Look who's talking

So Canada has announced that it will once again introduce a resolution on the human situation in the Islamic Republic of Iran at the UN General Assembly. Interestingly Iran has also announced that it will present a resolution on the human rights situation in Canada (unfortunately their statement is not posted, so for those of you who understand Persian and are reading this post today, watch here at 33 minutes into the programme).

It is a little ridiculous, but as was rightly said, the positive part of this action by Iran shows that it still believes that the UN has the right to look into the human rights situation of any given country, therefore that should apply to Iran too...

A few weeks ago, the second session of the UN Human Rights Council took place in Geneva, but this time, since the meeting was not graced by the presence of Mr. Mortazavi, nobody really talked about it... Well, it seems that there were a number of Special Rapporteurs and countries who mentioned Iran.

Philip Alston, the Special Rapporteur on Summary and Arbitrary Executions;

Yakin Erturk, the Special Rapporteur on violence against women;

Asma Jahangir, the Special Rapporteur on Freedom of Religion or Belief in a response to a question by the Netherlands;

Miloon Kothari, the Special Rapporteur on adequate housing;

and two NGOs jointly, the International Federation for Human Rights Leagues and the Bahai International Community.

No one spoke of human rights violations in Canada.

Iran Human Rights UN Canada

AOL is the absolute worst

I have been without internet connection for more than 3 weeks, thanks to AOL. Many things I would like to post on, but I cannot squat at my cousin's for hours...

:-(

Hopefully next week I will start posting again, so some of the info will be a little old -- apologies!

Another transition...

Regardless of what Hoder had to say, I thought that Gozaar (which they themselves have translated "Transition" -- but no connection with yours truly) produced an impressive line-up of contributors and interviewees for it's first edition. Moreover, they covered the human rights issues in Iran that are at the moment at the forefront, without any taboo. I understand that they needed to have a first edition that would attract interest, we now need to see how the subsequent editions will fare, and whether they will not be repetitive.

But I wish them well. Freedom House is what it is, and American human rights NGO, but let's face it, how many other publications do you know that seriously deal with human rights in Iran?

Iran Human Rights NGO Media