Hague aims for UN resolution on Iran

Wednesday, 14 September 2011 12:00 AM

By Alex StevensonFollow @alex__stevenson

Britain will seek a resolution at the UN general assembly on human rights condemning Iran, William Hague has pledged.

The foreign secretary told an event in central London that Britain would be "resolute in standing up" for the human rights of Iranians facing oppression from president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's government.

Iran faces growing scrutiny from the international record for its human rights record, which Britain is treating separately from its pursuit of nuclear weapons.

The UN established a human rights rapporteur to report on the situation in March. Members of the Iranian Revolutionary Guards Corps have had EU travel bans imposed on them and their assets frozen.

"The actions of the Iranian regime are holding Iran back, isolating its people and suffocating their immense potential, and preventing Iran from enjoying normal and productive relations with the outside world," Mr Hague said.

"Our government is working with its allies, with the media and NGOs to highlight human rights abuses in Iran, to insist that it meets its international human rights obligations and to show those who suffer abuses that their plight has not been forgotten by the outside world."

More journalists are imprisoned in Iran than in any other country in the world save China, the foreign secretary pointed out. There are more executions in Iran per capita than anywhere else in the world.

"We are ready to engage in meaningful and substantive discussion with the Iranian authorities on human rights issues at any time, which they are currently completely unwilling to do," Mr Hague added.

"2011 has shown that demands for human dignity are irrepressible. Iranians should take solace from this."

The Arab Awakening did not spread to Iran, whose regime argued that it was triggered by Islamic anti-American sentiment.

But it became embroiled in Syria's uprisings, which were brutally suppressed by Bashar al-Assad partly thanks to assistance from Tehran.

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• iran
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• middle east
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• william hague