Iran Baha’i arrests - House of Lords short debate
Our very good friend and supporter, Lord Avebury, today raised an emergency question in the House of Lords. The question and Lord Avebury’s supplementary question was responded to by Lord Malloch-Brown, Minister of State at the Foreign and Commonwealth Office.
You can find the link to the Hansard record of the debate here:
Emergency Human Rights Council resolution?
You will note that Lord Avebury’s supplementary question was this:
My Lords, while I am grateful to the EU presidency for its statement, in view of the fact that Iran accounts for the largest number of urgent appeals by the Working Group on Arbitrary Detention and that the working group, the special rapporteur on freedom of religion and the independent expert on minorities have jointly and separately drawn attention to the serious concerns felt about the treatment of Baha’is over the past two years, does the Minister agree that the situation warrants an emergency resolution at the forthcoming eighth Session of the Human Rights Council, which is to be held in the first half of June this year?
Lord Malloch-Brown’s response agrees that the situation warrants an emergency resolution at the forthcoming session of the Human Rights Council:
My Lords, I agree that it warrants one; we will have to consider whether we can achieve it. It is possible to ask for a special Session of an emergency resolution at the Human Rights Council, but to date the way that we have had most success on Iran, including on the Baha’is issue, has been through the third committee of the UN General Assembly. We have used the Human Rights Council to raise issues of the treatment of the Baha’is, using the thematic special rapporteurs to which the noble Lord referred.
There are a number of other significant comments in this short debate, the text of which is well worth reading.
It’s always exciting when the Faith gets such support in parliament and we will be pursuing this further.
Iran Baha’i arrests - previous posts
Read some more of my posts on Iran:
Baha’is arrested in Iran - grave news
Baha’i leaders arrested in Iran - Baha’i World News Service story
Bahá’í arrests in Iran - Wendi’s excellent article
Baha’i arrests in Iran - more coverage
EU condemns arrests of Baha’is in Iran
Technorati Tags: Baha’i, Bahai, Iran, human rights, UN, Human Rights Council, House of Lords, Lord Avebury, Lord Malloch-Brown, Foreign Office
Related posts:
3 comments
I noticed the world media are paying a lot of attention to this case.
Iran ‘plans to destroy Baha’i community (CNN)
Bahais accuse Iran of religious bias, say community leaders unfairly detained (Herald Tribune)
Persecution Index 10: Iran (Ruth Gledhil - The Times Online)
[...] I wrote about the short debate in the House of [...]
Many thanks for the links, Marco.
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