When will Pakistan and Iran end their persecution of minorities?

HRC 25th Session
Item 9 General Debate
March 25, 2014

Delivered by Hillel Neuer

Thank you Mr. President.
When civil rights leader Morris Abram founded UN Watch two decades ago, he did so with the same vision of equality that guided his work for the Nuremburg tribunal on the Nazi war crimes and his struggle with Reverend Martin Luther King. This included most famously his successful legal action in which the U.S. Supreme Court finally recognized “one man, one vote;” one of the great victories for African American equality. Today I wish to explore the theme of racism and discrimination against ethnic and religious minorities.
We ask, when will Pakistan end the persecution of minority Shiites? In this past August, we witnessed grenade attacks on minority Ismaili prayer houses in Southern Pakistan which killed two people and wounded thirty others. We are witnessing systematic persecution of other Islamic minorities, as we are of Christian minorities, including women who remain on death row for the so-called crime of blasphemy.
Mr. President, when will Iran respect the United Nations General Assembly’s call to end continued discrimination and persecution of Arabs, Azeri, Beluchis, Kurds and other ethnic minorities?
Mr. President, when will Iran respect the UN General Assembly’s call to end continued harassment and persecution of religious minorities including Christians, Jews, Sufi Muslims, Sunni Muslims, and Zoroastrians?
When will Iran respect the United Nations call to end the widespread arrest and detention Sufi Muslims and evangelical Christians including the continued detention of Christian pastors such as pastor Abedini?
Mr. President, just a few days ago we witnessed the leader of Iran, the supreme leader Khomeini question the Holocaust. When will Iran end its holocaust denial and the racism and anti-Semitism that underlies it?
Thank you Mr. President.