Foreign Ministry Spokesman Seyed Abbas Mousavi on Wednesday issued a statement on the emergency meeting of the UN Human Rights Council on June 17-18, held to address the murder of George Floyd and the issue of combatting racism in the United States. 

“The Islamic Republic of Iran supports the idea of holding the meeting and the resolution passed by the Human Rights Council in Geneva, and believes that the capacity, resources and energy of the United Nations-associated human rights mechanisms must be geared to approaches such as countering phenomena like racism,” he added.

“According to its religious, cultural and national teachings, the Islamic Republic of Iran has been always a pioneer of confronting and fighting against racism, and believes that systematic racism in certain parts of the world, particularly the US, should be tackled at its roots,” the spokesman noted.

“The people of Palestine have been also victims of prejudice and racism over the past couple of decades, and what we are witnessing in the US society today is the result and upshot of the systematic racism and injustice that have existed and continues to exist in the pillars and structures of the US’s political establishment,” he stated.

“As announced earlier, this is not only the American people and society that have been and are victims of racism and injustice from their ruling governments, but the nations in other countries have also had very bitter experiences of the US administrations’ discriminatory attitudes and approaches coupled with oppression and injustice, and have seen many of their rights violated because of prejudice and injustice, as the responsibility for it lies directly with the US administration,” Mousavi added.

He further highlighted the capabilities and potential of the United Nations organs for the principled and fundamental addressing of issues such as combatting racism, and noted, “At the same time, concerns must be taken into account about a possibility that such efforts might be diverted to the paths that are far from their primary objectives.”

“Racism is one of the very old subjects and agendas at the United Nations, but, in spite of the efforts and measures for several decades, we witnessed such atrocities and brutalities in the US today on the eve of the 20th anniversary of adoption of the Durban Declaration and on Africa Day. This demonstrates that combatting racism must enter a new era, so that we’d ultimately see a day when people are not victimized by racism anywhere in the world,” he added.