After Acid Attacks And Execution, Iran Defends Human Rights Record

Iranians protest in Isfahan, Iran, last month in solidarity with women injured in a series of acid attacks. Several women have been attacked by assailants on motorcycles who threw acid on their faces, purportedly because they were "badly veiled." Arya Jafari/AFP/Getty Images hide caption

Iranians protest in Isfahan, Iran, last month in solidarity with women injured in a series of acid attacks. Several women have been attacked by assailants on motorcycles who threw acid on their faces, purportedly because they were "badly veiled."

Iranian officials attacked the latest United Nations report on its human rights record Friday, blasting what they called efforts to impose a Western lifestyle on the Islamic republic.

But for Iranians and others who hoped President Hassan Rouhani would begin to turn around his county's human rights record, the U.N. report provided a depressing but not surprising answer. It said executions in Rouhani's first year in office had increased to what U.N. Special Rapporteur Ahmed Shaheed called "alarming" levels.

Coming days after a woman was executed for killing her alleged rapist, and after several acid attacks against women in the city of Isfahan, Shaheed's report portrayed Iranians as suffering from an opaque justice system, regular oppression of women and religious persecution.

Iranian lawyer Nasrin Sotoudehn was freed in 2013 after three years in prison. Behrouz Mehri/AFP/Getty Images hide caption

Iranian lawyer Nasrin Sotoudehn was freed in 2013 after three years in prison.

Mohammad Javad Larijani, head of Iran's High Council for Human Rights, attacked Shaheed for including in his report people who had been charged as terrorists. He told state television that someone with "the high-flown title of U.N. rapporteur shouldn't act as a Voice of America showman."

"I think such words in this report devalue the entire report," Larijani says. "I strongly advise him to resign from this post conclusively, because his background as a rapporteur is very poor."

Shaheed and other rights advocates say Rouhani, who promised human rights reforms during his election campaign, is hampered by the country's fractured political system. With hardliners well-placed in parliament, the judiciary, the security services and religious establishment, Rouhani and his supporters can only try for improvements on the margins.

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After Acid Attacks And Execution, Iran Defends Human Rights Record