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Iran has called on the British government to “restrain” the police and stop the “violent treatment” of rioters.
The foreign ministry spokesman, Ramin Mehmanparast, said dialogue would calm the situation, and urged the UK to respond to the demands of the “protesters”. He also asked human rights organisations to investigate the death of Mark Duggan, which led to the riots. Hossein Ebrahimi, the deputy head of the parliamentary committee on national security and foreign policy, said Britain should facilitate the visit of a group of experts to investigate “human rights violations” in the UK “without making false excuses”, according to the English-language state-run Press TV. Ebrahimi said that “the group of rapporteurs intend to interview political detainees and to give a report to international bodies on the treatment received by the protesters,” the report said.
Iranian media have presented the recent rioting and looting across London and other cities as social unrest fuelled by bad living conditions and police mistreatment of the poor. Iranian MPs condemned what they described as police violence. “An Iranian majlis [parliament] national security and foreign policy sub-committee has urged the UK to immediately stop violent treatment of people protesting the killing of a black man,” Press TV reported on Tuesday. Mohammad Karim Abedi, the vice-chairman of the parliamentary committee “urged London to order the police to stop treating protesters violently”.
Iran’s Fars news agency, mouthpiece of the revolutionary guards, has widely reported the rioting and looting across Britain. “We advise the monarchical regime of Britain to respect the rights of its people by avoiding savage behaviour,” Fars quoted Seyed Hossein Naqavi, an Iranian MP of the parliamentary human rights committee, as saying. Naqavi said: “The British people have come to the streets to protest at the security forces’ deliberate gunfire at Duggan.”
Iran is an ancient civilisation with a rich culture from which we could learn a lot. Unfortunately the bunch of thugs who seized power by force 30 years ago should hang their heads in shame at their sickening regime rather than preaching to other countries. The buffoon Ahmadinejad addressed the UN with the long dead ‘hidden imam’ looking over his shoulder. The guy who really runs the country, supreme leader Khamenei, claims to have met this imam who disappeared 1,000 years ago. It is bad enough that this dictatorship is headed by people who are delusional. What is more important is that they preside over murder, torture, rape and a system of unspeakable savagery.
Dozens of activists were killed and thousands detained after Iran’s disputed presidential elections in 2009, and there is widespread torture and rape inside the country’s prisons. Those detained often disappear completely so nobody knows whether they have been executed or remain imprisoned without charge or trial.
There is no proper judicial system in Iran, but in the name of sharia, they stone people to death and execute gay teenagers after savagely flogging them. Recently they sentenced a man to have his eyes destroyed with acid, but the victim of his crime decided not to carry out the punishment. This sickening barbarism is in the context of a society whose economy has been wrecked and the regime is kept in power by unaccountable thugs calling themselves revolutionary guards.
Of course we should have no regard for the criminal Iranian state suggesting how we might sort out our problems, but they feel they can make this suggestion because they are offended by British government calls for human rights enquiries in Iran. This should be a lesson to our government. Concentrate on curing the problems of the country you were elected to govern. I hope that the Iranian people will soon be able to choose a legitimate government of their own, but that is a matter for them to achieve.
Related articles
- UK riots: Iran condemns police ‘violence’ (guardian.co.uk)
- Iranians Use London Riots As Propaganda (news.sky.com)
One of the side-effects of being some sort of world policeman or moral arbiter is you put yourself up to be judged by the purest of standards. I do wonder how the rioting kids would have got on over in Tehrann though – suspect they might have been on the end of the old blowtorch treatment…
Our rioters would not put their noses above their balconies in Iran.
The people who have had the enormous courage to face torture, rape and death in the fight for decent government in Iran have immense principle, determination and astonishing bravery. I salute them.
English looters and arsonists have no objective other than crime.
The British government has no right or justification in trying to police the world. Let us hope that the riots make them realise that they need to apply themselves to keeping our own citizens safe.
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