Iranian official dismisses U.S. human rights report on Iran

TEHRAN,April 30(MNA) – The Iranian Foreign Ministry on Monday dismissed the United States’ “unfounded” allegations of human rights violations in Iran, criticizing Washington’s double standards on human rights issues. “The United States’ politicized approach and practice of double standards on human rights in the world is nothing new and has become the country’s political trend,” Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman Ramin Mehmanparast said in reference to the U.S. Department of State’s Country Reports on Human Rights Practices for 2012. Mehmanparast also advised the U.S. to address its own human rights problems instead of leveling accusations at other countries. He said that a number of those problem were “support for the Munafiqin (MKO) group and its removal from the list of terrorist groups, the establishment of illegal extraterritorial detention centers, the fact that the Guantanamo detention camp is still open and torture and systematic violations of human rights are being practiced and committed there, the brutal killing of civilians in various parts of the world, including the people of Iraq, Afghanistan, and Pakistan as a result of occupation and military drone attacks, abduction of other countries’ nationals and transferring them illegally to a third country, violence against immigrants and their families, a rise in social inequality, suppression of the Wall Street social protest movement, the harassment of Muslims as part of a campaign against Islam, racism and xenophobia in the United States, and poor conditions of prisoners in the United States, which has the largest prisons in the world.”