Irony At Its BEST: Guess Which Country Is Chairing U.N. Human Rights Council?

This development comes just a month after Hamas, an organization backed by Iran, committed some of the most heinous crimes against Israeli civilians in recent history.

The watchdog group, UN Watch, reported that Iran was awarded the rotating chairmanship of the UN human rights forum in May. The theme for the 2023 forum is the utilization of technology to advance human rights. Ironically, just two days before Iran was granted the chairmanship, the country's archaic theocracy executed two men for discussing the deficiencies in Islam's human rights on social media.

November 03, 2023

In six months, Iran will take up the promised chairmanship, following the horrific acts of its terrorist proxy, Hamas, which included the rape, torture, murder, and kidnapping of over 1,400 Israeli civilians.

UN Watch has gathered 90,000 signatures on a petition to overturn Iran's chairmanship, with a last-ditch effort to garner more signatures featuring a video of Executive Director Hillel Neuer questioning the UN's rationale for appointing a regime known for its brutal treatment of women demanding their rights.

Iran's ascension to chair a human rights forum is ill-timed, considering the recent killing of a young woman for allegedly violating its hijab law. The victim, 16-year-old Armita Geravand, was reportedly assaulted and kidnapped by the "morality police" after boarding a train on October 1. Geravand's family was forced to tell state media that their daughter collapsed randomly and hit her head.

Footage of the incident was deliberately obscured by bystanders and suppressed by the Iranian government. However, a clip that made it to the outside world showed Geravand boarding the train without a hijab. Independent journalists reported that Geravand was confronted by the "morality police" on the train, and one of them pushed her hard enough to hit her head against a metal object. Geravand fell into a coma from the head trauma and never regained consciousness. Her death was reported by Iranian state media on Saturday.

The death of Mahsa Amini in 2022, also for a similar hijab "offense," sparked some of the largest protests against the brutal Iranian regime. The regime responded with a violent crackdown that should disqualify Tehran from holding a seat on any human rights council.

In December 2022, Iran was expelled from the U.N. Commission on the Status of Women (UNCSW) following Amini's murder. The regime in Tehran has neither accepted responsibility for Amini's death nor implemented any human rights reforms since then. Instead, it has imposed even more oppressive hijab laws and brutal enforcement.

Neuer, on Monday, called on all democracies at the UN to stop legitimizing murderous regimes and to start holding the perpetrators accountable. He criticized the appointments, stating that they send the wrong message at the wrong time, enabling Iran to strut on the international stage as a respected and influential actor, even as it continues to commit human rights abuses.

Neuer also highlighted that Iranian state media has been celebrating its chairmanship of the U.N. forum as a historic victory in an attempt to demoralize dissidents.

The U.S. ambassador to the U.N. Human Rights Council (UNHRC), Michele Taylor, expressed her dismay in May that "a country with such a deplorable human rights record" would be given the chairmanship of a forum. She argued that the appointment lends unwarranted legitimacy to the Iranian regime and undermines the credibility of UNHRC and its Social Forum.

On October 19, the European Union posthumously awarded the Sakharov Prize for Freedom of Thought, its highest human rights honor, to Mahsa Amini and the "Woman, Life, Freedom" movement her death inspired.

Yet, on Thursday, the regime that killed her and used murderous violence to crush the Woman, Life, Freedom movement is scheduled to assume the chairmanship of a United Nations panel on human rights.