Iran Protests On Agenda Of G7 Foreign Ministers Summit
Foreign ministers of the Group of Seven (G7) are set to discuss Iran’s crackdown on antigovernment protesters when they open two days of talks in Germany this week.
Foreign ministers of the Group of Seven (G7) are set to discuss Iran’s crackdown on antigovernment protesters when they open two days of talks in Germany this week.
The top diplomats of the world’s major industrialized democracies — Britain, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan and the United States -- are scheduled to hold meetings in the town hall of the western German city of Munster on Thursday and Friday.
In addition to the Islamic Republic’s brutal crackdown on the ongoing protests, ignited by the death in custody of 22-year-old Mahsa Amini, they will be talking about Tehran’s supplying Russia with armed drones and other weapons for use in Ukraine.
In a press briefing Tuesday, United States State Department spokesman Ned Price faced questions as to what the US planned to do over alleged Iranian arms supplies to Russia. He said the US was pursuing “every relevant and appropriate tool in our tool kit” to curb Iran’s reported supply of military drones, including sanctioning Iranian commanders and defense companies.
The G7 foreign ministers from the Group of Seven nations will also grapple with the implications of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and China’s growing economic clout.
In mid-October, gender equality ministers G7 expressed "solidarity with the people rallying in Iran against the violations and abuses of their human rights and fundamental freedoms."
Meanwhile, the number of signatures in an online campaign aimed at the leaders of the seven industrialized countries of the world, G7, has surpassed 720 thousand. The petition calls on these countries to recall their ambassadors from Iran and expel diplomats and officials of the Islamic Republic.
While the lawyer has previously supported at least some sanctions against Tehran, Ebadi’s intervention comes not only after six weeks of protests in Iran but with the US in recent weeks showing hesitancy toward talks aimed at reviving the JCPOA (Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action). Under a restored JCPOA, Iran would gain access to funds frozen abroad and lifting of US sanctions in return for curbing its nuclear program.
Ebadi was addressing an ‘Arria’ meeting of the United Nations Security Council, an informal gathering sponsored by members of the council or other states to allow informative input from experts or non-state groups. The meeting was sponsored and introduced by US ambassador Linda Thomas-Greenfield and Albanian ambassador Ferit Hoxha to discuss weeks of protests in Iran following the September 16 death of Mahsa Amini after arrest by Tehran ‘morality police.’
Speaking virtually from London, Ebadi said the “demands for justice” by the Amini family had “so far yielded no results.” Ebadi called on “western governments and especially the United States of America to refrain from subscribing [to] any type of agreements that will help the survival of the regime, as the Islamic Republic does not spend the funds for the welfare of the people but on the contrary provides and buys more weapons, which in turn cause more killing in Iran and the region.”
Ebadi, who left Iran in 2009, said the UN should set up an investigation into “recent repressions in Iran,” citing the 2017 precedent of Myanmar, and demanded the withdrawal of ambassadors of the “governments of the free world” from Iran with their representation reduced to charge d’affaires. She called for the removal of Iran from the UN Commission on the Status of Women, and for the establishment of a “democratic and secular government.”
Also addressing the Arria meeting virtually, the US Special Rapporteur on Human Rights in Iran Javaid Rehman highlighted an “absence of accountability” in Iran, arguing that official investigations into Amini’s death had “failed to meet the minimum [standards] required.”Rehman argued Iranian family law, the age of criminal responsibility, and employment practices were all discriminatory, creating a situation of “gender apartheid.”
‘Powder-keg moment’
Rehman called for an international “independent investigative mechanism” to investigate the state’s response to six weeks of protests, in which he said at least 277 people had been killed, including 67 in Sistan-Baluchestan province.
The third speaker, Iran-born Hollywood actress Nazanin Boniadi, who was present in New York, called Amini’s death a “murder” that had been “the powder-keg moment that ignited this most recent uprising.” She said that the slogan ‘Woman, Life, Freedom’ was a “declaration of opposition to a regime…built on being anti-women, pro-martyrdom, and repressive.”
Boniadi disputed the “myth…perpetuated by global pundits…that compulsory hejab is a cultural issue that we shouldn’t interfere with.” She also rejected “another myth, that this regime is reformable,” and argued that presidential and other elections could not “make a difference.” She said that “the potential for the current protests to transform Iran from theocracy to representative government could be a geopolitical game-changer, and the single most important key to bringing about stability in the Middle East.”
US ambassador Thomas-Greenfield, sitting in front of White House Special Envoy Rob Malley, said the US would support an international investigation into human rights in Iran, and had already sanctioned Iran’s ‘morality police.’ Arria meetings, first established in 1992 by Venezuelan Ambassador Diego Arria, have sometimes led to UN Security Council resolutions.
