Aouthor Ahmed Y. Obali is a South Azerbaijani political dissident and journalist who set up and heads Gunaz TV based in Chicago.

However, he is not outspoken enough as the Iranian regime continues to repress its own people, massacring 40,000 people over a period of two days alone this past January. While he claims to oppose Iran’s repression of protesters, in February, Mamdani labeled the Iran war a “catastrophic escalation in an illegal war of aggression,” arguing that Americans want peace and economic relief, not regime change.

In other words, Mamdani wants a regime that executes women, ethnic minorities, members of the LGBTQ community and other repressed groups en masse to stay in power.

Furthermore, he has been silent on a series of human-rights issues related to Iran. For example, he has not uttered a word after Human Rights Watch condemned the Iranian regime both for using cluster bombs, which are against international law, and for recruiting minors as young as 12 to serve in the Basij militia under the command of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps.

On March 19, four Palestinian women were killed in the West Bank town of Beit Awa, Human Rights Watch reported. It noted that they were killed by an Iranian submunition, which was caused by a cluster bomb. These four Palestinian women were civilians who were brutally massacred while going to a hair salon for an upcoming Muslim holiday. One of the murdered Palestinian women was six months pregnant. Mamdani, who claims to care about Palestinians, did not utter a word about the brutal massacre of four Palestinian women and the maiming of about a dozen others in an Iranian cluster-bomb attack.

“Iran’s use of cluster munitions in populated areas pose a foreseeable and long-lasting danger to civilians,” said Patrick Thompson, crisis, conflict and arms researcher at Human Rights Watch. “Cluster-munition bomblets are dispersed over a wide area, making them unlawfully indiscriminate in violation of the laws of war.”

The present mayor of New York City was silent as Iran sent cluster bombs to the Palestinian Authority-controlled West Bank. He was silent when the Iranians sent missiles and drones to Azerbaijan, Bahrain, the United Arab Emirates and other Muslim countries across the Middle East. In fact, the Iranians even targeted NATO-member Turkey on more than one instance and Cyprus, a member of the European Union. Yet Mamdani was mum.

In the Nachshivan region of Azerbaijan, four civilians were wounded when the Iranians attacked the South Caucasus country with attack drones. An Iranian drone strike on a residential neighborhood in Sitra, south of Manama, Bahrain, resulted in 32 civilian injuries. Several children were among the injured, with four children reported to be in critical condition requiring emergency surgery. As of late April, Iranian missile and drone attacks targeting the UAE have resulted in at least 13 deaths, including 10 to 12 civilians.

Where is Mamdani’s outrage for the death and maiming of his fellow Muslims by the Iranian regime?

Mamdani claims to care about children. In a recent photo shoot, he pictured himself reading to schoolchildren together with former President Barack Obama. However, he doesn’t seem to care much about the well-being of Iranian children. “There is no excuse for a military recruitment drive that targets children to sign up, much less 12-year-olds,” said Bill Van Esveld, associate children’s rights director at Human Rights Watch. “What this boils down to is that Iranian authorities are apparently willing to risk children’s lives for some extra manpower.” Mamdani, if you care about children, where is your outrage?

As mayor of the largest city in the United States, Mamdani has done everything so that Iranians in New York will feel secure despite the Iran war, even if they are IRGC agents under cover. Yet he appears to care much less about the plight of ethnic South Azerbaijani human-rights activist Narges Mohammadi, the 2023 Nobel Peace Prize laureate, who is currently imprisoned in Iran and who faces a cumulative total of more than 44 years behind bars. She has been arrested 13 times and convicted multiple times, often while in custody, for her activism against the death penalty, solitary confinement and mandatory hijab laws.

Mohammadi, 54, who has health issues, collapsed four times in prison, yet still has not been given the chance to see a doctor. How can Mamdani, who claims to care about human rights, not care about her rights—a fellow Muslim suffering daily under totalitarian mullah rule in Iran?

Mamdani is not only silent about violations by the Iranian government. In 2020, the Armenian armed forces attacked the city of Ganja in Azerbaijan with five missiles, killing up to 32 civilians and maiming at least 175 others. Among the slain were women and at least six children. An entire residential street in the city of Ganja was leveled to the ground, with many homes destroyed.

Sadly, the mayor had absolutely nothing to say about this grave human-rights violation.

It appears that Mamdani isn’t such a rights activist at all. If he is, then he is quite selective about which humans he cares about.

Source: https://www.jns.org/opinion/ahmed-y-obali/is-the-new-york-mayors-claim-of-being-a-human-rights-activist-a-sham