Iranian scholars urge UN to investigate systemic racial discrimination in US

A group of Iranian scholars have written to the United Nations in condemnation of systematic racism against people of color in the US, calling for the formation of a committee to investigate widespread injustice and social discrimination in the country.

The demand was made in a letter to the United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres and Michelle Bachelet UN High Commissioner for Human Rights on Tuesday.

“Today, despite the progress and advancement of science and knowledge as well as access to more effective routes to a healthy, just and better quality life, we are witness to a more widespread domineering world system and deepening of the wounds and exacerbation of the pain of oppression, social discrimination and racist divisions based on the interests of a particular group against the interests of all nations across the word,” they said.

“The murder and harassment of black Americans is not an exceptional case, rather it stems from a social racist mentality according to which a small group enjoys a very high status, but the rest are not entitled to lowest degree of civil rights,” the letter added.

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The letter called on Guterres and Bachelet “to insightfully utilize the global capacity to help end social discrimination and basically the racist mentality, particularly discrimination against black Americans, and take the necessary measures for setting up a “Committee for Investigating the Widespread Social Discrimination in the United States,” especially against black Americans.”

The signatories said the “bullying approach” of the US was shaped during the formation of the country when it waged war against the native owners of America.

“In the course of the establishment of the new American system, history bears testimony to widespread genocides and deterritorialization as well as systematic social discrimination against the real owner of America. Those who were considered a kind of “others or aliens”, included the native Americans, black Americans and somehow the entire nonwhite community, who are the referents of the discriminated communities,” the letter read.

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The signatories further enumerated some examples of “discrimination and injustice” against black Americans throughout history, the latest of which

“Regretfully, the exceptionalist mentality of a small, but powerful and rich American group, is the source of widespread oppressions, sanctions and historical falsifications as well as trampling upon human rights and evaluation of human values based on wealth, ethnicity, geographical situation and religion,” the letter said.

The letter highlighted the recent protests that broke out in the US and Europe in the wake of the murder of African-American George Floyd at the hands of a white police officer.

The 46-year-old died after Derek Chauvin, the white officer, knelt on his neck and pinned him to the ground for nine minutes in Minneapolis, Minnesota on May 25.

The letter said, “The protests against oppression, harassment and murder of black Americans as well as the removal of slavery symbols point out to the wakeful conscience of the American and European peoples just like the protests in other parts of the world.”

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