(Jerusalem Post) Tovah Lazaroff - "It is unacceptable that the [UN Human Rights Council] treats Israel differently from every other UN member," U.S. Ambassador Mary Catherine Phee told the Council on Wednesday in Geneva. "The institutional integrity of the Council demands that the efforts to delegitimize and isolate Israel through such blatant bias must end." The HRC mandates that Israeli human rights abuses against Palestinians in the West Bank must be debated at each session and that there must be a permanent investigator assigned to investigate such abuses. No other country has such a permanent mandate, including countries considered to be serial human rights abusers. On Tuesday, the U.S. said it was "appalled" that Iranian Justice Minister Seyyed Alireza Avaei was allowed to speak at the HRC. "Minister Avaei oversaw the summary executions of Iranians in the late 1980s....Avaei oversees systematic arbitrary arrests and detentions of Iranians engaging in peaceful political and civic activism, and imprisons them in a network of facilities notorious for suspicious deaths, the use of torture, and denial of medical care," the U.S. said.
2018-03-01 00:00:00Full ArticleBACK Visit the Daily Alert Archive