Shutterstock
Iran’s Ambassador and Permanent Representative to the United Nations, Ali Bahreini, has been invited to chair the UN Human Rights Council’s Social Forum, which will focus on technology and promotion of human rights.
Vahid Beheshti, a British-Iranian activist who has been on hunger strike and campaigning for over two months outside the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office calling for the UK Government to proscribe Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), joined widespread condemnation of the appointment. Mr Beheshti said: “This is the same country that over recent days has been executing roughly one person every six hours, and was condemned just yesterday by the UN Human Rights Council for its executions”.
Over 200 Iranians have been put to death since the start of 2023, with 582 executed in 2022 – the highest number of executions since 2015. Iran is second only to China in the number of executions carried out annually.
On Monday, Iran executed Yousef Mehrad and Sadrollah Fazeli-Zare for “insulting the Prophet of Islam”, according to the country’s judiciary. They were arrested in 2020 and held in solitary confinement, sentenced to death in 2021.
In a Written Parliamentary Question submitted yesterday, CFI Officer Nicola Richards MP raised concerns over the appointment, asking the Foreign Secretary what discussions he has had with UN representatives and other countries on the issue.
The UK has designated more than 70 Iranian officials and entities for human rights violations since October 2022, including the IRGC, the Iranian Prosecutor General and the Morality Police.
Foreign Secretary James Cleverly underlined last month that “the Iranian regime are responsible for the brutal repression of the Iranian people and for exporting bloodshed around the world” and that “the UK and our international partners… will not overlook the regime’s brutal oppression”.
