Iran’s foreign ministry on Sunday admonished the United States to “stop the practice of racism and inhumane behavior” amid mass protests following incidents in Ferguson, Mo. and Staten Island in which white police officers were not indicted after killing unarmed black men.
{mosads}”The U.S. administration has continuously criticized other countries and made an instrumental use of human rights and adopted double-standard criteria in the last few decades, while it has ignored domestic situation at home,” Iranian spokeswoman Marziyeh Afkham said, according to the country’s semi-official FARS News Agency.
Afkham went on to challenge the Obama administration and U.S. courts “to comply with their duty and take lawful and just actions in dealing with their citizens and stop the practice of racism and inhumane behavior.”
Iran’s criticism came in the wake of protests across the country over the weekend after a New York grand jury opted not to charge a police officer in the death of Eric Garner, but also after Secretary of State John Kerry said he was “deeply disappointed and concerned” by reports Tehran had denied bail to a Washington Post reporter working in the country.
“I am personally dismayed and disturbed at these reports as I have repeatedly raised Jason’s case, and the other cases of detained or missing U.S. citizens, directly with Iranian officials,” Kerry said in a statement.
“We share the concerns of Mr. Rezaian’s family regarding reports that he is under physical and psychological distress, and is not receiving proper medical care,” Kerry continued, charging that Iranian authorities had blocked international diplomats from seeing the U.S. citizen or providing him legal representation.
But the statement from Tehran was just the latest example of foreign governments using the unrest sparked by the killings to criticize the U.S. over human rights.
During the height of the protests in Ferguson earlier this summer, Chinese spokeswoman Hua Chunying said “there’s no such thing as perfection when it comes to human rights regardless of whatever country you’re in.”
“We have to improve the record of human rights and promote the cause of human rights,” she continued. “We can learn from each other in this area.”
Russian diplomat Konstantin Dolgov also said the developments “highlight serious challenges to the American society and its stability.”
“Racial discrimination, racial and ethnic tensions are major challenges to the American democracy, to stability and integrity of the American society,” Dolgov said. “We may only hope that U.S. authorities seriously deal with those issues and other serious challenges in the human rights field in their own country and stop what they have been doing all along recently — playing an aggressive mentor lecturing other countries about how to meet human rights standards.”
During a speech at the United Nations in September, President Obama acknowledged the criticism and that the U.S. had “failed to live up to our ideals” and “has plenty of problems within our own borders.”
“We have our own racial and ethnic tensions. And like every country, we continually wrestle with how to reconcile the vast changes wrought by globalization and greater diversity with the traditions that we hold dear,” Obama said. “But we welcome the scrutiny of the world – because what you see in America is a country that has steadily worked to address our problems and make our union more perfect.”