Alwaght- For years seizing any opportunity to put political and legal pressures on Iran, the US over past few days has been building excuses from sporadic protests in some Iranian cities to launch a massive propaganda against Tehran. In his United Nations General Assembly session address, the US President Joe Biden said "today we stand with the brave citizens and the brave women of Iran who right now are demonstrating to secure their basic rights." Secretary of State Antony Blinken went beyond this and tweeted: "Mahsa Amini should be alive today. Instead, the United States and the Iranian people mourn her…. Iran should allow peaceful protests." Also, National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan said that his country supports the Iranian protestors.
In the past years, by exploiting the protests in Iran, the American officials have tried to paint the Islamic Republic a violating human rights and not respecting the rights of its citizens. Now and in the midst of nuclear negotiations, the White House officials— weaponizing the human rights— are trying to take advantage of Iran's protests and wrest concessions from Tehran at the negotiating table. But these tactics have never gone anywhere and will fail this time as well.
The American meddling in Iran's political affairs has drawn reaction of the officials of Iranian foreign ministry. Its spokesman, Nasser Kanani, in response to the claims by the US Secretary of State said that the US, "with its shameful record of human rights" both at home and abroad should not dare to see itself in a superior moral position and preach the world. Kanani stressed that Blinken should remember that he is the foreign minister of a country whose police have shot and killed 730 people, many of them blacks, in just nine months.
Foreign Minister Hossein Amir-Abdollahian at a meeting with his Belgian counterpart in New York, while announcing Iran's readiness to finalize some documents of bilateral cooperation, panned the dual standards of Western countries towards human rights and their "selective" approaches.
US dark human rights record
Painting themselves as the global leaders of human rights advocacy, the US officials are the world's biggest rights violators, leaving behind a black record both at home and in countries they waged wars against and occupied in past decades. In recent years, the whole world witnessed the crimes and violence of the American police against black citizens, and every year hundreds of Americans are killed by majorly-white police forces without any crime, and the government does not take any action to condemn the police brutality. The American officials always stop at expressing their regrets about these daily crimes and close their eyes to them. American police brutality is so severe that even international rights groups voice their concerns about them.
According to data published by the Mapping Police Violence, a center monitoring the US police violence, suggest that during the first seven months of this year, the US officers killed over 700 citizens. The center holds that this number is unprecedented since 2013, the year it began collecting data regarding the American police brutality. According to this report, since 2013, a black person is three times more likely to be killed by the police than a white person in the US. In 48 of the 50 largest American cities, the number of blacks killed by the police is much higher than that of white people. Also, in recent years, more than 98 percent of the killings committed by the American police have not led to the conviction of the guilty officers. However, police forces kill black people easily because they know that there is no punishment for their crimes in court. This racism is deep-rooted in white American police and has been on the rise in recent decades, to the point that former US President Barack Obama admitted to this during his presidency and said that "racism is part our DNA." The American officials do not care about their own people and turn a blind eye to these crimes, but in dealing with protests in other countries, they advertise themselves as supporters of human rights and the defense of people who, according to them, have been oppressed.
From another aspect, police suppress peaceful protests in the US and use all means and arms to disperse the protesters. Their brutality is the most brazen example of human rights violations.
The American officials claim advocacy to human rights while in their country every day dozens are killed because of laws allowing carrying forearms and the White House plans no amendments to law despite the fatalities. The statistics published on the number of deaths due to shootings by civilians in the US are terrifying. Daily fatal shootings are also carried out by the teenagers in the country, most of whom are white. Data from the Gun Violence Archive show that the daily rate of mass shootings in the US has reached more than 2.4 incidents per day. Also, reports indicate that since the beginning of 2022, more than 12,000 people have been killed and more than 20,000 injured due to gun violence. News of some of these crimes are withheld from public by media.
In addition to the police brutality happening on a daily basis, the US government also treats inhumanely the illegal immigrants detained in the country. In recent years, in order to stop illegal immigrants from entering the country, the US officials have exercised more harsh policies. The conditions of immigrants are miserable and in some cases even infants are separated from their parents and it is even said that many of children lose their families because of border separation and are left parentless. Under Donald Trump, illegal immigrants were kept in iron cages to be punished and for others to take lessons. Also, thousands of illegal immigrants have been arrested by the security forces and sentenced to long terms in prison.
Double standards in dealing with human rights
The US has never been a genuine rights advocate and human rights matter for the White House officials only in the non-compliant countries. The experience of recent years has shown that Washington officials remain silent to human rights violations in their allied countries and even implicitly support government-led suppressions. A clear example of these double standards are seen in protests of the 'yellow vests' in France. Although the French protesters demanded the restoration of their basic rights during two years of demonstrations, Washington did not take any stance and, on the contrary, sided with the government. Another example is the crimes against the indigenous peoples in Canada. Over the past decades, mass graves of the orginal inhabitants of Canada were discovered regularly but the White House has chosen to remain silent and even did not call for Canadian government's investigation. The same approach on the human rights is adopted in other allied countries.
As a conclusion, it must be said that American pro-rights claims in Iran, China, and Russia are only meant to meddle in their internal affairs, because those who close their eyes to violence against their own citizens and in allied countries cannot be credible rights advocates for other countries.
