Official says country is in ‘fully fledged human rights crisis’ as fact-finding mission launched
The UN’s human rights council has voted overwhelmingly to set up a fact-finding investigation into human rights abuses in Iran, where an estimated 300 people have been killed and 14,000 arrested since protests began 10 weeks ago.
At a special session convened by Germany in Geneva the HRC voted by 25 to six to set up the inquiry, with 15 abstaining. The vote is regarded as a significant victory for human rights defenders, since a mechanism now exists to file evidence of abuses by the state, making the possibility of prosecutions in international courts more likely.
“Iranian officials will not be able to perpetrate this violent crackdown anonymously,” the US ambassador to the HRC, Michele Taylor, said after the vote. “The international community is watching.”
Iran has been rocked by more than two months of protests sparked by the death of Mahsa Amini, a 22-year-old Kurdish woman arrested by the morality police for supposedly wearing her hijab inappropriately. The Iranian authorities have said their inquiry showed she died from natural causes due to a pre-existing condition. Her family allege she was beaten.
Iranian authorities have grown increasingly heavy-handed in their response to the demonstrations as they have spread across the country and swelled into a broad movement against the theocracy that has ruled Iran since 1979.
Before the vote the UN high commissioner for human...
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