Tehran - Tehran on Sunday rejected a statement by the European Union which had voiced concern over human rights in Iran as ‘not corresponding to the truth.’
‘These kind of reports are based on unreliable sources and not corresponding to the truth,’ Foreign Ministry Spokesman Mohammad-Ali Hosseini said in a press briefing in Tehran.
The EU statement had said it was troubled at a recent wave of arrests of civic and women’s rights activists and the closure of at least three offices of non-governmental organizations.
The EU also drew attention to the worsening of the situation of ethnic and religious minorities in Iran, in particular to the plight of the Baha’i, who are excluded from public life, discriminated against and harassed.
‘We have several times voiced our readiness to discuss (with the EU) the situation of minorities and compare in fair and technical discussions their treatment here (Iran) and there (Europe),’ Hosseini said.
The spokesman refrained from commenting on the recent arrests of Iranian-US nationals which have caused a protest wave in the US and within human rights organizations.
One of the detainees, the Iranian-US scholar Haleh Esfandiari, was charged by the judiciary of ‘crimes against national security.’ Esfandiari, director of the Middle East Programme of the Woodrow Wilson International Centre for Scholars in Washington, is married to a Jew.
Iranian peace Nobel winner Shirin Ebadi and her team were supposed to represent Esfandiari at court but have reportedly not been allowed to do so.
In another case, Parnaz Azima, a correspondent for the Persian- language radio station owned by Radio Free Europe and funded by the US, has been prevented from leaving Iran since January.
Both women had reportedly travelled to Iran last year to visit their sick mothers.
