Press Release from Eye on the UN:

NEW YORK—EYEontheUN Editor Anne Bayefsky announced today that the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, Louise Arbour, attended a human rights meeting of the Non-Aligned Movement (NAM), chaired by Cuba, in Tehran. The meeting was held to redefine and relativize human rights in accordance with “cultural diversity.” The Iranian concept of cultural diversity is last month’s stoning of a man for allegedly committing adultery and the hanging of corpses (recent victims of mass executions) from cranes placed in public squares.

While Arbour sat in the front row listening to Ahmadinejad, some Iranians were being made ready to be publicly hanged—21 prisoners were executed the next day.

Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad proclaimed during the meeting that, “revolutionary Iran aims at global government and a genuine Islamic culture so as to gain a loftier position worldwide.” Iranian Foreign Minister Manuchehr Mottaki called on participants to “modify” the Universal Declaration of Human Rights because the “Islamic world” wasn’t present when it was drafted.

Arbour’s visit occurred at a time when suppression in Iran is brutal. The numbers of opponents of the regime hanged in public and being imprisoned are increasing. Despite Iran’s refusal to cooperate with many of the UN’s own human rights investigators, who have sought entry into the country for many years, Arbour told NAM participants that “The new method of considering issues related to human rights is comprehensive and not selective and the UN Human Rights Council is ready to present technical and consultation assistance to Iran.”

“High Commissioner Arbour has done a great disservice to the families of those tortured and killed by the Iranian government, to genuine human rights advocates putting their lives on the line and to the fundamental quality of human rights—its universality,” Bayefsky lamented.

For more information visit Eye on the UN

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