By Tara Kyle
DNAinfo Reporter/Producer
MIDTOWN EAST — UN delegates from the United States, the United Kingdom and France expressed their displeasure with Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad on Monday by walking out as he addressed a conference on the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty.
Outside on First Avenue, small groups of non-UN protesters expressed their outrage.
“We lost our dignity as Iranians,” said Cyrus Sheres, 29, a contractor from Brooklyn who moved to the United States from Iran a decade ago. “It’s an insult to us that such a sophisticated civilization in the world has to have such a brutal, oppressive government that doesn’t really represent Iranians.”
Members of Iranian solidarity group Where Is My Vote wore green — the color associated with opposition leader Mir Hossein Mousavi — and called for more attention to be focused on Iranian students, women’s rights activists and other Iranians who risk their lives by protesting against the government.
“Unfortunately, what we’ve seen is a continuous discussion about the nuclear program and virtually nothing about the human rights condition,” said group co-founder and attorney Bitta Mostofi of Brooklyn said of the UN conference.
At another designated area near the UN set aside for protest groups, Representatives from Neturei Karta, an Orthodox Jewish organization opposed to Zionism, marched to express their view that Israeli accusations of Iranian anti-Semitism are “totally wrong, totally false, and extremely dangerous for Jews and for humanity,” said Rabbi Dovid Feldman.
Neturei Karta’s presence triggered arguments between demonstrators and passers-by.
Meanwhile, a advocacy group called Free the Hikers held a rally in support of the three Americans jailed since July 2009 for crossing an unmarked border between Iran and Iraqi Kurdistan.
“We’re out here less to protest and more as a rally to let people know that our friends are being held, said Jennie Heinlein, 27, a Brooklyn social worker. "Countries can have their conflicts — for us this is more about innocent citizens being held unjustly for an extreme amount of time.”
The demonstrations drew few onlookers. Activists cited the late announcement of Ahmadinejad’s visit, as well as its Monday mid-morning timing.
