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It's Time for Obama to Support a UN Rights Monitor on Iran
(Foreign Policy) Dokhi Fassihian - Since the Green uprising started last summer, not a single resolution has been presented by the U.S. or European states on the brutal repression taking place in Iran. By November 2009, 5,000 Iranians were in prison, hundreds tortured and raped, and dozens put on show trials and sentenced to death or long prison terms solely for their peaceful demands for free and fair elections. On June 20, 2009, the day Neda Agha Soltan was gunned down on a Tehran street, President Obama quoted Martin Luther King when he said, "The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice." The first step to attaining justice is to build recognition of injustice. The Iranian people need the UN's help - as did the citizens of Chile, South Africa, and Hungary - to attain justice. At the UN General Assembly meeting this fall, the U.S. has another opportunity to help them by ensuring the establishment of a UN mandate that will investigate abuses and encourage accountability for those perpetrating crimes in Iran. We should not miss it again. The writer is executive director of the Democracy Coalition Project.