AMAZING NEWS!!!

At its 35th special session, the UN Human Rights Council voted to create a new fact-finding mission to investigate human rights violations in the Islamic Republic of Iran related to the protests that began on 16 September 2022.

Proof that our activism has worked. Let’s keep the pressure on and hold the Islamic Republic accountable for crimes against humanity. 

Michael Fakhri, the UN's Special Rapporteur on the Right to Food, calls out the nations of the world at the UN Human Rights Council, even those allegedly supporting Palestine, for doing nothing to stop the starvation of Gaza.

Also this.

Hopefully something comes from this as well.

Feel free to reblog.

UN Human Rights Council on the investigation of human rights in Ukraine.

Legislation seeking to disband the United Nations Human Rights Council’s Commission of Inquiry investigating Israel has gained support in recent weeks, amassing 34 cosponsors since its introduction this spring.

The COI Elimination Act was introduced by Rep. Greg Steube (R-FL) in late March. It would designate that it is U.S. policy to “seek the abolition” of the COI and “combat systemic anti-Israel bias at the United Nations Human Rights Council and other international fora.”

The legislation would also trim the U.S.’s annual contributions to the U.N., following a model used in existing U.S. law primarily to oppose other U.N. bodies and projects accused of attacking Israel. The COI was established following the May 2021 conflict between Israel and terrorist groups in Gaza, and is an open-ended inquiry into the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

When the bill was first introduced, it had only two co-sponsors — Reps. Vicente Gonzalez (D-TX) and Joe Wilson (R-SC) — but has picked up support over the past month, with 27 Republican co-sponsors and seven Democrats now having signed on.

Current Democratic co-sponsors include pro-Israel stalwarts, Reps. Henry Cuellar (D-TX), Dean Phillips (D-MN), Elaine Luria (D-VA), Brad Sherman (D-CA), Josh Gottheimer (D-NJ) and Ritchie Torres (D-NY).

“The ongoing anti-Israel commission formed by the U.N’s discredited Human Rights Council directly obstructs peace in the Middle East and intentionally targets the only democracy in the region,” Steube said in a statement when he first introduced the legislation. “Our U.S. tax dollars have no place funding an anti-Israel commission.”

Steube also claimed that his legislation “will abolish the commission” — something the U.S. does not have the ability to do unilaterally.

The legislation is also a top priority for AIPAC. As part of its first in-person National Council meeting in Washington, D.C., since the start of the pandemic, AIPAC-affiliated activists are on Capitol Hill this week to lobby more than 300 congressional offices on several measures, including the COI Elimination Act, an individual familiar with the matter told JI.

U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Linda Thomas-Greenfield told a House Appropriations Subcommittee earlier this month that the U.S. likely would not have been able to block the establishment of the COI, which is housed in the Human Rights Council, even if it had been a member of the council at the time. (The Trump administration withdrew the U.S. from the Human Rights Council in 2018; the Biden administration rejoined the U.N. body in October 2021.)

Thomas-Greenfield added that the U.S. worked to cut the investigation’s budget by 25%.

AIPAC’s meeting this week also included speeches from House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer (D-MD); House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-CA); Sens. Jacky Rosen (D-NV) and Todd Young (R-IN); Reps. Mario Diaz-Balart (R-FL), Haley Stevens (D-MI) and Michael McCaul (R-TX); National Security Council Middle East Coordinator Brett McGurk; Israeli Ambassador to the U.S. Michael Herzog and United Arab Emirates Ambassador to the U.S. Yousef Al Otaiba.

In addition to the COI bill, AIPAC activists will urge lawmakers to support security assistance to Israel and the Stop Iranian Drones Act.

Removing Russia from UN human rights council but leaving it in security council is one of the dumbest decision that organization has ever made…

The individual tasked by the United Nations Human Rights Council with probing alleged Israeli violations against the Palestinians had previously said that the “Jewish lobby” controls the United States and compared Israelis to Nazis, The Times of Israelreported on Wednesday.

Francesca Albanese, the UNHRC’s Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in the Palestinian Territory occupied since 1967, made the comment in 2014 during the 50-day conflict between Israel and the Hamas terrorist group.

“America and Europe, one of them subjugated by the Jewish lobby, and the other by the sense of guilt about the Holocaust, remain on the sidelines and continue to condemn the oppressed—the Palestinians—who defend themselves with the only means they have (deranged missiles), instead of making Israel face its international law responsibilities,” Albanese wrote on Facebook at the time.

TOI also found that Albanese had sympathized with terror organizations, dismissed Israel’s security concerns and accused the Jewish state of potential war crimes.

Did China try to suppress the UN report on Xinjiang?, September 1, 2022

After waiting for almost a year, the United Nations Human Rights Office released the Xinjiang report on Wednesday, suggesting that China's large-scale internment and treatment of Uyghurs and other ethnic minorities in western China may amount to "crimes against humanity." Human rights organizations have weighed in on the significance of this report, saying the findings expose the extent of harm that China has done to more than one million ethnic minorities in the Xinjiang region. Others say the final results show why Beijing tried so hard to prevent the report from being released. Deutsche Welle

Further reading:

AFP, via HKFP: UN report on rights in Xinjiang finds China may have committed crimes against humanity, August 31, 2022

BBC: Uyghurs: China may have committed crimes against humanity in Xinjiang - UN, September 1, 2022

2087th Meeting, 79th Session, Committee Against Torture (CAT).

Consideration of Azerbaijan - The Committee Against Torture (CAT) and Other Cruel Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment is the body of 10 independent experts that monitors implementation of the Convention against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment by its States parties. The Committee Against Torture works to hold States accountable for human rights violations, systematically investigating reports of torture in order to stop and prevent this crime.

CAT 79 Session (15 Apr 2024 - 10 May 2024)

Watch the Consideration of Azerbaijan - 2087th Meeting, 79th Session, Committee Against Torture (CAT)

It has been reported that on Firday, Milad Ashrafi Atbatan and Manouchehr Shahbandi Bojandi, were executed on charges of “intelligence cooperation with Israel” in Rajavi prison in Karaj, Iran. 

Their death sentence was issued in June and was recently approved by the Supreme Court of the country.

Cooperation with “enemies of state” is a common charge used by the Islamic Republic against political dissidents. Torture is used to force confessions. 

There are 2 other individuals who have also been sentenced to death and the courts have upheld the death penalty for them.  

3066th Meeting, 112th Session, Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination (CERD).

Consideration of Moldova - Watch the 3066th Meeting, 112th Session, Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination (CERD).

‘Faith literacy’ must combat religion-based hate.

States must record such incidents and urgently step up their efforts to combat intolerance against people based on religion or belief using the many available tools at their disposal, including the OHCHR guide to developing anti-discrimination legislation.

“Faith literacy – in other words, knowledge and understanding about the values of each religion and belief – is also crucial,” Mr. Türk said, urging States to include it as part of comprehensive training initiatives on combating religious hatred for law enforcement officers and the judiciary, faith-based actors, teachers and media professionals.

In Geneva, Volker Türk, UN High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR), said all forms of religious hatred and intolerance are unacceptable.

“The message today is perhaps more urgent than ever: we are all well past the hour to restore peace, tolerance and respect,” he said. “We know that fear breeds hate, ignorance and distrust of the other.”

“Islamophobia has stolen lives”, dehumanising entire communities and sparking “torrents of hate speech, magnified by social media”, he said, citing multiple reports on “huge spikes” in Islamophobic incidents amid the current conflict in the Middle East, with a nearly 600 per cent increase in some countries in North America and Europe.

By: AP News

Published: Nov 11, 2022

GENEVA (AP) — The U.N.’s top human rights body is poised to hold a special session on Iran in the wake of the government’s deadly crackdowns on protesters, threats against journalists and other alleged human rights violations in the Islamic republic. The Human Rights Council will hold the session in the week of Nov. 21 “if possible on Nov. 24,” following a diplomatic request by Germany and Iceland. Germany sent a letter to the council offices Friday announcing the call for a special session “to address the deteriorating human rights situation in the Islamic Republic of Iran, especially with respect to women and children.” At least one-third of the council’s 47 member states need to support such a request and the move by Germany suggests it has lined up enough backing. The protests in Iran, sparked by the Sept. 16 death of a 22-year-old woman after her detention by the country’s morality police, have grown into one of the largest sustained challenges to the nation’s theocracy since the chaotic months after its 1979 Islamic Revolution. Security forces have sought to quash dissent. After the protests erupted, the United States and European Union imposed additional sanctions on Iran for its brutal treatment of demonstrators and its decision to send hundreds of drones to Russia for use in its war in Ukraine. EU foreign ministers are expected to agree on additional sanctions Monday. At least 328 people have been killed in the Iran protests and 14,825 others arrested, according to Human Rights Activists in Iran, a monitoring group. Iran’s government for weeks has remained silent on casualty figures.