Ahmed Shaheed metamorphosed into a showman: Iran’s human rights chief

Young journalists club

News ID: 5380
Publish Date: 12:51 - 27 October 2014
Tehran, YJC. Head of the Iranian Judiciary’s Human Rights Staff Mohammad Javad Larijani in a live interview on national TV on Sunday evening said there are a number of problems with the way the UN rapporteur covers Iran’s human rights issues.

The job of a special rapporteur is to make reports on Iranian human rights from dawn to dusk, he said, adding "Our stance to reporting is not at all negative. But we believe there are a number of clear faults with Ahmed Shaheed which are not at all personal.”

Larijani stated "The first problem is that the appointment of this rapporteur needs some justification. For example, what is it happening in Iran htat does not happen in neighbor countreis such as Turkey, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, India, etc. Or, based on whose initiative has she been appointed? Is the US authorized to talk about human rights in other countries while it is itself much worse in this regard?”

"The second problem is that the rapporteur has to be completely unbiased, whereas since the beginning of his job, he would go from one TV to another and would take stances, so much so that he had turned into a showman for the media and was a reporter no more.”

The third problem is that he lacks a methodology, Larijani said, adding "Right now there are a large number of accusations against each and every country which you can find by doing a search on the internet. But a rapporteur has to adopt a filtering methodology. Once we ask Ahmad Shaheed what he methodology is, he says he sniffs things and understands them by himself. Our response to that is that this is no methodology that could be trusted.”

Asserting that Shaheed is a fan of terrorism, the Iranian human rights chief stated "He has a responsibility to fight terrorism. But he names as defenders of human rights those people who have committed terrorist acts.”

Asked why prosecutions such as that of Reihane Jabbari have turned global through the media while it has many counterparts in the West gone unnoticed, Larijani said "The reason for it is only retribution which is backed by a very sensible and bright verdict from the Quran; and the West is an enemy of the Quran.”

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