UN Rights Council President Supports Fact-Finding Mission On Iran
The UN Human Rights Council president says he believes that the newly established fact-finding mission on Iran can make a difference.
The UN Human Rights Council president says he believes that the newly established fact-finding mission on Iran can make a difference.
In an interview with CNN International, Federico Villegas of Argentina said Friday that the newly created fact-finding mission to investigate alleged human rights violations in Iran “can make a difference,” and expressed hope that Iran will cooperate.
During the special session on Iran Thursday, the President of the Human Rights Council had noted that it is a multilateral and democratic body where differences of opinion are legitimate, raising hope that the Islamic Republic would cooperate to carry out the mission.
“I think that at one moment or another they will realize that the Iranians across the world are asking for change and their demands for change are directly linked to human rights because they would like to see a different situation in their country in relation to human rights,” Villegas told CNN’s anchor Becky Anderson.
He went on to say that the UN Human Rights Council for the first time established a special team to run an independent investigation into the violations that are being committed on a daily basis in Iran.
The UN Human Rights Council voted Thursday to launch an independent investigation into Iran's deadly repression of protests, that has killed over 450 civilians.
The motion passed with 25 votes in favor, six opposed and 16 countries abstaining amid cheers of activists amid an intensifying crackdown in Kurdish areas of western Iran over recent days.
In a letter issued on Friday, a group of about 140 ophthalmologists said that a large number of protesters have been taken to medical centers hit by rubber bullets and metal pellets as well as paintball bullets in their eyes, leading to the loss of eyesight in one or both eyes.
Last week, another group of 230 ophthalmologists issued a similar letter warning about the loss of eyesight among protesters.
The Islamic Republic, which had been previously condemned for blinding protesters in the streets and has intensified the use of guns, including military weapons against unarmed protesters.
In an article on November 19, The New York Times cited ophthalmologists of three hospitals in the capital Tehran – namely Farabi, Rasoul Akram and Labbafinezhad -- and several doctors in Kordestan province, as saying that about 580 protesters suffered serious eye injuries during the regime’s crackdown.
The full scope of mass eye injuries has been largely concealed due to the internet blackout, but medical evidence given to The Times by doctors, protesters, family members of patients and rights groups revealed that ophthalmology wards in hospitals have been overwhelmed with eye injury victims. The range of injuries included mutilated retinas, severed optic nerves and punctured irises.
The regime’s security forces have been extensively using cartridges of shotshell loaded with numerous small balls or birdshots, or medium-sized buckshots as well as single large solid projectiles known as a slug to quash the protests across the country.
In an investigative report published on Friday, FRANCE 24 found evidence that shotgun cartridges manufactured by French-Italian manufacturer Cheddite have been widely used against Iranian protesters, an apparent violation of EU sanctions that went into place in 2012.
The team analyzed more than 100 photos and videos showing teargas canisters, rifle bullets, paintball projectiles and cartridges from shotguns. While most of the shotgun shells photographed were made in Iran, 13 shells recovered from eight different Iranian cities bore Cheddite logos from factories in Italy and France. The company claims to be the world’s largest maker of empty shotgun cartridges and firing caps, producing more than a billion empty cartridges every year.
Nicholas Marsh, a senior researcher at the Peace Research Institute Oslo (PRIO), told FRANCE 24 about Iran that "The regulation currently in force states that it is not allowed to sell shotguns of any type, ammunition designed for them and associated components. The restriction on firearms was added in an amendment on 24 March 2012. Since then, shotguns and their ammunition have been covered by the EU sanctions, and the sanctions are still in effect." The agency also quoted Amnesty International's researcher on arms control and human rights, Patrick Wilcken, as saying that “Cheddite has a responsibility to respect human rights; it should carry out human rights due diligence on its entire value chain and should cease supplies if there is a risk of goods being diverted into hands of serial human rights violators…”
Citing Interfax Friday, Iran’s semi-official news agency ISNA reported that Azerbaijan’s President Iham Aliyev cancelled a December 7 meeting in Brussels with Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan aimed at easing tensions after September-October clashes killed around 200 Armenian and 80 Azerbaijani soldiers.
Earlier Friday, at a Baku conference ‘Along the Middle Corridor,’ Aliyev launched a broadside against Iran, his toughest so far since relations soured over Iran’s role in the 2020 Azerbaijan-Armenia war, when adjacent Iranian military exercises followed the Azerbaijanis capturing areas around the disputed Nagorno-Karabagh enclave and along the Iran border.
Stepping Friday on ground he previously avoided, Aliyev said his government would do “our best to preserve our secular lifestyle…as well as Azerbaijanis living in Iran,” whom he called “part of our people.” The president said that in Azerbaijan 340 schools taught in Russian and ten in Georgian, while none in Iran taught in Azeri. Around a quarter of Iran’s population is Azari, with analysts and activists disagreeing over the closeness of their cultural-linguistic links to their neighbors to the north.
“We worked with three presidents of Iran, [Mohammad] Khatami, [Mahmoud] Ahmadinejad, and [Hassan] Rouhani,” Aliyev said. “For all these years there was no situation similar to the current one. Never has Iran had two military exercises near our borders within a few months. There have never been such hateful and threatening statements against Azerbaijan.”
‘Hateful statements’ referred to warnings from President Ebrahim Raisi and other leaders against any border changes or threats to Iran’s transit route to Armenia, which is vulnerable since 2020 changes. Iran carried out more military drills along the border October, when Foreign Minister Hossein Amir-Abdollahian also visited Yerevan.
But Tehran-Baku tensions have simmered since the 2020 war, when Iran moderated its past support for mainly Christian Armenia due partly to domestic pressures from both ethnic Azeri and Shia clerics supporting fellow Muslims.
Brussels mediation meeting cancelled?
Armenia’s frustration at what they feel is a lack of support from Russia – which has been engrossed in the Ukraine war – lay behind the news early Friday that Pashinyan had involved French President Emmanuel Macron as a possible mediator to build on the current ceasefire.
This prompted Aliyev’s announcement refusing a French role – and Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov to immediately offer Moscow’s support as a broker.
Analysts generally see the Azerbaijan-Armenia balance tilting in Baku’s favor since 2020. This has come with Aliyev making statements seen as provocative in Tehran. On November 11, at a summit of Turkic states of central Asia, the president said the “geographical borders of the Turkic world are wider than the Turkic states.” In Baku, state media has recently referred to north-western Iran, where most Iranian Azari live, as ‘south Azerbaijan.’
‘Persian fascist mullah regime’
Mahmudali Chehregani, Washington-based leader of the South Azerbaijan National Awakening Movement, appeared on Azerbaijani state television November 4 to promise the end of the “Persian fascist mullah regime.” Once considered persona not grata in Baku, Chehregani has lately criticized relations between Tehran and Yerevan, the “enemy of Azerbaijanis,” and said that an Armenian consulate due in Tabriz would be “razed to the ground.”
Iran’s options are limited. In mid-November, it summoned ambassador Ali Alizadeh over “unfriendly statements” by leading Baku officials, referring for example to Aliyev November 8 warning Iran, indirectly, against further military exercises.
While Iran’s main concern is fragile land corridor to Armenia – and fears a move to connect Turkey with mainland Azerbaijan and on to central Asia – it may also see Aliyev as exploiting protests in Iran. Such edginess might explain an Iranian suggestion of Azerbaijani involvement in the October 26 attack in Shiraz claimed by the Islamic State group (Isis-Daesh).
Raisi is unlikely, as yet, to take the advice from some commentators, including Shargh newspaper November 12, to downgrade relations with Baku or introduce trade sanctions. But Iran’s recent targeting of Iranian Kurdish groups in northern Iraq may be in part a message to Baku.
Ceyhun Sadlinski at a conference organized by Azerbaijan’s Security Council, where he is first deputy chairman, said Thursday Iran’s “special services are actively carrying out intelligence and subversive activities” against Baku, the official Azerbaijani Press Agency reported. “Drastic measures” were being taken in response, Sadlinski said.