The resolution was approved by the General Assembly’s human rights committee with a vote of 85 in favor, 35 against and 63 countries abstaining.
It urged Iran to implement pledges made by President Hassan Rouhani to eliminate discrimination against women and ethnic minorities, as well as to increase freedom of expression in Iran.
It also called on Iran to “abolish, in law and in practice, public executions,” and urged the regime “to ensure, in law and in practice, that no one is subjected to torture or other cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment, which may include violence, and punishments that are grossly disproportionate to the nature of the offense.”
The resolution also demanded that Iran “end widespread and serious restrictions, in law and in practice, on the right to freedom of expression, opinion, association and peaceful assembly, both online and offline, including by ending the harassment, intimidation and persecution of political opponents, human rights defenders, women’s and minority rights activists”.
Iran’s Foreign Ministry immediately trashed the resolution, calling its claims “baseless”.
Maryam Rajavi, head of the National Council of Resistance of Iran (NCRI), welcomed the resolution as a necessary step in bringing justice to Iran’s theocratic government.
“Inaction vis-à-vis a regime that has 120,000 political executions on its record –including the massacre of 30,000 political prisoners in 1988– is a flagrant violation of the values and principles the United Nations Organization has been founded on”, she added
Noting the Third Committee resolution’s call on the Iranian regime “to launch a comprehensive accountability process in response to all cases of serious human rights violations, including those involving the Iranian judiciary and security agencies, and to end impunity for such violations,” Rajavi said, “Since the Iranian regime’s leaders, high ranking officials and incumbent judiciary officials are the main masterminds and perpetrators of human rights violations in Iran, the United Nations needs to launch an independent investigation committee to probe the regime’s anti-human crimes and bring justice to those who ordered and carried out such crimes, particularly in the case of the 1988 massacre which is a true example of crime against humanity.”
