Iran: Amnesty must report hardships of Iranians under US sanctions

Iran’s mission to the European Union has called on Amnesty International to compile a report about the harmful impact of illegal American sanctions on the livelihoods of Iranians, especially at a time when the country is grappling with a deadly coronavirus outbreak.

In a chain of tweets on Friday, Iran’s Embassy in Belgium ­— which hosts the EU’s headquarters — drew attention to the difficulties that over 80 million Iranians have been facing under America’s unilateral sanctions, saying those problems have been compounded by the spread of COVID-19, the disease caused by the virus.

Along with one of the tweets, the diplomatic mission posted a recent Amnesty report on “deliberately divisive and destructive policies that have perpetuated inequality, discrimination and oppression and paved the way for the devastation wrought by COVID-19.”

The Iranian mission said “as Agnès Callamard correctly observed in an Amnesty report ‘the pandemic has cast a harsh light on the world’s inability to cooperate effectively in times of dire global need.”

Callamard serves as the secretary-general of the London-based human rights group. Before her new post, she served as the Special Rapporteur on extrajudicial, summary, or arbitrary executions appointed by the United Nations Human Rights Council.

“During the past year Iranian people have been grappling with a fast-spreading virus while due to illegal US sanctions their assets have been frozen in foreign banks, effectively cutting them off from global banking channels to pay for the necessary medical supplies,” the mission added.

The US, it added, even blocked the International Monetary Fund (IMF) to grant Iran a load that it needed to “strengthen its economy to better provide for the people and tend to their health and medical needs.”

“The report rightly describes health workers as the heroes of 2020. Iranian health workers endured the excruciating pressure of US illegal sanctions while shouldering the burden of fighting the pandemic. Casualties among Iran's health workers is among the highest in the world,” the Embassy added.

“Amnesty International is hereby called upon to write a report on the ruinous impact of US illegal sanction on the lives of more than 80 million Iranians who have to win their bread under the pressure of unilateral sanctions and the threat of a virus,” the mission said.

Since May 2018, when Washington left a multilateral nuclear deal with Tehran, the Iranian nation has been the target of an American “maximum pressure” campaign, which is primarily devised to cripple Iran’s energy sector and its transactions with international banks.

The US claims the humanitarian goods are exempt from its sanctions, but the restrictive measures have scared foreign banks and companies away from engaging in any trade with Iran, something that prevents Tehran from using its financial resources to buy basic needs, such as food, medicine, and medical supplies, from abroad.

Just yesterday, Iranian President Hassan Rouhani said the United States had blocked the country’s access to 10 million doses of a coronavirus vaccine by pressuring the companies involved in the transferring of the vaccines to Iran.

In October 2018, the International Court of Justice — also known as the World Court — ruled that the US must lift the sanctions targeting Iran’s imports of humanitarian goods such as food and medicine.

That ruling, however, fell on deaf ears.

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