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volker türk
UN Human Rights Chief Calls Out Trump FCC for Threatening Media Over Iran War Coverage
"Full respect for media independence and freedoms is all the more important in such circumstances, as fundamental to holding governments to public account," said Volker Türk.
Apr 01, 2026
The United Nations' top human rights official on Tuesday accused a Trump administration agency of attempting to "limit media freedom" by publicly threatening outlets engaged in critical coverage of the Iran war.
Volker Türk, the UN human rights chief, specifically called out the US Federal Communications Commission (FCC) over its chairman's threat last month to pull the broadcast licenses of broadcasters accused by the administration of "news distortions." FCC Chair Brendan Carr issued the threat in response to a March 14 tirade by US President Donald Trump, who baselessly condemned The Wall Street Journal and other media outlets for publishing "intentionally misleading" war coverage.
Türk's mention of the FCC came at the tail-end of a statement decrying the "deepening clampdown on freedom of expression" amid the US-Israeli war on Iran. The UN official pointed to mass arbitrary detentions in Qatar, the United Arab Emirates, the Israeli-occupied Palestinian territories, and Iran, as well as crackdowns on free assembly.
"There have also been attempts to limit media freedom, such as restrictions imposed by Israeli military censorship authorities, and a threat by the US Federal Communications Commission to revoke broadcast licenses for coverage deemed critical of the war," said Türk. "Full respect for media independence and freedoms is all the more important in such circumstances, as fundamental to holding governments to public account. The exercise of such rights must be protected, not threatened."
A day after the FCC chief threatened broadcasters, Trump floated "treason" charges against media outlets he accused of spreading "false information"—something the president does constantly.
Tom Jones, senior media writer at Poynter, wrote earlier this week that "perhaps the most dangerous figure in Trump’s aggression against the press is Brendan Carr," who "made his feelings abundantly clear at the Conservative Political Action Conference in Texas on Friday."
"He bragged about the damage Trump has done to the media," Jones wrote. "Carr told an approving crowd, 'Look at the results so far. PBS, defunded. NPR, defunded. Joy Reid, gone from MSNBC. Sleepy-eyes Chuck Todd, gone. Jim Acosta, gone. John Dickerson, gone. Stephen Colbert is leaving. CBS is under new ownership, and soon enough, CNN is going to have new ownership as well.'"
"Then," Jones added, "he chillingly said, 'So, we’re not at the point yet where we’re raising the mission accomplished flag, but President Trump is taking on the fake news media, and President Trump is winning.'"
Carr's attack on broadcasters over their Iran war coverage led Sen. Ed Markey (D-Mass.) to reiterate his call for the FCC chair's resignation. In a letter to Carr, Markey wrote that the chairman's threat demonstrated his "continued effort to turn the FCC into Trump’s personal speech police."
Carr's threat to pull media outlets' broadcast licenses "follows that same logic but extends it to the coverage of an active military conflict, where the chilling effect on journalists and the damage to the public’s right to know are most severe."
Other Trump administration officials, most notably Pentagon Secretary Pete Hegseth, have vocally complained about press coverage of the illegal Iran war, describing American media outlets as insufficiently "patriotic."
Under Hegseth's leadership, the Pentagon recently ramped up its crackdown on journalists' access to the department following a court ruling against earlier press restrictions. As part of the new crackdown, the Pentagon closed a press area known as Correspondents' Corridor and moved reporters to an unfinished annex in a separate building.
“Closing the Correspondents’ Corridor and forcing escorted access undermines independent reporting at the Pentagon at a moment when the public needs clear, unfiltered information about the US military," said Mark Schoeff Jr., president of the National Press Club. "Independent reporting on the US military is not optional. It is essential to accountability, transparency, and public trust. Any policy that curtails that access should concern everyone who values a free and informed society.”
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'A War Crime': UN Rights Chief Urges Immediate Repeal of Israel's New Death Penalty Law
UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Volker Türk said the new law "raises serious concerns about due process violations, is deeply discriminatory, and must be promptly repealed.”
Mar 31, 2026
The top United Nations human rights official was among those who on Tuesday urged Israel to repeal legislation it passed the previous day legalizing the hanging of Palestinians convicted of terrorism-related killing of Israelis—a law critics contend will not apply to Israelis who commit similar crimes.
The law passed by the Israeli Knesset states that Palestinians must be hanged within 90 days if convicted of nationalistic killings in a military court. While the legislation does not allow pardons, it gives judges discretionary power when it comes to sentencing Israeli citizens convicted of similar crimes, and observers say it's highly unlikely that any Israeli would ever be hanged under the law.
Experts argue the 90-day provision and lack of appellate process are violations of international humanitarian law.
“It is deeply disappointing that this bill has been approved by the Knesset,” UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Volker Türk said Tuesday. “It is patently inconsistent with Israel’s international law obligations, including in relation to the right to life. It raises serious concerns about due process violations, is deeply discriminatory, and must be promptly repealed.”
“The death penalty is profoundly difficult to reconcile with human dignity, and it raises the unacceptable risk of executing innocent people,” he added. “Its application in a discriminatory manner would constitute an additional, particularly egregious violation of international law. Its application to residents of the occupied Palestinian territory would constitute a war crime.”
While proponents of the law—some of whom, like Israeli National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir, celebrated its passage—say they believe it will deter Palestinians from killing Israelis, studies in the United States, the only Western democracy that actively executes people, have repeatedly shown that the death penalty is not a deterrent to crime.
Palestinians and their defenders have also warned that the law could open the door to mass executions, including of anyone found to have killed Israelis during the October 7, 2023 Hamas-led attack, for which Israel retaliated with an ongoing assault and siege that has left more than 250,000 Palestinians dead, maimed, or missing.
“Trials for crimes related to October 7 are supremely important, but they must not be anchored in discrimination," said Türk. "All victims are entitled to equal protection of the law, and all perpetrators must be held accountable without discrimination.”
Other human rights defenders also condemned the new Israeli law and called for its repeal.
"The Israeli parliament's adoption of a racist law authorizing the hanging of Palestinian prisoners is the very definition of apartheid," the Washington, DC-based Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) said in a statement Tuesday. "Even the South African apartheid government never adopted a death penalty law so explicitly racist."
Taking aim at Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu—who is wanted by the International Criminal Court for alleged crimes against humanity and war crimes in Gaza—CAIR continued, "The Netanyahu regime is completely out of control because our nation continues to bankroll its crimes, from the de facto annexation of the West Bank to the genocide in Gaza, to the ethnic cleansing of southern Lebanon, to the occupation of Syria, to the illegal war with Iran that it triggered, to the closure of Christian and Muslim holy sites in Jerusalem."
“Congress is not just failing to act, it is actively advancing more military support while treating that US taxpayer funding as automatic, even as these abuses escalate," the group added. "Every member of Congress—especially Democratic leaders of the House and Senate—must condemn these crimes, including the racist execution law, and announce their opposition to any further military funding for the Israeli apartheid regime."
A 2024 ruling by the International Court of Justice in The Hague—where Israel is also facing a genocide case brought by South Africa in response to the US-backed war on Gaza—affirmed that the Israeli occupation of Palestine is an illegal form of apartheid that must be ended.
More than 9,500 Palestinians are currently locked up in Israeli prisons, including 350 children and 73 women, according to advocacy groups. Palestinian and Israeli human rights defenders say detainees face torture, starvation, and medical neglect behind bars, causing many deaths.
Former prisoners as well as Israeli staff and medical personnel say they have witnessed torture at prisons including Sde Teiman, the most infamous of Israel's lockups, with victims ranging from children to the elderly.
Israeli physicians who worked at Sde Teiman described widespread serious injuries caused by 24-hour shackling of hands and feet that sometimes required amputations. Palestinians taken by Israeli forces recounted rapes and sexually assaults by male and female soldiers, electrocution, maulings by dogs, denial of food and water, sleep deprivation, and other torture.
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'Slaughtered in Cold Blood': Iranians Describe US Massacre of School Children to UN Human Rights Council
"Israel and the United States, who are the cause of this suffering, must be held accountable," said a mother whose two children were killed in the school strike. "Not for revenge, but for justice."
Mar 27, 2026
A grieving Iranian mother told the United Nations Human Rights Council on Friday that when she sent her children off to their elementary school in the city of Minab late last month, "there was no sign that this would be the last time."
Speaking via video link to the 47-member UN body, Mohaddeseh Fallahat described combing the hair of Mahdiyeh and Amin, two of the more than 100 children killed in a US missile strike on Shajareh Tayyebeh Elementary School on February 28, the first day of the war.
"No mother is prepared to hear the words, 'Your child is not coming back,'" Fallahat told the council. "I am not just a grieving mother. No. I am the voice of all the mothers who sent their children to school believing they would be safe. A school was meant to be a place of learning, laughing, and building the future—a safe place for the children who were supposed to build the future of this world, not a place where their future is extinguished in an instant."
"Israel and the United States, who are the cause of this suffering, must be held accountable," she continued. "Not for revenge, but for justice, so that the world knows that children's lives are not worthless."
Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi spoke after Fallahat, telling the council that the strike on the Minab elementary school was a crime, not a "miscalculation." Those killed in the attack, he said, were "slaughtered in cold blood."
“At a time when the American and Israeli aggressors, in their own assertion, possess the most advanced technologies and the highest precision military and data systems," said Araghchi, "no one can believe that the attack on the school was anything other than deliberate and intentional."
Preliminary findings in a US military investigation of the strike reportedly indicate that American forces were behind the attack, but that it was "the result of a targeting mistake" as the Trump administration conducted "strikes on an adjacent Iranian base of which the school building was formerly a part," according to The New York Times.
Volker Türk, the UN high commissioner for human rights, called for the US to complete its investigation "as soon as possible" and release the findings to the public.
"There must be justice for the terrible harm done," Türk said during Friday's human rights council session.
More broadly, the human rights chief called on the US and Israel to "end their attacks against Iran" and "return to negotiations—the only path towards a durable solution to their differences."
"There is a high and rising risk of further contagion and increased civilian suffering in the countries directly involved," said Türk. "Beyond the region, there are fears of grave economic consequences, from deepening poverty and hunger to shortages of medicine and fuel. It is imperative that all parties halt the escalation."
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