HCHR_ Kazem Gharibabadi, the Vice-President of the Judiciary for International Affairs and the Secretary-General for the High Council for Human Rights of the I.R of Iran, in the program "To the Horizon of Palestine" that was broadcasted on the Ofogh Channel, referred to the Zionist regime's attack on Al-Shafa Hospital in Gaza: “What we witness today in the Gaza Strip is an exhibition full of all kinds of crimes. Of course, the Zionist regime has committed all crimes during more than 75 years of its fake existence, but in the recent round of these crimes, we observe all kinds of crimes that fall within the scope of International Criminal Law, in the very early days”.
Emphasizing that no one expects the Zionist regime to respect human rights, Gharibabadi noted: “If there is a rebel, criminal, child-killing and apartheid regime called the Zionist regime of Israel, the International Organizations and countries claiming human rights, have a serious responsibility, since they claim to be heralds of human rights”.
Gharibabadi continued: “Attacking a civilian hospital on the pretext that it had become a military base, is a heinous crime. Earlier, they’d attacked al-Mu'amdani hospital under the same pretext and martyred more than 1000 innocent people, and no one held this regime accountable! But the important thing is that these days claims about human rights have faded and International Organizations are no longer effective”.
The Secretary-General for the HCHR stated: “Various human rights treaties have been established; were they able to stop these aggressions and crimes? We see that they did not have any efficiency”. He added “We are now approaching the 75th anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. In a situation where these international instruments and mechanisms did not succeed in stopping the crimes of the occupying regime, should we celebrate and be proud of the existence of such organizations and treaties?!”.
He further said: “The bitter irony and of course the ridiculous issue is that the Zionist regime is a member of a number of human rights treaties. What is the use of symbolic and prestigious membership in these treaties?”. He added: “Now we need action from countries and International Organizations. Nearly 40 days have passed since these massive crimes; the Human Rights Council has yet to convene an emergency session, while the investigation of these crimes is within the jurisdiction of both the Security Council and the Human Rights Council. There is a Special Rapporteur for Human Rights and an Independent Commission of Inquiry on the crimes of the Zionist regime. The Commission of Inquiry has announced that any party, if they have complaints and documents, should send them to this commission, but no mission has been determined by the Human Rights Council yet”.
Gharibabadi also stressed: “From now on, we should not attach importance to the claims of countries and Human Rights Organizations, of course this issue was obvious to us, but in this round of crimes, they revealed their contradictions more than ever”.
Referring to the innumerable crimes of the Zionist regime, Gharibabadi said: “The occupying regime has carried out more than 3,000 terrorist operations; performed more than 3,500 killing operations; made more than 7 million Palestinians displaced; martyred more than a hundred thousand people in more than 75 years before the Al-Aqsa Storm Operation; martyred nearly 12,000 people only in the last 40 days, which is a very widespread crime; and injured hundreds of thousands of people in the last seven decades. If we want to record these crimes, only the titles of the crimes would make several books.
The Secretary-General of the HCHR further stated: “Some measures were taken by International Organizations, which again indicates the impropriety of these mechanisms. Over 75 years, more than 512 resolutions have been issued in the General Assembly, the Security Council and the Human Rights Council against this occupation regime, none of which have been implemented, and 55 resolutions were vetoed by the United States alone in the Security Council”.
He added: “We are not only facing the phenomenon of the Zionist regime. If it was only this regime, the Resistance Forces would be enough to destroy this apartheid and child-killing regime. Some countries such as the United States and some western countries support this regime. Now, in Al-Aqsa Storm, terrible statistics of infrastructure destruction, attacks on educational, religious and medical facilities, as well as residential buildings are being published. On the other hand, instead of preventing these crimes and killings, the US itself has become a party to the aggression and provides all kinds of financial, military, intelligence and diplomatic support to the Zionist regime.
Gharibabadi emphasized: “The Zionist regime is not alone in its crimes. Some Western countries and the US are also to be blamed for the crimes committed by the Zionist regime against the oppressed and innocent people of Gaza”.
Regarding the measures taken in the international arena and within the Islamic Republic of Iran to stop these crimes, Gharibabadi said: “These crimes will end sooner or later, but the very important point is the legal and judicial action against the crimes of this apartheid regime”. He added: “As the Supreme Leader said, the Zionist regime should be tried, the trial is a legal and judicial matter”. Gharibabadi also noted: “Some lawyers and jurists, about 200 to 300 people, even from European countries, have spontaneously taken actions against the Zionist regime on their own initiative and went to the courts. What is the reason? This is because of the fact that the scale of these crimes is so huge that the public opinion has seen even International Organizations can't do anything, so that they started to do it by themselves. We also used the capacity of institutions and the lawyers' community inside, to follow up the crimes of the Zionist regime with the help of the Bar Association and the Lawyers Center and the official experts of the Judiciary and some lawyers and legal professors. We held several specialized meetings and will form a network of defenders and supporters of Palestine.
Finally, he stated: “Countries that have accepted the principle of universal jurisdiction can also file a lawsuit against the Zionist regime. The International Criminal Court is competent to deal with 4 crimes, namely, war crimes, crimes against humanity, genocide and aggression. The Palestinian government is a member of this court and the prosecutor of the court started the investigation against the occupying regime in 2021. Governments can file their complaints here, and the Palestinian government did so, but unfortunately, we see the inactivity of the court's prosecutors, while in the case of Ukraine, they went with a team and prepared a report. In this case, documentation is being done and the media is full of documentation. So the legal work is being done and for the first time we opened a case against the crimes of the Zionist regime in Gaza at the Tehran Prosecutor's Office”.