In the Media

The Daily Telegraph – 12 January 2026

Once again, brave Iranian men and women are risking everything, including their lives, to demand their basic rights and dignity, in standing up to one of the most savage regimes on earth.

Conservative estimates are that at least 2,000 people have been killed by the regime’s forces over the past 48 hours, as the daily protests now conclude their second week.

All of this is happening even as the regime enforces near total internet shutdown, deliberately trying to hide its own brutality. That the truth is still emerging despite these efforts, makes the silence from much of the self-styled “human rights” community not only utterly deafening, but inexcusable.

These are the same voices who never miss an opportunity to denounce Israel; the same activists who can mobilise within hours to flood the streets, chant slogans, wave placards and issue breathless condemnations whenever the Jewish state dares to defend itself.

Yet when Iranians rise up against a regime that hangs gays from cranes, polices womens’ bodies and dress, crushes minorities and exports terror across the Middle East, suddenly the megaphones go quiet.

Where was the march in solidarity with the Iranian people across the Sydney Harbour Bridge?

Where were the tens of thousands demanding freedom for Iranians in Federation Square, Melbourne?

Why was there no protest outside Parliament House in Canberra?

Yet instead of marching for Iranian women being beaten for refusing to wear the hijab, or for protesters being hauled off to prison after demanding help to survive escalating poverty, this weekend Melbourne’s streets once again filled with demonstrators protesting against Israel, even as we still mourn the fifteen people murdered in the Bondi terror attack.

Allow that to that sink in for a moment.

As Iranians are being shot, imprisoned and executed by their own government, the priority for many of these so-called “human rights” activists was not Tehran, Shiraz or Mashhad, but still Israel. This occurred even as their previous excuses for breaking all norms related to protests no longer apply – the ceasefire protestors long demanded is in place and violence, while not completely ended, is greatly reduced, while more humanitarian aid is rolling into Gaza every day than the UN previously said it needs.

This is not accidental or mere oversight. It is hypocrisy, plain and simple, and it epitomizes the collapse of moral consistency in the international human-rights movement.

When an issue is deemed fashionable or ideologically convenient, the crowds come out in force. Streets are shut down. Media coverage is wall-to-wall.

For too many in the activist class, “human rights” has become about slogans and fashionable causes, not universal principle. The term has become a political weapon, not a moral compass. Abuses committed by regimes that fit their ideological worldview, particularly those that define themselves in opposition to the West or to Israel, are minimized, excused or simply ignored.

Israel – falsely viewed as the epitome of “imperialism” – by contrast, is held to a standard no other country is expected to meet. It is demonised, obsessively scrutinized and routinely accused of crimes without basis, context or proportion. This obsession is so all-consuming that it crowds out concern for genuine victims of oppression elsewhere, like Iran now.

The Iranian people deserve better – as do many other victims of the oppression, from the Uighurs, to the Rohinga, to the Darfuris.

They deserve the same solidarity, the same amplification, the same outrage that activists so readily extend to causes they find politically comfortable. They deserve to know that their suffering matters, not only when it can be weaponised against Israel or the West, but in and of itself.

The irony is painful. The very regime crushing Iranian protesters is the same regime that arms and funds Hamas, Hezbollah and Islamic Jihad; the same regime that openly calls for Israel’s destruction; the same regime that fuels instability and bloodshed across the region; the same regime that can be held largely responsible for sparking the terrible war which led to the Palestinian suffering which supposedly so incensed the protestors.

Standing with the Iranian people is not just a human rights imperative, it is a stand against the world’s foremost state sponsor of terror. And it is also a stand against an actor which has made Israel-Palestinian coexistence and peace all but impossible.

And yet, many who claim to oppose “oppression” cannot bring themselves to say so clearly.

If the so-called human rights champions cannot find their voice when heroic Iranians are bravely confronting tyranny in the streets, then perhaps it is time to stop pretending they care about human rights at all.

Because real human rights advocacy does not depend on the identity of the oppressor or the political utility of the victim. It depends on principle. And right now, such principle is sorely missing for so many of those who claim to be advocating for “human rights”.

Arsen Ostrovsky is a human rights lawyer and Head of the Sydney Office of the Australia/Israel & Jewish Affairs Council.