TEHRAN - Iran’s top human rights official Kazem Gharibabadi has criticized the United Nations human rights office for leveling trumped-up rights charges against Iran while turning a blind eye to U.S. violent crackdown on anti-war students and academics in university campuses.
Gharibabadi, secretary of Iran’s High Council for Human Rights, said the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) ignores what is unfolding in university campuses across the U.S., but did issue statements about so-called rights violations in Iran over the same period.
“The Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights has taken no notice of what is happening in the U.S. but at the same time issued three statements accusing Iran of human rights violations, which is proof of contradictions and double standards in the UN body’s mechanisms,” Gharibabadi said.
From California to New York, Illinois to Texas, the U.S. police have raided university campuses carrying and dragging students away or shockingly slamming them.
They have even arrested professors, like Caroline Fohlin, an Emory University professor, in Georgia, during protests over Israel’s genocidal military campaign in Gaza, which has killed nearly 34,500 Palestinians and left over a million displaced and starving.
So far, more than 900 people have been arrested on U.S. campuses, the Washington Post reported on Monday, highlighting that demonstrations were “peaceful and nonviolent until law enforcement showed up.”
On Monday, riot police used pepper spray and arrested about 50 students at the University of Texas pro-Gaza protest encampment. Monday’s clashes between police and students marked the second time in less than a week that state police were called to campus.
Since the start of the Israeli war on Gaza on October 7, students in the U.S. have been protesting Israel’s genocidal actions in the narrow Strip, however, a new wave of demonstrations – marked by protesters setting up encampments on their campuses – has gripped the country.
The students are mainly calling for their universities to disclose their investments and break financial ties with firms linked to Israel or businesses that are profiting off its war against Palestinians. 
The protests spread across America’s most influential universities earlier this month from Columbia University in New York, where the college president Nemat Minouche Shafik called on police to clear protesters’ encampments.
Despite harsh crackdowns, including mass suspensions, evictions from university housing, and arrests, similar protests have sprung up across the U.S. with footage emerging of students, professors, and journalists being violently detained by the police on campuses.
Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman Nasser Kanaani has also strongly criticized the crackdown by the U.S. police to break up pro-Palestinian protests on university campuses across the United States.
In a post on X on Tuesday, Kanaani shared a viral image of the arrest of one of the protesting students in the U.S., and wrote: “The Imprisonment of Freedom in America – U.S. media: At least 900 protesters have been arrested by U.S. police during student protests in the country in support of Gaza.”
Students in some 20 universities across the United States have been protesting the Israeli regime’s genocidal war against Palestinians in the Gaza Strip and the U.S. government’s unconditional support for its ally.
Hundreds of people have been arrested since the protests first erupted at Columbia University in New
 York. The anti-Israeli movement has now spread to other U.S. universities.
Last week, U.S. President Joe Biden signed into law a massive foreign funding bill that includes $17 billion in additional military aid to Israel amid the ongoing aggression in Gaza.
On Tuesday Iranian lawmakers, in a statement, expressed their support for American and European academic communities that have held demonstrations in support of Palestine in defiance of their governments.
Over 150 Iranian parliamentarians voiced support for the university students and professors in the U.S. and Europe who have staged rallies in support of Gaza in recent weeks.
The Iranian lawmakers described the anti-Israeli demonstrations in Western countries as a move emanating from the “justice-seeking, philanthropic and humanitarian nature”.
The MPs said the pro-Palestine rallies in the Western states reveal that the mainstream media’s attempts to distort and misrepresent the realities by whitewashing the Israeli atrocities in Gaza have been futile.
The solution to the Gaza crisis is a return to justice, the statement said.
More than 900 protesters have been arrested over the last 11 days across the United States as demonstrations against Israel’s onslaught on Palestinians and the rallies for a ceasefire in Gaza and divestment from companies linked to the Israeli regime spread across U.S. campuses.