{"id":1546656,"date":"2024-03-10T08:43:22","date_gmt":"2024-03-10T08:43:22","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.rferl.org\/a\/pope-ukraine-courage-white-flag-peace-talks-russia\/32855698.html"},"modified":"2024-03-10T08:43:22","modified_gmt":"2024-03-10T08:43:22","slug":"pope-francis-ukraine-should-have-the-courage-of-the-white-flag-negotiate-end-of-war-with-russia","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/2024\/03\/10\/pope-francis-ukraine-should-have-the-courage-of-the-white-flag-negotiate-end-of-war-with-russia\/","title":{"rendered":"Pope Francis: Ukraine Should Have The Courage Of The \u2018White Flag,\u2019 Negotiate End Of War With Russia"},"content":{"rendered":"
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The Iranian government \"bears responsibility\" for the physical violence that led to the death of Mahsa Amini, the 22-year-old Iranian-Kurdish woman who died in police custody in 2022, and for the brutal crackdown on largely peaceful street protests that followed, a report by a United Nations fact-finding mission says.<\/p>\n

The report<\/a><\/strong>, issued on March 8 by the Independent International Fact-Finding Mission on the Islamic Republic of Iran, said the mission \u201chas established the existence of evidence of trauma to Ms. Amini\u2019s body, inflicted while in the custody of the morality police.\"<\/p>\n

It said the mission found the \"physical violence in custody led to Ms. Amini\u2019s unlawful death.... On that basis, the state bears responsibility for her unlawful death.\u201d<\/p>\n

Amini was arrested in Tehran on September 13, 2022, while visiting the Iranian capital with her family. She was detained by Iran's so-called \"morality police\" for allegedly improperly wearing her hijab, or hair-covering head scarf. Within hours of her detention, she was hospitalized in a coma and died on September 16. <\/p>\n

Her family has denied that Amini suffered from a preexisting health condition that may have contributed to her death, as claimed by the Iranian authorities, and her father has cited eyewitnesses as saying she was beaten while en route to a detention facility.<\/p>\n

The fact-finding report said<\/a><\/strong> the action \u201cemphasizes the arbitrary character of Ms. Amini\u2019s arrest and detention, which were based on laws and policies governing the mandatory hijab, which fundamentally discriminate against women and girls and are not permissible under international human rights law.\"<\/p>\n

\"Those laws and policies violate the rights to freedom of expression, freedom of religion or belief, and the autonomy of women and girls. Ms. Amini\u2019s arrest and detention, preceding her death in custody, constituted a violation of her right to liberty of person,\u201d it said.<\/p>\n

The New York-based Center for Human Rights in Iran hailed<\/a><\/strong> the findings and said they represented clear signs of \"crimes against humanity.\"<\/p>\n

\u201cThe Islamic republic\u2019s violent repression of peaceful dissent and severe discrimination against women and girls in Iran has been confirmed as constituting nothing short of crimes against humanity,\u201d said Hadi Ghaemi, executive director of the center.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe government\u2019s brutal crackdown on the Women, Life, Freedom protests has seen a litany of atrocities that include extrajudicial killings, torture, and rape. These violations disproportionately affect the most vulnerable in society, women, children, and minority groups,\u201d he added.<\/p>\n

The report also said the Iranian government failed to \u201ccomply with its duty\u201d to investigate the woman\u2019s death promptly.<\/p>\n

\u201cMost notably, judicial harassment and intimidation were aimed at her family in order to silence them and preempt them from seeking legal redress. Some family members faced arbitrary arrest, while the family\u2019s lawyer, Saleh Nikbaht, and three journalists, Niloofar Hamedi, Elahe Mohammadi, and Nazila Maroufian, who reported on Ms. Amini\u2019s death were arrested, prosecuted, and sentenced to imprisonment,\u201d it added.<\/p>\n

Amini's death sparked mass protests, beginning in her home town of Saghez, then spreading around the country, and ultimately posed one of the biggest threats to Iran's clerical establishment since the foundation of the Islamic republic in 1979. At least 500 people were reported killed in the government\u2019s crackdown on demonstrators.<\/p>\n

The UN report said \"violations and crimes\" under international law committed in the context of the Women, Life, Freedom protests include \"extrajudicial and unlawful killings and murder, unnecessary and disproportionate use of force, arbitrary deprivation of liberty, torture, rape, enforced disappearances, and gender persecution.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe violent repression of peaceful protests and pervasive institutional discrimination against women and girls has led to serious human rights violations by the government of Iran, many amounting to crimes against humanity,\" the report said.<\/p>

The UN mission acknowledged that some state security forces were killed and injured during the demonstrations, but said it found that the majority of protests were peaceful.<\/p>\n

The mission stems from the UN Human Rights Council's mandate to the Independent International Fact-Finding Mission on the Islamic Republic of Iran on November 24, 2022, to investigate alleged human rights violations in Iran related to the protests that followed Amini's death.
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\r\nThis content originally appeared on News - Radio Free Europe \/ Radio Liberty<\/a> and was authored by News - Radio Free Europe \/ Radio Liberty.
<\/p>\n

This post was originally published on Radio Free<\/a>. <\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Iranian government “bears responsibility” for the physical violence that led to the death of Mahsa Amini, the 22-year-old Iranian-Kurdish woman who died in police custody in 2022, and for the brutal crackdown on largely peaceful street protests tha…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":32222,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[45472,42767,42618,1374,63819,42620,42985,43964,65711,4,56610,785,27397,24,73216,43726,27150,42603,376,204,3856,42900],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1546656"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/32222"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1546656"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1546656\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1546657,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1546656\/revisions\/1546657"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1546656"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1546656"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1546656"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}