Sánchez accepted human rights advice from the Iranian dictatorship that kills protesters

The democratic opposition has been staging two weeks of demonstrations in Iran against the Islamist dictatorship.

Protests in 110 cities across Iran, 32 people murdered, and media silence in the West
Sánchez accepts that Cuba, Iran and Venezuela can lecture Spain on human rights

More than 200 dead in Iran due to the brutal repression of the dictatorship

According to Iran's National Council of Resistance, these protests have now spread to 190 Iranian cities. The dictatorship of Ali Khamenei has responded to these protests with extreme violence: regime forces have already killed more than 200 people, according to a Tehran doctor interviewed yesterday by Time magazine. It is the largest protest to have taken place in the country, and the Iranian dictatorship is experiencing its worst moment. In fact, its fall is becoming increasingly likely, a possibility that grows stronger with each new murder committed by Khamenei's henchmen to suppress these protests.

The most astonishing thing about what is happening in Iran is the silence of many politicians and media outlets in the West. Many journalists who have spent years accepting the claims of Hamas terrorists, allies of the Iranian dictatorship, without any verification, now seem to be unaware of the protests against this anti-democratic regime. Some politicians who are very sensitive to everything that happens in the United States or Israel do not seem as concerned about what is happening in Iran, a dictatorship about which they rarely make statements.

Pedro Sánchez's silence on the brutal repression in Iran

An example of this is the Prime Minister of Spain. The Socialist Pedro Sánchez has not yet commented on the brutal repression of the protests in Iran. This silence should come as no surprise. Let us recall that a few months ago, Sánchez included Iran and six other dictatorships in a round of talks on the Middle East, from which he excluded Israel, a democratic country (in fact, it is the only real democracy in the region). Let us remember that one of Sánchez's investiture partners is Podemos, an extreme left-wing party that has links with the Iranian regime.

Sánchez accepted advice on human rights from Iran and other dictatorships

But there is an even more revealing fact that many Spanish media outlets inexplicably omitted at the time. On July 20, 2020, you could read here that Sánchez accepted that Cuba, Iran, and Venezuela (three dictatorships) could lecture Spain on human rights.

A few days earlier, through its official website, the UN published: "Spain commits to carrying out 91% of the recommendations to improve in human rights." The information indicated that the Spanish government accepted 252 of the 275 recommendations issued by 110 foreign governments as part of the so-called Universal Periodic Review, a mechanism of the UN Human Rights Council, a controversial body for having among its members regimes that violate the most basic human rights.

The detailed report of the recommendations accepted by Spain is no longer available on the UN website, but an automatically archived copy can be read here. As I already pointed out in my article in 2020, Sánchez's government accepted the recommendations of the Iranian dictatorship on the eradication of hate speech, racism and intolerance (as can be seen on page 21 of the report), the promotion of women's rights (p. 34), protection of children (p. 70) and freedom of expression and the right of assembly (p. 99).

An Islamist regime that violates the rights it lectured Spain about

It is outrageous to think that, by Sánchez's decision, a democratic country like Spain allowed itself to be lectured by a brutal dictatorship that is now killing protesters, and that it did so on issues where that dictatorship violates human rights in a scandalous way, with measures such as imprisoning women for not wearing a veil, sponsoring terrorism in the rest of the world, persecuting Christians, punishing homosexuality with the death penalty, condoning child marriages (a way of legalizing the abuse and sexual assault of minors by adults) and so on.

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Photo: La Moncloa. Meeting of Pedro Sánchez with Hassan Rouhani, President of the Islamic Republic of Iran, on September 24, 2019.