Iranian Guards Attack US Human Rights Record

Basij commander presents the report on “U.S. Human Rights Violations” to the chairman of the parliamentary Commission on National Security.

Though not typically associated with a stringent regard for human rights, Iran's state paramilitary Basij force has turned to its attention to monitoring violations.

Notorious inside Iran for its quasi-military role in suppressing protests and intimidating dissidents and critics, the Basij is estimated to include about half a million members, who receive small stipends and various perks in exchange for their service. The corps emerged out of the frontline troops who served in Iran's war with Iraq, but has evolved over time into an ideological force loyal to the supreme leader and frequently cited as the perpetrator, rather than monitor, of rights abuses.

On Monday Basij commanders, together with Revolutionary Guard officials and hardliner members of parliament, unveiled a 37-page report on American human rights violations by the Basij's America Watch group. In the style of a Western human rights organisation, it issued the report,“The 2013 Report on Human Rights Violations in The U.S.A” in three languages, Persian, English and Arabic.

“The violations of human rights in the U.S. are actually a thousand times more,” said Mohammad Reza Naqdi, the Basij commander who has been barred from travel by the European Union. “America is the root of all terror, it even has a budget for terrorist activities.” He accused the United Sates of supporting terrorist groups operating along Iran's borders, the Al Qaeda-affiliated Baluchi insurgents, the People's Mojahedin Organization and other terrorist “bands”.

Ninety-percent of Americans are “downtrodden,” according to the Basij vice-president for international affairs. They are even prevented from getting the news, he said, and outlined how the mission of his own organization is to enlighten and inform the world’s oppressed.

The report first defines what constitutes a human rights violation, invoking international treaties and conventions such the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and various conventions against discrimination, torture and children’s rights.

The Basij report criticizes the American military for capital punishment, violations of free expression and prisoner’s rights, unwarranted arrests, violations of privacy, racial discrimination and “sexual assaults against women.” It cites the events at Guantanamo Bay where prisoners on hunger strike were “tortured” by force feeding.

The report goes on to catalogue U.S. violations of minorities and native Americans, violations of privacy against Muslims, racial discrimination in the judicial system and violations of children’s rights.

It dedicates a whole section to privacy violations through electronic surveillance and eavesdropping on Internet and mobile communications, the prosecution of Bradley Manning for passing classified documents to WikiLeaks and the case of Edward Snowden.

While many Western human rights organizations fault the United States for precisely these concerns, the Basij report is in many cases one-sided or simply flawed. For example it places America next to Somalia for not joining the Convention on the Rights of the Child, ignoring the American laws that actually do a great deal to protect children, including the fact that the American Supreme Court considers the execution of children a “cruel and unusual punishment” and criminal laws that forbid the imprisonment of minors.

The report does not discuss why the United States has not joined the convention and declares it only as a case of negligence regarding the rights of the children. The legal reservations have actually surrounded the convention's failure to recognize home schooling or private schools, though President Barack Obama has described America's refusal to join the convention as “shameful”.

The Basiji report seeks to use human rights discourse and reports by organizations such as Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International to bestow credibility on itself, describing the execution of 38 Americans in 2013 as “dire.” It does not, however, mention what the same institutions have said about the 500 executions in Iran during the same period.

The report neglects to mention that the American media has reported carefully and accurately on these violations.

In recent years hardliners in Iran have become energetic in criticizing American from within, to propel their anti-American agenda. Two years ago, during the heyday of Occupy Wall Street, they declared the movement as inspired by the Islamic Revolution and even said that protesters were following a “Basiji example.”

Hardline media has also enthusiastically covered the WikiLeaks and Snowden affairs, and there has even been talk of offering Snowden asylum in Iran. However the stated aim of Snowden and Julian Assange, the founder of WikiLeaks, was not to join Iranian hardliners in their anti-Americanism, but to help create a less corrupt and a more transparent government — a category in which Iran ranks 144^th, according to the latest report by Transparency International.

The Iranian hardliners try to present themselves as humanitarians and supporters of human rights by using reports against the United States’ conduct, reports mostly published by the American media—a privilege that Iranian media does not enjoy at the hands of its government.