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UN body accuses Iran of practicing torture |
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Wednesday, 22 November 2006 |
Iran Focus
 London, Nov. 22 – A United Nations General Assembly committee accused Iran on Tuesday of continuing the practice of torture and punishments such as flogging, stoning and amputation of limbs.
The UN General Assembly’s Third Committee approved the resolution by a vote of 70 in favour to 48 opposed, with 55 abstentions.
The Third Committee expressed “serious concern” at the “continuing harassment, intimidation and persecution of human rights defenders, non-governmental organizations, political opponents, religious dissenters, political reformists, journalists, parliamentarians, students, clerics, academics, webloggers, union members and labour organizers, including through undue restrictions on the freedoms of assembly, conscience, opinion and expression, the threat and use of arbitrary arrest and prolonged detention, targeted at both individuals and their family members, the ongoing unjustified closure of newspapers and blocking of Internet sites and restrictions on the activities of unions and other non-governmental organizations, as well as the absence of many conditions necessary for free and fair elections”.
The resolution also denounced the “continuing use of torture and cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment such as flogging and amputations” in Iran and the “continuing of public executions, including multiple public executions, and, on a large scale, of other executions, in the absence of respect for internationally recognized safeguards, and the issuing of sentences of stoning; and, in particular, deplores the execution of persons who were under the age of 18 at the time their offence was committed”.
It censured the theocratic government for “violence and discrimination against women and girls in law and in practice”, and accused the hard-line Guardians Council of refusing to take steps to address systemic discrimination and arrests of and violent crackdowns on women exercising their right of assembly.
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