Tehran: Guardian report meant to paint black picture of Iran rights situation

Tehran has denounced a recent report by Britain’s Guardian newspaper about Iran’s treatment of duly convicted prisoners in the country, saying such “commissioned” reports are an attempt to portray the human rights situation inside the Islamic Republic in a negative light.

“The purpose of these commissioned reports, which are meant to paint a black picture of the human rights situation in the Islamic Republic of Iran, especially at the current juncture, is crystal clear,” Foreign Ministry Spokesman Saeed Khatibzadeh said on Wednesday.

He also noted that politicking and selective measures on the part of the United States and some European governments have always dealt the biggest blows to the principle of human rights.

Earlier, The Guradian reported that France, Germany and the UK were summoning Iranian envoys in a protest against Iran’s “detention of dual nationals and its treatment of political prisoners.”

Iran’s Ambassador to London Hamid Baeidinejad was summoned by the Foreign Office on Tuesday and the ambassadors to Paris and Berlin are also being called in this week, it added.

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Khatibzadeh said that Iran considers the statements and actions of certain European countries as interference in its domestic affairs, adding that relevant authorities have adopted necessary response in this regard and will do so hereafter.

“It is very strange and unbelievable for us that the same countries not only have not reacted to the gross violations of Iranian nation’s rights by the US regime’s inhumane policy of maximum pressure and its oppressive sanctions, but are also fueling it practically by their inaction and are complicit in it,” he emphasized.

The US unleashed the so-called maximum pressure campaign against Iran in 2018, when it left the 2015 multilateral nuclear agreement.

Following its unilateral withdrawal from the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), Washington targeted the Iranian nation with the “toughest ever” economic sanctions.

Tehran remained fully compliant with the JCPOA for an entire year after the US pullout, waiting for the co-signatories to fulfill their end of the bargain by offsetting the impacts of Washington’s bans on the Iranian economy.

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Buckling under Washington’s pressure, the European parties to the JCPOA, namely France, Germany and the UK, failed to do so, causing Tehran to move in May 2019 to suspend its commitments under the accord.

The European inaction comes as the sanctions are taking a heavy toll on the Iranian health sector at a time the Islamic Republic, along with other world nations, is fighting to rein in a deadly coronavirus outbreak.

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