Iran MUST be removed from UN women’s rights body, top lawyer urges

Iran must be removed from the UN committee for women’s rights, one of the body’s top lawyers has demanded.

Tehran on Monday executed a second man in connection with protests that have shaken the regime for months, defying an international outcry over its use of capital punishment against those involved in the movement.

The protests were sparked by the September 16 death in custody of Mahsa Amini, a Kurdish-Iranian arrested by the morality police for allegedly breaching the Islamic republic’s strict dress code for women. 

Professor Javaid Rehman, the UN Special Rapporteur on Human Rights in Iran, called on the international community to apply pressure on the regime to prevent any further executions. He also demanded that Iran be removed from the body’s committee for women’s rights.

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 other people, the judiciary’s Mizan Online news agency reported. The hanging also came only four days after Mohsen Shekari (right) was executed on Thursday

Tehran on Monday executed a second man in connection with protests that have shaken the regime for months, defying an international outcry over its use of capital punishment against those involved in the movement

‘I am shocked and outraged and horrified at the two executions,’  Prof Rehman told BBC Newsnight.

‘As regards to the international community, the international community must exert more pressure on the Iranian regime to immediately stop any further executions , they must engage with them; they must pressurise them. When I talk about the international community I talk about the states, member states of the United Nations as well as the UN.

‘It is true that Iranian regime continues to execute people at same time I would say more more international pressure is going to result in them halting these executions, and what we know they are torturing people and forcing them to make confessions. 

‘And therefore I think alongside sanctions there should be more concerted international pressure from the United Nations and from individual member states.

‘In practical terms, it means that the states who have bilateral relations with Iran must talk to them, a number of states do have good relations with Iran. They should be talking to them directly. 

Professor Javaid Rehman, the UN Special Rapporteur on Human Rights in Iran, called on the international community to apply pressure on the regime to prevent any further executions

Two protesters were killed in Nasiriyah in clashes with security forces at a rally after an activist was handed a jail term, authorities said

‘And other states from the United Nations should also engage for example the permanent missions I think the UK should also exert more pressure through permanent mission pressure to convey the message of condemnation.’

Asked if Iran should remain on the UN committee for women’s rights, Prof Rehman said: ‘I am indeed calling for them to be removed because they have violated the rights of girls and women in such a blatant manner, they do not justify to be part of a body which is established in order protect rights of girls and women across the globe and therefore it is very important that Iran is removed from the commission on for status 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 other people, the judiciary’s Mizan Online news agency reported. It said he was hanged in public in the city, rather than inside prison.

He was executed just over three weeks after he was arrested in November, rights groups said.

The hanging also came only four days after Mohsen Shekari, also 23, was executed on Thursday on charges of wounding a member of the security forces in the first case of the death penalty being used against a protester.

The executions drew a sharp rebuke from Iran’s arch-foe the United States, with State Department spokesman Ned Price saying they ‘underscore how much the Iranian leadership actually fears its own people’.

Iran calls the protests ‘riots’ and says they have been encouraged by its foreign foes.

Mizan published images of Rahnavard’s execution, showing a man with his hands tied behind his back hanging from a rope attached to a crane. The execution took place before dawn and there was no sign that a significant number of people witnessed it.

Mourners accompany the casket of one of the two protesters killed earlier in clashes with security forces, in the southern Iraqi city of Nasiriy

The director of Oslo-based group Iran Human Rights, Mahmood Amiry-Moghaddam, said Rahnavard ‘was sentenced to death based on coerced confessions after a… show trial’.

‘The public execution of a young protester, 23 days after his arrest, is another serious crime committed by the Islamic republic’s leaders,’ he told AFP.

The protests represent the biggest challenge to the regime since the shah’s ouster in 1979 and have been met with a crackdown that activists say aims to instil public fear.

EU ministers meeting in Brussels on Monday stepped up sanctions on Iran over the crackdown.

The targets of the new EU sanctions included state broadcaster IRIB, its director and a TV news anchor for airing forced confessions of detainees.

Army commander-in-chief Abdolrahim Mousavi, the deputy interior minister, and regional commanders of the Revolutionary Guard Corps were also hit with asset freezes and visa bans.

Iran sought to preempt the EU move by imposing sanctions of its own against the heads of the UK’s domestic spy agency and military, along with British and German political figures.

The office of the UN rights commissioner said it was ‘appalled’ by the news of Rahnavard’s execution.

Iran’s use of the death penalty is part of a crackdown that IHR says has seen the security forces kill at least 458 people. According to the UN, at least 14,000 have been arrested.

Iran is already the world’s most prolific user of the death penalty after China, Amnesty International says. Public executions are however highly unusual in the Islamic republic, and one in July was described by IHR as the first in two years.

Prior to the two executions, Iran’s judiciary said it had issued death sentences to 11 people in connection with the protests, but campaigners say around a dozen others face charges that could see them also receive the death penalty.