. In fact if members of the regime find a person who is Bahai, he or she is immediately imprisoned, tortured and then executed. While other minorities may be punished if they “step out of line”, there is zero tolerance for Bahais who are promptly executed. This is because the regime in Iran sees the Bahai faith that requires proselytizing as a direct threat to the future viability of Islam. Likewise floggings, forced amputations as punishment, public executions by hanging, and executions by stoning advocated by Iran’s Islamic laws have also been condemned through this resolution. Surprisingly the international community finally chastised Iran’s regime for its execution of children under the age of 18 and carrying out other forms of cruel torture to the “enemies of the state”.

Now you may wonder why I am now writing about this U.N. resolution despite the fact that it was passed nearly three months ago. Well to be honest, it was not extensively covered by the mainstream media and a good size of the U.N. members amazingly opposed the resolution to hold Iran accountable for these crimes! Iran’s government officials at the U.N. and in the West have done a great job at killing all media exposure this story may have received by ranting and raving about their nuclear capabilities all these months. I only learned about this resolution when a reader of this blog email it to me last week. It shocks me how leaders in Europe and the West who are always concerned with “human rights” for the Palestinians and Africans turn a blind eye to even worse violations carried out at the hands of Iran’s current government! When the regime in Tehran realizes, much like the Nazis, that they can carry out these crimes against humanity without any repercussions then they will not stop.

Below are just a few very REAL photos I obtained from news websites operated by Iran’s state-run media outlets showing how Muslim citizens of Iran who are supposed “enemies” of the regime are punished and later executed. While these photos may be graphic for some individuals, they are evidence to the pure evil behind Iran’s government. More importantly, if this is how non-Jews are treated in Iran, it makes me wonder what horrible fate may befall Iran’s Jews if they don’t remain in line with the regime’s wishes!

Majid Kavousifar, a 28-year-old Iranian Muslim student opposed to the regime who was hung in public from a crane in Tehran on August 2, 2007 for alleged “crimes” against Iran’s regime. The executioner shouts “Allah Akbar” as the stool is yank from underneath his feet.

The Iranian government executed the above gay men in November 2005 in the province of Kermanshah in western Iran. The Muslim young man above on the left identified as Shahab Darvishi had been hanged in the city for corruption, assault and “lavat” the Persian word for sodomy. The two teenagers shown here were executed after a religious court found them guilty of homosexuality on July 19, 2005 in the city of Mashhad. Under the Iranian penal code, girls as young as nine and boys as young as 15 can be hanged.

Unknown Iranian woman buried up to her chest and then stoned to death. Iran’s Penal Code prescribes execution by stoning and dictates that the stones are to be large enough to cause pain, but not so large as to kill the victim immediately. Article 102 of the Iranian Penal Code states that men should be buried up to their waist and women up to their chest for the purpose of execution by stoning. Women in Iran are often executed by stoning for the crime of adultery, drug use, or other crimes the regime deems worthy of such execution.

Unknown Iranian woman hung in public by a crane for alleged crimes against the regime.