Iran Writes to UN to Declare Yes Vote on Myanmar Resolution

In a Tuesday statement, Iran’s Foreign Ministry Spokesman Bahram Qassemi said, “In line with its principled policy of defending the rights of all Muslims across the world, particularly the oppressed Muslims of Myanmar, the Islamic Republic of Iran has sent an official note to the UN Secretariat to declare its yes vote to the [UNGA] resolution that condemns the human rights violations in Myanmar.”
Reiterating the firm stance of the Islamic Republic on protecting the displaced Muslims of Myanmar and vehemently condemning the heinous crimes committed by the Myanmar army against the Rohingya Muslims, Qassemi said Iran’s absence from the recent voting session on Myanmar’s human rights violations was due to some technical reasons.
Elaborating on the technical considerations, Qassemi said, “Over the past three decades, the Islamic Republic of Iran has continuously expressed its protest against politicised and discriminatory approaches of the UN General Assembly towards member states.”
He went on to say that Iran’s main policy has always been to oppose the approval of any country-specific resolution by the Third Committee of the UN General Assembly.
“Therefore, except for resolutions on the Palestinian cause which are discussed within different agendas and Iran has voted in favour of them at all times, Tehran has always voted against resolutions on other countries’ human rights conditions.”
However, he added, given the depth of the crimes being committed by Myanmar against Muslims and despite our earlier policy of voting against such resolutions, the Islamic Republic of Iran refrained from attending the voting session, and issued a separate statement to strongly condemn the Myanmarese government’s crackdown on the Rohingya Muslims.
By issuing the statement, Qassemi said, Iran stressed that its absence from the UNGA voting session “merely reflects the country’s opposition to the rejected approach of politicising human rights”, and the absence has nothing to do with the resolution’s content.
“Given the importance of defending the rights of Myanmar’s Muslims, the Islamic Republic’s macro foreign policy considerations should have been preferred to expert-level considerations [on the UNGA resolution],” Qassemi noted.
Therefore, he added, Iran sent the official note to the UN Secretariat on Tuesday to revise its earlier stance and declare its yes vote while underlining that Tehran dismisses as unacceptable any politicisation of human rights resolutions.