Iran has executed a man for allegedly injuring a paramilitary officer in the first known execution linked to revolution that have swept the country since September, state media reported on December 8. Mizan Online, a news agency affiliated with Iran’s judiciary, and the semi-official Tasmin news agency both named the protester as Mohsen Shekari. He was reportedly convicted of “waging war against god” for allegedly stabbing a member of the Basij paramilitary force at a protest in Tehran on September 23. Shekari was sentenced to death on October 23, and executed by hanging on December 8, according to Mizan Online. It was the first execution connected to the protests to be publicly reported by state media.
Iran Human Rights, a non-profit rights organization that has members inside and outside the country, has called for a strong international response to the execution. “His execution must be met with the strongest possible terms and international reactions. Otherwise, we will be facing daily executions of protesters who are protesting for their fundamental human rights,” the group’s director Mahmood Amiry-Moghaddam said in a statement. Amiry-Moghaddam said that Shekari was executed without any due process or access to a lawyer of his choice in a “show trial” by the Revolutionary Court.
Several European governments strongly criticized Iran for the execution. German Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock said in a tweet that Shekari “was tried and executed in a perfidious rushed trial for disagreeing with the regime.” “The Iranian regime’s inhumanity knows no bounds,” she said. “But the threat of execution will not suffocate people’s desire for freedom.” French foreign ministry spokeswoman Anne-Claire Legendre said France condemned the execution in the “strongest terms” and “reiterated its strongest commitment to the right to peaceful protest.” She said the demands by the protesters are “legitimate and must be heard.” British Foreign Secretary James Cleverly said he was “outraged by the tragic news of the first execution of a protestor in Iran,” while the foreign ministry of the Czech Republic, which currently holds the rotating presidency of the European Union, described the news as “appalling,” and said “the Iranian regime uses outrageously disproportionate penalties to instill terror in its population.”
Several Iranians have been sentenced to death by execution during the nationwide protests, which were sparked by the death of 22-year-old Mahsa Amini after she was apprehended by the state’s morality police for allegedly not wearing her hijab properly. Her death touched a nerve in the Islamic Republic, with prominent public figures coming out in support of the movement, including top Iranian actor Taraneh Alidoosti. The protests have since coalesced around a range of grievances with the authoritarian regime.
According to Amnesty International, as of November, Iranian authorities are seeking the death penalty for at least 21 people in connection with the protests. Approximately 500 people at least have been killed in the unrest since September, according to Norway-based Iran Human Rights organization. Since the demonstrations began, authorities have unleashed a deadly crackdown, with reports of forced detentions and physical abuse being used to target the country’s Kurdish minority group. Meanwhile, Iran’s Supreme Leader (dictator)Ayatollah Ali Khamenei has praised the Basij, a wing of Iran’s Revolutionary Guard, for its role in the crackdown, describing the protest movement as “rioters” and “thugs” backed by foreign forces.
Iran’s clerical rulers have stepped up suppression of persistent anti-government protests in the country’s Kurdish region, deploying troops and killing at least four demonstrators on November 20, social media posts and rights groups said. Nationwide protests, sparked by the death of 22-year-old Iranian Kurdish woman Mahsa Amini in September in the custody of morality police, have been at their most intense in the areas where the majority of Iran’s 10 million Kurds live. Videos on social media, showed a convoy of military vehicles with heavily armed troops, purportedly in the western city of Mahabad, located in Iranian Kurdistan. The sounds of heavy weaponry could be heard in several other videos. The Norway-based human rights group Hengaw said military helicopters carried members of the widely feared Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) to quell the protests in the Sunni-dominated Kurdish city of Mahabad.
In a statement, carried by state media and other pro-regime mouthpieces, the IRGC confirmed “strengthening” their forces in the northwestern Kurdish region to confront “terrorist separatist groups” in the area. “The security of the people is our red line … and dealing decisively with terrorists is our mandate,” the statement said. Iranian authorities, who have blamed Amini’s death on pre-existing medical conditions, have often baselessly claimed that the unrest has been fomented by countries Iran perceives to be its rivals, and often accuse armed separatists of perpetrating violence. Prominent Sunni cleric Molavi Abdolhamid, a powerful dissenting voice in the Shi’ite-ruled Islamic Republic, called on security forces to refrain from shooting at people in Mahabad. “Disturbing news is emerging from the Kurdish areas, especially from Mahabad … pressure and crackdown will lead to further dissatisfaction,” Abdolhamid tweeted.
Hengaw said at least four protesters were killed in the Kurdish area. The widely-followed activist account 1500Tasvir said a 16-year-old student and a school teacher were killed in the Kurdish city of Javanrud. Iran’s state media said calm had been restored in the area. But activists and Hengaw said on Twitter that “the resistance” continued in several Kurdish cities. “In (the Kurdish city of) Marivan repressive forces have opened fire at people,” Hengaw said.
The uprising has turned into a popular revolt by furious Iranians from all layers of society, posing one of the boldest challenges to the clerical leaders since the 1979 Islamic revolution that swept them to power. Ehsan Hajsafi, a footballer who normally plays in Athens, became on November 20 the first member of Iran’s national team to speak out from the World Cup in Doha in apparent support of the protests at home. Other players have kept silent, and some activists have called for protests against the team.
Overall, the revolt in Iran have stretched into a third month despite violent state clampdown and death sentences issued for at least 15,000 protestors. HRANA said 410 protesters had been killed in the unrest as of November 19, including 58 minors. Some 54 members of the security forces were also killed, it said, adding that more than 17,251 people have been arrested. Authorities have not provided an estimate of any wider death count. Videos posted on social media showed Iranians in several other cities kept up protests, from Tehran to the northwestern city of Tabriz, calling for the toppling of the Islamic Republic and chanting “Death to (Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali) Khamenei“.
President Joe Biden’s aides have launched a formal review of the US military prison at Guantanamo Bay in Cuba, reviving the Obama-era goal of closing the controversial facility with the aim of doing so before he leaves office, the White House said on February 12. Aides involved in internal discussions are considering an executive action to be signed by President Biden in coming weeks or months, two people familiar with the matter told Reuters, signaling a new effort to remove what human rights advocates have called a stain on America’s global image. Asked whether President Biden would shut the high-security prison located at the Guantanamo Naval Station by the time his presidency ends, White House spokeswoman Jen Psaki told reporters: “That certainly is our goal and our intention.” But such an initiative is unlikely to bring down the curtain anytime soon on the offshore facility, due largely to the steep political and legal obstacles that also frustrated efforts by his ex-boss, former President Barack Obama, to close it.
Set up to house foreign suspects following the 9/11 attacks on New York and Washington, the prison came to symbolize the excesses of the US “war on terror” because of harsh interrogation methods that critics say amounted to torture. “We are undertaking an NSC process to assess the current state of play that the Biden administration has inherited from the previous administration, in line with our broader goal of closing Guantanamo,” National Security Council spokeswoman Emily Horne told Reuters, which was the first to report that the review was underway. “The NSC will work closely with the Departments of Defense, State, and Justice to make progress toward closing the GTMO facility, and also in close consultation with Congress,” she added.
The immediate impact of a new approach could be to reinstate, in some form, former President Barack Obama’s Guantanamo closure policy, which was reversed by former President Donald Trump as soon as he took office in 2017. Trump kept the prison open during his four years in the White House. Now, 40 prisoners remain, most held for nearly two decades without being charged or tried. President Joe Biden’s campaign said during the 2020 race that he continued to support closing the detention center but did not say how he would do it. It is also unclear how specific Biden’s coming executive action might be about his plans for the prison, which holds suspects in the 9/11 attacks among its detainee population. “This is an encouraging and much welcome development,” said Scott Roehm, Washington director of advocacy group The Center for Victims of Torture. “The process needs to move quickly.”
Opened under former President George W. Bush in 2002, Guantanamo Bay’s population grew to a peak of about 800 inmates in 2006 before it started to shrink. Former President Barack Obama whittled down the number further, but his effort to close the prison was mainly stymied by Republican opposition in Congress. The federal government is still barred by law from transferring any inmates to prisons on the US mainland. Even with his own Democratic party now controlling Congress, their majorities are so slim that President Joe Biden would face a tough challenge securing legislative changes because some vulnerable Democratic Senators might also oppose them.
Here are the main events that occurred in Politicsthis week:
1. President Donald Trump Signs Immigration Executive Order Meant to Curtail the Separation of Migrant Children from Parents
On June 20, President Donald Trump on signed an executive order designed to keep together immigrant families who have been detained at the U.S.-Mexico border, while also retaining his administration’s so-called “zero-tolerance” immigration policy. “I didn’t like the sight or the feeling of families being separated,” President Trump said from the Oval Office, but at “the same time, we are keeping a very powerful border, but continue to be zero tolerance.” Trump’s executive order would keep most families together under the Department of Homeland Security, except in cases where an adult may pose a threat to a child. “You’re going to have a lot of happy people,” Trump further said as he signed the order. While the order could possibly work to quell the furor over the controversial practice of separating families at the border, it marks a stunning reversal for President Donald Trump, who has prided himself as being a hardline opponent of illegal immigration.
Vice President Mike Pence, who also appeared with Trump at the signing, said that the order would enable families to stay together in the immediate future, but added that it was still up to Congress to come up with a permanent solution, presumably as part of a larger immigration package. The executive order by President Donald Trump is certain to encounter legal challenges, much like President Obama’s 2014 immigration executive order. Some advocates will argue that children staying in detention centers violates the 1997 decision known as the Flores agreement. Although the Executive Order mandates that Attorney General Jeff Sessions request a US district court to modify the agreement, Trump acknowledged he could be headed for a fight. “There may be some litigation,” he conceded.
The separations at the border began earlier this year when Attorney General Jeff Sessions mandated that all people caught crossing into the US illegally be referred for criminal prosecution. Under that policy, adults were sent to jail under the auspices of the Department of Homeland Security, while children have been held in facilities run by the Office of Refugee Resettlement. Since the policy was implemented, over 2,000 children have been separated, according to government figures. The backlash, spurred by images of children crying, audio documenting the separation, and personal accounts from those experiencing it, was swift and intense and came from both sides of the aisle, as well as from international organizations and figures. Until June 19, the Trump Administration had been vociferously defending his immigration policy. President Trump insisted on June 18, that illegal immigrants were “infesting” the country, and asserted that the only other option was to release all the undocumented immigrants detained at the border. However, Trump insisted that his executive order was not a sign of his backing down. “The border’s just as tough,” he told reporters. “They can come in through ports of entry if they want. That’s a whole different story. And that’s coming in through a process, and the process is what we want.”
2. The US Withdraws from UN Human Rights Council, Alledging Anti-Israeli Bias
The Trump administration withdrew from the United Nations Human Rights Council on June 19 in protest of what it perceives as an entrenched bias against Israel and a willingness to allow notorious human rights abusers as members. UN Ambassador Nikki Haley, who has sought major changes on the council throughout her tenure, issued a blistering critique of the panel, saying it had grown more callous over the past year and become a “protector of human rights abusers and a cesspool of political bias.” She cited the admission of Congo as a member even as mass graves were being discovered there, and the failure to address human rights abuses in Venezuela and Iran. “I want to make it crystal clear that this step is not a retreat from our human rights commitments,” she said during a joint appearance with Secretary of State Mike Pompeo at the department. “On the contrary. We take this step because our commitment does not allow us to remain a part of a hypocritical and self-serving organization that makes a mockery of human rights.” Haley went further to accuse governments with mediocre human rights records of seeking seats on the council to avoid scrutiny and then resisting proposals for reform. “When we made it clear we would strongly pursue council reform, these countries came out of the woodwork to oppose it,” Haley said. “Russia, China, Cuba, and Egypt all attempted to undermine our reform efforts this past year.”
The decision to leave the 47-nation body was more definitive than the lesser option of staying on as a nonvoting observer. It represents another retreat by the Trump administration from international groups and agreements whose policies it deems as out of sync with American interests on trade, defense, climate change and, human rights. Additionally, the decision leaves the council without the US playing a key role in promoting human rights around the world. “By withdrawing from the council, we lose our leverage and allow the council’s bad actors to follow their worst impulses unchecked — including running roughshod over Israel,” said Congressman Eliot Engel (D-NY), the top Democrat on the House committee that oversees the State Department. “However, this administration’s approach when it sees a problem is to take the United States off the field,” he added. “That undermines our standing in the world and allows our adversaries to fill the void.”
The US is midway through a three-year term on the council, which is intended to denounce and investigate human rights abuses. A U.S. departure deprives Israel of its chief defender at a forum where Israel’s human rights record UN human rights chief slammed the Trump Administration’s policy of separating migrant parents from their children after they enter the United States at the Mexican border, calling it “unconscionable” and akin to child abuse.
3. Latest Efforts to Hold Talks on Ending Sudan Civil War Fail
The most recent efforts to negotiate an end to South Sudan’s Civil War ended in failure this week as both sides refused to meet face-to-face.
The latest attempt at ending South Sudan’s five-year civil war failed on June 22, when President Salva Kiir rejected working again with rival Riek Machar after their first face-to-face meeting in almost two years. “This is simply because we have had enough of him,” government spokesman Michael Makuei said. The rivals met this week in neighboring Ethiopia at its prime minister’s invitation, shaking hands and being coaxed into an awkward embrace as they held direct talks. They shook hands again as regional heads of state and met to discuss the civil war in the world’s youngest nation. But it soon became clear that while South Sudan’s government was open to having the opposition in the vice president’s role, it would not accept Machar’s return to that post. Machar fled the country after new fighting broke out in the city of Juba in July 2016, ending a brief attempt at peace in which he returned to his role as Kiir’s deputy.
Opposition spokesman Lam Paul Gabriel said “there was nothing agreed upon in the talks” but that the face-to-face meeting with South Sudan’s president was useful “because we are able to see violence in Salva’s eyes.” Gabriel also accused the East African regional bloc of favoring South Sudan’s government and putting its own interests ahead of “genuine peace,” adding: “This is completely disappointing.” The warring sides are to meet again on June 25 in Kenya. Machar will attend the Khartoum meeting, Makuei said. “We believe that peace is going to come in the coming one month or so,” South Sudan’s Cabinet affairs minister, Martin Elia Lomoro, told reporters even as observers expressed skepticism.
South Sudan’s civil war, which started just two years after the country won independence from Sudan, has continued despite multiple attempts at peace deals. Tens of thousands of people have died and millions have fled to create Africa’s largest refugee crisis since the 1994 Rwandan genocide. Millions of others still in the country are near famine, while the warring sides have been blamed for obstructing or slowing the delivery of desperately needed aid.
The latest attempt at a cease-fire in December was violated within hours. Both sides have been accused of widespread abuses such as gang rapes against civilians, including along ethnic lines. A number of South Sudan officials have been accused by human rights groups of profiting from the conflict and blocking the path to peace, and the US has threatened to withdraw aid to the country. Early this month the UN Security Council adopted a United States-sponsored resolution that threatens an arms embargo on South Sudan and sanctions six people, including the country’s defense chief, if fighting doesn’t stop and a political agreement is not reached. The resolution asks Secretary-General Antonio Guterres to report to the council on that by June 30.
4. Canadian Parliament Approves Bill Legalizing Marijuana
The Canadian government passed legislation allowing the recreational use of marijuana this week, become the second country in the world to do so.
On June 19, the Canadian parliament voted to legalize the recreational use of cannabis, making Canada the first G7 country to legalize marijuana. The law regulates its cultivation, sets limits on possession and prohibits marketing that would encourage consumption. When the law comes into effect, Canada will be the second country in the world, after Uruguay, to make it legal to puff marijuana for pleasure. Bill Blair, a Liberal Party member of the Canadian Parliament, stated that if the bill is passed this week, marijuana could be legal by September, lining up with a late-summer schedule proposed by Prime Minister Justin Trudeau last month.
Concerns expressed about the bill by members of Parliament include how to keep marijuana away from children and how to address organized crime and traffic deaths related to marijuana use. The current bill restricts marijuana production, possession and sale to those over the age of 18. Canadian Senator Peter Harder acknowledged his colleagues’ reservations about the bill’s specifics in a statement on June 18. “Given the exceptional amount of work that went into the Senate’s study of this bill, I understand that some of these outcomes are frustrating for some,” he said. “I know that some of these frustrations are rooted in deeply held policy views and personal values and that much disagreement will not end with our vote on this message, whatever its result.”
A key area of interest among political scientists is the promotion of human rights and democracy at the international level. Over the past century, many countries in all regions throughout the world sought to create domestic democratic political systems with mixed results. In these cases, some countries transitioned towards democracy, while on the contrary, others slipped further towards authoritarianism. Some of the factors inhibiting the establishment of democratic governments and improve the protection of human rights worldwide include the role of the military, cultural and historical factors, and religious factors. Additionally, the structure of international institutions such as the United Nations often makes it difficult to effectively promote human rights and efforts at democratization at the international level. This paper seeks to explore the overall record of the UN in fostering democratic political reforms and human rights protections at the international arena and offers some suggestions regarding the future of these efforts.
The UN has sought to improve the global protection of human rights and encourage the spread of democratic governments at the international level since its inception. Even though the UN Charter does not specifically address the issue of democracy on the global scale, the opening lines of the charter show that there is a direct link between the will of the people to the member-states and the legitimacy of the organization. Additionally, the UN Charter directly mentions human rights and states that the promotion of these rights is a major aspect of international policy. Democracy and human rights were also addressed through the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, adopted unanimously by the UN General Assembly in 1948.
The UN further promoted the idea of political reform and human rights protection in the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR). Adopted on December 15, 1966, the ICCPR puts forward the legal basis for the promotion of democracy under the international legal mechanism. The ICCPR enshrines freedom of expression, freedom of assembly, freedom of association, the right to vote and take part in public affairs, and universal suffrage as essential aspects of any international efforts to promote democracy. In addition to many different conventions and charters focusing on human rights and democracy, several committees within the UN focus on the effective promotion of human rights and democracy at the international level. These committees include the UN Human Rights Committee, United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), the United Nations Democracy Fund (UNDEF), and the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR), among many others.
One of the main successes of the UN is its election-monitoring procedures.
The UN has had some success in promoting democracy and human rights. An example of the UN furthering democracy is its monitoring of elections. Starting in the 1980s, the UN strengthened its election monitoring processes. The primary factor contributing to this change was the end of the Cold War, which resulted in an increase in democratization worldwide. This increase in democratization necessitated the need for the international community to monitor elections within newly-democratic states to make sure that they were in accord with international standards.
One failure of the UN regarding human rights was its inability to adequately address the genocides in Bosnia and Rwanda during the 1990s. During the Rwandan genocide, the UN did little to prevent human rights abuses taking place within the country. The lack of political will among the members of the peacekeeping operations within the country and the lack of a vital national security interest in the country by the Security Council members prevented an effective response to the crisis. Additionally, the UN failed to address the ongoing human rights violations stemming from the Syrian Civil War. Like the response by the UN to the Rwandan genocide, the failure to address the human rights issues surrounding the Syrian conflict are attributed to political deadlock within the UN Security Council and the lack of will to address these issues head-on. These incidents show that much of the international community was reluctant at times to intervene to prevent human rights abuse.
Permanent members of the UN Security Council such as the US, Russia, and China often veto resolutions that ultimately improve human rights protections and promote democracy.
There are several factors that reduce the effectiveness of the promotion of democracy and the protection and upholding of human rights by the UN. One such reason is related to the structure of the UN Security Council. The UN Security Council has five permanent members and ten non-permanent members who serve two-year terms. The five permanent members have veto power over all resolutions passed by the Security Council. In recent years, members of the council such as Russia and China have vetoed several resolutions related to the Syrian Civil War. Additionally, the US used veto power over resolutions condemning the continued building of illegal Israeli settlements in the Palestinian territories.
Another factor that hampers the promotion of human rights and democracy by the UN is the overall structure of the UN committee system. The structure of the UN committees allows countries with poor human rights records and undemocratic political systems to potentially serve on committees dealing with human rights. For example, China, Cuba, and Saudi Arabia were elected to sit on the UN Human Rights Committee despite being guilty of human rights abuses and having nondemocratic governments.
Reform of the UN Security Council is one way to improve the human rights record of the UN.
The record of the UN in promoting democratic reform at the international level and protecting human rights illustrates the need for lasting reforms within the UN. The central area of improvement is related to the structure of the UN Security Council. One such reform proposal is to limit the right of veto to national security issues. By restricting veto authority to matters related to national security concerns, the security council will be forced to put aside their political objections to human rights resolutions. Another reform proposal is to require the five permanent members of the security council to consult with other nations to get an agreement before using their veto power on resolutions. The official language of the UN charter hampers any efforts to implement changes to the UN Security Council. For example, Article 108 of the UN Charter states that the Five Permanent Security Council members have veto power over any proposed amendments to the UN Charter.
Another proposal to improve the protection of human rights by the UN is to implement a grading scale for countries on various human rights issues to encourage improvements and progress. This approach will allow for a mare targeted approach to human rights violations while at the same time making sure that any changes are implemented in a way that is monitored easily by the international community. The UN should provide increased levels of support and development aid to countries that have improved their overall human rights record.
Tunisia is an example of a country that can be a model for this proposal. For example, Tunisia typically ranked near the bottom regarding human rights before the ousting of its President, Zine El Abidine Ben Ali, in 2011. After Ali’s removal from power, Tunisia made a series of improvements regarding human rights and political freedom and today ranks as one of the Middle Eastern nations with the highest level of political freedom. By implementing this proposal, the UN can allow for permanent changes in human rights policy to be implemented.
Restricting committee membership to countries with adequate human rights records is a plausible, yet discriminatory, measure to improve the UN’s human rights record.
The structure of elections to UN committees dealing with human rights is an additional area in which reform is necessary. A possible solution in this area is to restrict elections to the human rights related committees to countries that have met the international requirements for human rights protection. One possible benefit from this proposal is that it will improve the effectiveness of the committees dealing with human rights and motivate countries to improve their human rights records. A problem with this proposal is that it is undemocratic in nature and prevents equal representation at the international level, thus going against the original intent of the UN as a fair and impartial body for international dispute settling.
