Iranian top rights official has condemned as crime against humanity the unilateral sanctions against Tehran stressing that such sanctions undermine rights of the Iranian nation.

Kazem Gharibabadi, the secretary of Iran’s High Council for Human Rights, made the remarks while addressing an international human rights conference in Tehran themed the impact of sanctions on patients’ health.

“Experts view the sanctions as a warfare tool, as the bans impact whole nations and ordinary people suffer from them,” he said. “The sanctions are also acts of genocide, as they sometimes target certain groups of people, including special disease patients.”

Gharibabadi said the broad Western bans violate various rights of people, including their right to life, food, healthcare, education, development, and a free trial.

“The sanctions have blocked 150 to 200 billion dollars in Iranian oil revenues over the past years. When the oil sale of a country is banned, it is the development of the infrastructure of that country that they want to destroy,” he said.

“They blacklist people without providing any evidence or giving them any chance to defend themselves,” he said.

Gharibabadi cited a May report on the impact of anti-Iran sanctions by Alena Douhan, UN Special Rapporteur on the negative impact of unilateral coercive measures on human rights.

The Iranian official said the report shows the US threats have forced banks, insurance firms and transport companies to shy away from cooperating with Iranians, rendering the so-called humanitarian exemptions issued by the US practically useless.

“The Americans block money transfer channels and threaten insurance firms not to cooperate with Iran. What they write on paper is something and what they do is something else,” he said, referring to the US claim that drug imports are not subject to its sanctions.