18 March 2024- Justice for Iran and 6Rang welcome the Special Rapporteur’s report and his acknowledgment of the situation of women in Iran as gender apartheid. We also urge the Human Rights Council to extend the mandate.
Both the Special Rapporteur and Fact Finding Mission have established that the protest crackdown amounted to crimes against humanity: it is now crucial for UN Member States to leverage and develop mechanisms to guarantee justice for victims, including women and LGBT+ protestors.
We use this opportunity to emphasize the worsening plight of minorities, notably ethnic groups and LGBT+ individuals. These communities are subjected to discriminatory laws and punitive measures, merely due to their identities. They face smear campaigns and incitement to hatred by highest ranking officials, legitimizing systematic discrimination and abuses against them. The use of death penalty against them is justified by State propaganda that frequently brands opposition ethnic voices as ‘separatist’ or ‘terrorist’, while LGBT+ individuals are labelled as threat to Islamic family values, accused of colluding with Western countries to overthrow the government.
We call upon the UN Member States, and UN human rights mechanisms to increase political attention to these issues and prioritise these marginalised groups in all their efforts to stop discrimination and violence against minorities, as a key step to improve the wider situation of human rights in Iran.
