Iran slams statement on women access to online platforms

The rights council issued a statement on Tuesday in reaction to a joint statement that was released last Thursday by the governments of the United States, Australia, Canada, Chile, Iceland, New Zealand, the Republic of Korea, Sweden, and the United Kingdom.

“The political and instrumental approach of Western countries to human rights, including rights of women and girls, which only aims to exert pressure on independent countries, is doomed to failure,” the council said.

It is a bitter irony that the US foreign secretary and some of his Western counterparts accuse Iran of violating the rights of women and girls in a meddlesome joint statement and with an insolent tone while claiming to defend and support women’s rights, it added, Press TV reported.

According to the statement, some countries look at women and their rights only as a means to achieve their own political interests and preferences and impose their own incorrect perception of women and women’s rights on other nations and cultures.

These states do not hesitate to victimize women and girls and violate all their rights, it said.

It emphasized that various reports and research conducted by Western institutions have shown that the rights of women and girls are violated in Western states, particularly the US, more than in other parts of the world.

The Iranian body said the degradation of women’s dignity and identity and turning them into means of exploitation, extreme violence and obvious discrimination against women and girls, the very high number of female prisoners, the forced separation of refugee mothers from their children as well as a discriminatory view and torture of black, colored and migrant women and girls are only among examples of arrogant states’ approaches to the issue.

It is better for Western countries to adopt new strategies in their states to observe the rights of women and girls if they are really concerned about the issue, it added.

In their joint statement, the US and eight other countries claimed that the Iranian women and girls are facing “extreme violence” ever since riots broke out in the wake of the tragic death of 22-year-old woman Mahsa Amini in mid-September.

It accused Iranian authorities of continuing and even escalating their brutal suppression of protestors, including through their use of technology-facilitated gender-based violence, since the outbreak of the riots in the country, and condemned what it called a violent crackdown on protestors, including on digital platforms and through Internet restrictions.

The Iranian rights body said the US and Western states have proved that they do not care about the rights of women and girls in Iran at all as they have fully supported terror attacks against thousands of Iranian women, men, and children, as well as their killing, particularly during Iraq’s war against Iran in 1980s, when they imposed oppressive and illegal sanctions with adverse consequences on health and welfare and prevented the presence of successful Iranian women and girls in global sports and scientific fields.

“Behind their hypocritical statements and remarks, they only pursue inhumane and anti-human rights political interests and goals,” it added.

It also called on Western states to abandon unilateral and oppressive sanctions against women, girls and children instead of doing a political show.