Back to Brief on Iran
The Third Committee of the United Nations General Assembly today adopted a resolution on the "serious violations of human rights" in Iran, condemning "executions," "cases of torture and cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment, including sentences of stoning and amputation," "failure to meet international standards in the administration of justice," the "sentencing to death and arrests" of and "discrimination against religious minorities."
The Third Committee also made explicit expressions of concern over "arbitrary closure of publications, widely reported cases of harassment and persecution of persons, including writers and members of the press," "continuing threats to the life of Salman Rushdie, including the increase announced in bounty," "the lack of full and equal enjoyment by women of their human rights," and "discrimination in law and practice against women." The resolution also deplores the clerical regime's prevention of a visit to Iran by the Human Rights Commission's Special Representative.
Noting that this is the 43rd such resolution by a United Nations body condemning the violations of human rights by the mullahs' regime, Mr. Massoud Rajavi, President of the National Council of Resistance of Iran, emphasized the need for referring this case to the UN Security Council for the adoption of binding decisions against the clerical regime. He said: A decisive response to two decades of executions, torture, religious discrimination, gender apartheid, export of terrorism and breach of international law by the mullahs' religious, terrorist dictatorship, tests the United Nations' loyalty to the realization of the principles of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, 50 years after its adoption.
Mr. Rajavi added: The UNHRC Special Representative's explicit remarks on the "slipping backwards" of human rights conditions in Iran, as well as the substantial articles of the present resolution…clearly show that 1.5 years after Khatami's taking office, nothing has changed in the mullahs' illegitimate regime as far as social repression and suppressive methods are concerned. All factions in this regime depend on the trampling of the most fundamental human rights of the people of Iran in order to survive, the NCR President stressed.
Iran Commander Says Gulf-Bound Ships Must Report,
Reuter, November 18
The head of Iran's Revolutionary Guards said on Wednesday ships entering the Persian Gulf must identify themselves to Iranian forces, Iranian state television reported.
It was not immediately clear if the remarks by Major-General Yahya Rahim Safavi amounted to a new demand by Iran, which often objects to the presence of United States forces in the Gulf.
Cash-Strapped Iran Facing Difficulty in Repaying Foreign Debt, Agence France Presse, November 18
The severe recession in Iran, which has been exacerbated by rock-bottom oil prices, has left both the public and private sectors struggling to pay off some 11 billion dollars in foreign debt.
"There's a cashflow crisis," said one foreign banker. "And that's official."
Bankers are seeing a sharp rise in debt defaults and foreign firms in Tehran have been deluged with requests for delays in loan repayments.
Iranian companies are said to be having difficulty obtaining hard currency from the government, which according to Western sources is struggling to service its debts to three principal creditors -- Germany, Italy and Japan.
Tehran has asked the trio for a three billion dollar loan to help meet its financial commitments.
Germany and Japan have given no firm reply to Iran's cash request, hesitant to commit funds to a country that has failed to introduce key reforms to an economy almost wholly dependent on the sale of oil.
The government has been forced to borrow money from the central bank as well as take advances on future oil sales in an effort to pay wages and finance the very development projects it intended to create new jobs.
The unhealthy state of the economy has also taken its toll on the Iranian rial, which was trading at 6,200 to the dollar in mid-October but is now at more than 7,000 as the demand for hard currency grows.
In an unusual step to scrape together money, the government is even selling exemptions from Iran's 21-month compulsory military service.
But those numbers are unlikely to make a significant impact on the stuttering economy, which is seeing a flow of money into gold and jewelry as consumers demonstrate little faith that economic reforms will take hold.