Iran’s President Raisi To Attend UN General Assembly In September
Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi is slated to travel to New York for the 77th session of the UN General Assembly in September, his first since he did not attend the event last year.
Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi is slated to travel to New York for the 77th session of the UN General Assembly in September, his first since he did not attend the event last year.
In his weekly press conference on Tuesday, Iranian government spokesman Ali Bahadori Jahromi said that preliminary plans have been made for Raisi’s participation in the United Nations annual gathering.
The UNGA 77 is scheduled to open on September 13 in New York, and the first day of the high-level General Debate will be on 20 September. On the agenda of this year’s event are a meeting to mark the commemoration of the 30th anniversary of the adoption of the Declaration on the Rights of Persons Belonging to National or Ethnic, Religious and Linguistic Minorities on September 21 and a plenary meeting to commemorate the International Day for the Total Elimination of Nuclear Weapons on September 26.
Raisi – who is on the US and European sanctions list -- did not attend the high-level summit in the previous year, and only delivered a video speech.
He is probably among the most controversial among the Islamic Republic presidents to attend the General Assembly as he was a member of a "death committee" that issued orders to kill political prisoners in 1988. A witness in the Swedish trial of Hamid Noury (Nouri), an ex-judicial official and jailor, over alleged involvement in Iran’s 1988 prison executions named Raisi as one of the officials directly involved in the massacre.
Earlier in the year, prominent former UN officials called for a UN investigation into the 1988 "massacre" of political prisoners in Iran, including Raisi’s role, at that time.
The state-run television (IRIB) on Sundayaired the so-called ‘confessions’ of Sepideh Rashno, a 28-year-old artist, writer and editor, who was arrested on July 16, after a video of her quarrel with a woman enforcing hijab rules – identified as Rayeheh Rabi’i -- went viral.
In the video Rabi’i, who was fully covered by a long, black ‘chador’ – which is typical of the supporters of the Islamic Republic – is seen shouting at Rashno who had unveiled in a city bus. The quarrel became so frantic that other passengers intervened and kicked the hijab enforcer out of the bus.
Iran’s state media and media outlets affiliated with the Revolutionary Guards (IRGC) have been publishing videos of forced confessions from women who are arrested over their participation in an ongoing anti-hijab campaign.
In the forced confession under detention shown by the IRIB Sunday, Rashno says she regrets her confrontation with the hijab enforcer and posting her video on social media and that she “begged” US-based anti-hijab activist Masih Alinejad to remove the video of the encounter from social media.
Rashno has reportedly been in detention at the IRGC ward of Tehran’s Evin Prison since her arrest without any contact with her family or access to a lawyer.
In a tweet Sunday, Alinejad alleged that Rashno was tortured and forced to denounce herself and speak against her. “She’s a hero fighting for freedom for all women, for our dignity. I call on the international community to support Sepideh Reshnou,” Alinejad wrote.
While all these were taking place, a man was arrested outside Alinejad's home in Brooklyn, NY with a loaded AK-47 assault rifle, after being seen loitering for two days and trying to get into her home.
Social media users have pointed out that in the video aired Sunday Rashnou appears to be wearing a heavy layer of makeup to cover up bruises on her face, particularly above her right eye, and looks very tired and worn out resulting from possible physical and psychological torture.
Armin Soleimani, journalist, in a tweet Sunday said by torturing Rashno and airing her ‘confession’ on the state television, authorities aimed at intimidating anti-hijab activists and protesters.
Iran’s Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei claimed last week that the anti-hijab movement is nothing but a Western plot against the Islamic Republic, adding that in his view the Islamic Republic does not need to defend itself about issues related to women including the hijab but should rather be aggressive and attack the West for turning women into a “commodity”.
Rights activists allege that the Islamic Republic systematically uses torture and broadcasts torture-tainted ‘confessions’ of activists, politicians, and even ordinary criminals against themselves and others on state television to intimidate their peers and the public.
“Such confessions may have worked in the early days of the revolution but fortunately has lost its [desired] impact now due to being repeatedly used for all sorts of things and have even made the incompetent security organs the butt of jokes,” Maziar (Mazyar) Ebrahimi, a businessman who was tortured to ‘confess’ that he had been spying for Israel and was involved in the assassination of Iranian nuclear scientists in 2012 tweeted about the airing of Rashno’s confessions.
On July 12, following a call by women’s rights activists for civil disobedience with the hashtag of ‘No2Hijab’ social media exploded with dozens of videos and photos of women unveiling in public.
Iran’s government which is now fully controlled by hardliners has adopted a harsher than usual approach in enforcing hijab in the streets and government affiliated institutions, amid economic crisis and hardship for tens of millions. Government and military officials have warned the population against disobeying hijab rules and the morality police hijab enforcement patrols have detained many women, sometimes violently, on the streets.
