This is a response to some recent diaries on the recommended list, that to differing degrees, whitewash the human rights abuses that take place in Iran.
Let me be clear: I do not support military action against the government or people of Iran It just extremely annoys me when left-wing and otherwise well-meaning defenders of human rights try to gloss over human rights abuses of a regime that the Bush administration criticizes. While Bush certainly has no real concern for human rights (if he did, we would not be protecting Saudi Arabia, or might be doing somethign about Darfur) and when he criticizes countries for human rights it is clearly because he wants the oil underneath where those human rights abuses are taing place, it still doesn't mean that every country Bush criticizes is actually a perfectly good country that is just misunderstood or slandered by the conservative media.
More on Human Rights in Iran Below.
Of course, you can;t take anything Fox news says about Iran at face value. So, I've done some research from respectable sources.
Here is what Human rights watch has to say:
Iran's Judiciary should immediately halt the imminent execution of 10 Iranians of Arab origin and revoke the death sentence imposed on them, Human Rights Watch said today. The death sentences were imposed following secret trials that Human Rights Watch said could not be considered to meet international standards.
Secret trials? Many Kossacks were (rightfully) incredibly pissed of when the GOP congress passed a bill authorizing just that last month. Yet a description of Iran says this:
Compared to rising inequality in the United States and Israel, ranked numbers one and two for social inequality among developed nations, the Iranians look pretty damn good.
So having a more equal distribution of wealth makes rampant human rights abuses ok? Kossacks should know better. That diarist's response to Iran's human rights abuses is this:
Now, the usual crowd can be expected to comment on women, gays and political dissidents as being targets for repression in Iran. Without minimising the issues, I'm not convinced that the case isn't overstated and that the repression isn't outweighed by wider social advances.
The usual crowd? Sorry for being one of those hand-wringing sissies/neocons that feels a tinge of moral turpitude when I read this:
Iran's Supreme Leader, Ali Khamene'i, should immediately order the unconditional release of Ali Akbar Mousavi Khoini, a former member of parliament and critic of Iranian detention practices, Human Rights Watch said today....
The Iranian authorities have held Mousavi Khoini without charge for more than three months. Several days ago Mousavi Khoini charged that prison officials have subjected him to torture in order to pressure him to "repent" for his criticism of the Judiciary and intelligence services for human rights abuses and prison conditions. ...
Last Thursday, September 21, the authorities allowed Mousavi Khoini to attend the end of a memorial service for his father, who had died 40 days earlier. A person who attended the memorial service told Human Rights Watch that Mousavi Khoini's head and neck were visibly bruised.
Several persons who attended the event told Human Rights Watch that Mousavi Khoini's guards prevented him from seeing his wife when he arrived. In response, Mousavi Khoini started to speak loudly and ask for help, saying that his jailers were torturing him.
"For the past 20 days, prison officials have chained my hands and feet. I am being tortured," Mousavi Khoini reportedly told the crowd at the memorial service. "I am held in solitary confinement and interrogated four times a day. They wake me up in the middle of the night to interrogate me. They are trying to turn me to a mental patient."
"They are forcing me to denounce my beliefs, to repent for my activities, and to ask forgiveness from Khamene'i," he said. "I am resisting, but they are putting me under tremendous pressure."
We all should know better than to overlook Iran's human rights abuses just because Bush pays lipservice to these problems. Democrats invented modern human rights. Elanor Roosevelt would be rolling over in her grave if she saw some of the postings on Kos today.