LETTER: UN votes to probe Iran over rights abuses, but SA invites its foreign minister

The lead feature on BBC World Service and other international newscasts on November 25 was the the UN Human Rights Council vote for a fact-finding investigation into Iranian human rights abuses.

In recent weeks, protesting university students, together with courageous schoolgirls, have been brutalised by security authorities, resulting in mass arrests of thousands, including journalists, and the killing of hundreds of people. All of this a result of the death of Mahsa Amini, a 22-year-old Kurdish woman who had been arrested by the morality police for not wearing her hijab properly. 

For the past four decades, Iran has been governed by a theocratic and misogynistic regime where women’s rights are severely suppressed and compromised. Under that country’s civil code, girls can marry at 13 years old and even younger if authorised by a judge. Once married, girls and women often face abuse as husbands are granted significant control over their wives’ lives.

Yet just as SA enters the 16 Days of Activism for No Violence Against Women & Children, the ANC government has welcomed Iranian foreign minister Dr Hossein Amir-Abdollahian, and extended an invitation to president Ebrahim Raisi to visit SA in 2023. 

What a reflection of the ANC’s “commitment” to combatting the scourge of gender-based violence. Where is Naledi Pandor, whose department is charged with hosting and inviting some of the world’s worst women’s rights abusers? And where is the ANC’s Women’s League? 

The silence of the ANC in the face of the ayatollahs’ brutality is deafening, just as its silence in the face of Russia’s brutality is. 

Allan Wolman
Tel Aviv, Israel

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