The State Department released a report Wednesday that seemed to soften its criticism of Iran’s human rights record, even though human rights advocates say conditions in that country have not improved.
Secretary of State John Kerry announced his departments’ new human rights reports for 2015, a summary of which only included language about how Iran is not cooperating with NGOs on “alleged violations of human rights.”
“In Iran, the government restricted the operations of and did not cooperate with local or international human rights NGOs investigating alleged violations of human rights,” the report said. “By law NGOs must register with the Interior Ministry and apply for permission to receive foreign grants. Independent human rights groups and other NGOs faced continued harassment because of their activism as well as the threat of closure by government officials following prolonged and often arbitrary delays in obtaining official registration.”
That’s a far cry from State’s report from a year ago, which seemed to confirm that Iran was in fact working to limit human rights in the country.
“Iran continued to severely restrict civil liberties, including the freedoms of assembly, speech, religion, and press, and to execute citizens at the second highest rate in the world after legal proceedings that frequently didn’t respect Iran’s own constitutional guarantee to due process or international legal norms,” State said a year ago in its report on 2014.
The situation was even worse in early 2013, when State commented on Iran’s human rights record in 2012.
“The government committed extrajudicial killings and executed persons for criminal convictions on minor offenses, sometimes in public or group executions. Citizens remain unable to change their government through free and fair elections. The government severely restricted freedoms of speech, assembly, association, and religion and significantly increased its surveillance,” State said then.
Despite State’s softer language, human rights activists say the situation is not notably improving. Sarah Margon of the advocacy group Human Rights Watch said Iran “certainly” qualifies as a country that may be subject to selective criticism, given U.S. foreign policy priorities.
“It remains true that the administration too often mutes its human rights criticisms with countries of strategic interest when it comes to actually policy implementation,” Margon said in a prepared statement.
Republicans in Congress have been quick to argue that the administration has eased up on its criticism of Iran in order to ensure the implementation of the nuclear agreement reached last year.
Human Rights Watch also singled out China and Iraq as examples of countries where the U.S. has a strong conflict of interest. China’s status as an important trading partner has become controversial in the 2016 presidential campaign.
Another country the U.S. has reached out to, Cuba, was mentioned in similar language Wednesday as it did the year before.
“In Cuba, the constitution recognizes the Communist Party as the only legal party and ‘the superior leading force of society and of the state.’… State security continued its practice of arbitrary, short-term detentions to impede the exercise of freedoms of expression and peaceful assembly,” State said in its human rights report. That’s similar to language it used in 2012.
But Margon said the situation in Cuba has actually been improving. “[In] Cuba we’ve seen more engagement on HR issues,” Margon told the Washington Examiner.
