Transatlantic Lawmakers Sign Declaration Calling for international investigation of the "Basij" in Iran

By Walid Phares

On Tuesday, September 22, 2009, Members of the US Congress, Members of European Parliament and a Member of the Canadian Parliament signed an historic document condemning Iran’s continued human rights abuses.

This document was signed at the second Trans-Atlantic Group on Counter Terrorism, or TAG, summit hosted by TAG co-chairs US Representative Sue Myrick (NC-09) and Member of European Parliament Jaime Mayor Oreja (EU-Spain).

“This is historic because it is the first document signed by a group of international lawmakers addressing the Iranian regime’s human rights atrocities against the Iranian people,” said US Representative Sue Myrick (NC-09), who is also the Co-Chair of the US Bipartisan House Caucus on Counter Terrorism.

“We are keeping a close watch on the Iran nuclear weapons situation, but this will not cause us to forget the human rights atrocities committed by the Iranian regime.

We say to the Iranian people who continue their fight for freedom, ‘We have not forgotten you. We stand with you".

At the signing session which took place inside the US Congress, MEP Jaime Mayor Oreja, who serves as the Vice President for the EPP at the European Parliament, said "it is the first time that legislators from both sides of the Atlantic are coming together to address the threats of Jihadi terror. We are pleased to have accomplished this first step and other important steps will follow." Oreja oversees the European Ideas Network (EIN), the Policy Think Tank of the EPP.

Members of Congress who signed this declaration include: Sue Myrick (NC), Kay Granger (TX), Paul Broun (GA), Bill Shuster (PA), Ed Royce (CA), and former Congressman Bud Cramer (AL).

Members of the European Parliament who signed this declaration include: Mr. Jaime Mayor Oreja (Spain), a former Minister of Interior, Mrs. Corien Worthmann-Kool (Netherlands), Mr. Timothy Kirkhope MEP (UK), Mr. Othmar Karas (Austria), Mr. Marian Jean Marinescu (Romania), and Mr. Ioannis Kasoulides (Cyprus), a former Foreign Minister.

Canadian MP Irwin Cotler, a former Minister of Justice, also joined the delegations and signed the declaration.

In addition, a number of former US and European legislators and politicians have participated in the meetings leading to the declaration.

The declaration calls on:

1) The government of Iran to put an immediate end to the abuses of its citizens’ human rights;

2) The U.N. Secretary General to dispatch a team of investigators to Iran to inquire about the human rights abuses and report back their findings to the international community. We urge this team to visit political detainees in prisons, meet with the leaders of the opposition and with the demonstrators to present a full picture of abuse taking place;

3) Our respective governments of the United States, the European Union and Canada, and on the United Nations, to investigate the so-called "Basij militia" for alleged abuse of human rights;

4) The United Nations Human Rights Council to freeze the membership of Iran until a full investigation by the Council and the U.N. Secretary General on the mass scale abuse of human rights in Iran is completed; including the identification of those inside the Iranian regime responsible for issuing the orders to commit the atrocities. Iran should not be allowed to remain on the Human Rights Council when it does not defend human rights within its own border.

The goal of TAG is to create a working relationship between legislators from Europe and North America to address terrorism and the threat it poses to democracies. The first TAG summit was held April 30, 2008, in Washington, DC. The second TAG summit helped solidify the strong counter-terrorism trans-Atlantic partnership among lawmakers. At the summit, lawmakers discussed how democracies can address terror threats, not as individual countries, but as an international community.

In the US, the declaration was issued by Rep Myrick's office. In Europe it was issued by MEP Mayor Oreja's office and in Canada by MP Irwin Cotler. For Information on TAG contact the Secretariat General in Washington and Brussels transatlanticgroup@gmail.com

The Signed Declaration is attached

Dr Walid Phares is Co-Secretary General of the Trans Atlantic Parliamentary Group on Counter Terrorism.

Source: Counter Terrorism Blog

The United Nation's Deadly Silence on Iran

By Dr. Arash Irandoost | August 15

Many of you have been busy circulating numerous petitions to the United Nations regarding the brutality of the Islamic Republic of Iran. Please do not waste your precious time any longer, hoping for a miracle to happen from this incompetent, corrupt, anti-Semitic and pro-Islamic organization. Since June 12, 2009, despite numerous petitions signed by Iranians and submitted to the UN, there has not been any strong condemnation from this pro-Islamist organization regarding the criminal conduct of this medieval regime against its own citizens.

Don’t just take my word for it, please do your own research on this organization and how it functions. The UN is an organization rife with incompetence, corruption, and mismanagement.

The Iranian people are simply hopeless and helpless and the United Nations does not come to their rescue. Mass public hanging, as well as secret executions in prisons, are routine in the tyrannical Islamic Republic of Iran. From its past performance, rather its absence of performance, we know that the UN watchdog is a true disgrace to dogs, since all it does is eat, sleep and look the other way. Furthermore, the dog has no teeth. The vet had to pull all its teeth before the dog became acceptable to the crafty cats that constitute the UN itself.

The founding purpose of the UN was to “bring peace and prosperity to the people of the world".

The UN in the age of terror and blatant human rights violations by many countries such as Burma, China and Iran, has failed miserably to meet its obligation and its purpose.

The UN programs which was set up to help the Palestinians over the past half-century, have not only failed to produce decent lives, but have helped create a culture of hate and violence–fueled in large part by the UN's own anti-Israel agenda.

It is not uncommon to hear anti-Israeli rhetoric in the hallways of the United Nations.

You have heard frequent complaining and condemnation from the UN that the self-admitted terrorist prisoners at Guantanamo are being denied their human rights, or defenseless Palestinians are killed by Israeli soldiers, yet the UN has no time to speak out against documented human rights violating thugs in Iran.

The UN has ignored the alarming surge in assassinations, rapes, killings, torture and the massive crackdown that the Islamic Republic has launched against pro-democracy activists. Read more here ...

Source: New Media Journal

Human Rights Watch Goes to Saudi Arabia

Seeking Saudi Money to Counterbalance "Pro-Israel Pressure Groups"

BY DAVID BERNSTEIN

A delegation from Human Rights Watch was recently in Saudi Arabia. To investigate the mistreatment of women under Saudi Law? To campaign for the rights of homosexuals, subject to the death penalty in Saudi Arabia? To protest the lack of religious freedom in the Saudi Kingdom? To issue a report on Saudi political prisoners?

No, no, no, and no. The delegation arrived to raise money from wealthy Saudis by highlighting HRW's demonization of Israel.

An HRW spokesperson, Sarah Leah Whitson, highlighted HRW's battles with "pro-Israel pressure groups in the US, the European Union and the United Nations." (Was Ms. Whitson required to wear a burkha, or are exceptions made for visiting anti-Israel "human rights" activists"? Driving a car, no doubt, was out of the question.)

Apparently, Ms. Whitson found no time to criticize Saudi Arabia's abysmal human rights record. But never fear, HRW "recently called on the Kingdom to do more to protect the human rights of domestic workers.

There is nothing wrong with a human rights organization worrying about maltreatment of domestic workers. But there is something wrong when a human rights organization goes to one of the worst countries in the world for human rights to raise money to wage lawfare against Israel, and says not a word during the trip about the status of human rights in that country.

In fact, it's a virtual certainty that everyone in Whitson's audience employs domestic servants, giving her a perfect, untaken opportunity to boast about HRW's work in improving the servants' status. But Whitson wasn't raising money for human rights, she was raising money for HRW's propaganda campaign against Israel.

Someone who claims to have worked for HRW wrote to me, "I can tell you that the people on the research and policy side of the organization have little, if any, contacts with people on the donor side." If that's true, apparently this is yet another exception HRW makes for Israel: Ms. Whitson, who gave the presentation to potential Saudi donors, is director of HRW's Middle East and North Africa Division.

Also, as a Nathan Wagner comments at Opinio Juris: "Surely there is a moral difference between raising funds in free nations through appeals to ideals of universal human rights and raising money in repressive nations through appeals highlighting pressure brought against their enemies. [Moreover], the former type of fundraising does not imperil the organization's mission, but fundraising Bernstein highlights does, since any significant reliance on such funds will necessarily mute criticism of the repressive government."

Finally, some would defend HRW by pointing it that it has criticized Saudi Arabia's human rights record rather severely in the past. The point of my post, though, is not that HRW is pro-Saudi, but that it is maniacally anti-Israel.

The most recent manifestation is that its officers see nothing unseemly about raising funds among the elite of one of the most totalitarian nations on earth, with a pitch about how the money is needed to fight "pro-Israel forces," without the felt need to discuss any of the Saudis' manifold human rights violations, and without apparent concern that becoming dependent on funds emanating from a brutal dictatorship leaves you vulnerable to that brutal dictatorship later cutting off the flow of funds, if you don't "behave."

Mr. Bernstein is a professor of law at George Mason University and the author of "You Can't Say That! The Growing Threat to Civil Liberties from Anti-Discrimination Laws." This article first appeared on the Volokh Conspiracy web site.

Source: WSJ