Category Archives: UN HRC
National Post: Canada and Durban II
April 28, 2009, 7:30 AM by NP Editor
We Canadians are often too polite to say, “I told you so.” But 16 months after we told the world that the Durban “anti-racism” conference was anything but, we have been vindicated. Canada was the first nation to pull out of the Durban II conference and to cut off funds for NGO participation. Countries like Italy, Australia, New Zealand, the Netherlands, Germany, Poland, Israel and the United States of America followed us. Many other nations later walked out of the conference when Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad poured verbal acid all over Israel, the United States and Europe.
As Ahmadinejad was speaking in Geneva, I too was giving a speech in the same city — at a true anti-racism conference organized to protest against the Iranian President and Durban II in general. UN Watch, the invaluable NGO, helped to host the event, which included presentations by Harvard legal scholar Alan Dershowitz and legendary soviet prison camp survivor Natan Sharansky. Everyone at the meeting praised Canada and Prime Minister Stephen Harper for leading the world in staying away from Durban II.
As a prescient lead-up to the conference, I joined the International March of the Living Mission in Poland, where we visited the remains of Auschwitz and Birkenau, two of the most infamous Nazi death camps. Thousands of students marched through the camps commemorating victims of the Holocaust and celebrating its survivors.
Continue Reading →
Anne Bayefski at Durban II
Iran interrupts Anne Bayefski at Durban.
Anne Bayefsky on Durban II. The outrage continues
Jewish World Review April 23, 2009 / 29 Nissan 5769
The outrage continues
By Anne Bayefsky
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http://www.JewishWorldReview.com | The UN’s racist anti-racism conference “Durban II” rammed through a final declaration three days before its scheduled conclusion. On Monday Iranian President Ahamadinejad had opened the substantive program by denying the Holocaust and spewing antisemitism. A day later UN members rewarded Iran by electing it one of three Vice-Chairs of the committee which adopted the final declaration.
The committee meeting was chaired by Libya and lasted fifteen minutes. No discussion of the merits of the Durban II declaration was tolerated.
The document reaffirms the 2001 Durban Declaration which alleges Palestinians are victims of Israeli racism and mentions only Israel among all 192 UN member states. It also multiplies the anti-Israel provisions, using the usual UN code, by adding yet another rant about racist foreign occupation.
Not surprisingly, such a manifesto encouraged the racists and antisemites which had pressed for its adoption. Speaking on Tuesday the Syrian Minister of Foreign Affairs, Faysal Mekdad, alleged “the right of return” of Jews to Israel — Jewish self-determination — was “a form of racial discrimination”. He also objected to the “Judaization of Israel” and to the “ethnic cleansing…of 1948.”
Palestinian Riyad Al-Maliki claimed that “for over 60 years the Palestinian people has been suffering under…the ugliest face of racism and racial discrimination…” and said an Israeli government “declaration…regarding the Jewish nature of the state is a form of racism, racial discrimination, xenophobia and related intolerance.” Al-Maliki was delighted with the result of the conference and gloated by reading excerpts from the 2001 Durban Declaration that he was pleased to see had been reaffirmed.
The remnants of the European Union which remained inside the conference — in particular France and the United Kingdom — entirely ignored their many promises not to accept anything which singled out the Jewish state. Though these Europeans undoubtedly enabled the hatemongering, their excuses in the coming days are predictable.
Dr. Phyllis Chesler’s April 21, 2009 Speech about Muslim Women’s Rights
For many years, the United Nations has conducted itself in ways that range from the ridiculous to the surreal. They have been utterly ineffective in all things save one: the legalization of Jew-hatred. That grim project continues to gather force and is now a potentially genocidal one. The current Durban II conference is more of the same diabolical Mad Hatters party. But make no mistake: The UN and the Organization of Islamic States take themselves very seriously. They think there is nothing illogical, biased, perverted, or even “racist” about their condemnation of the Jewish state.
The failure to stop Durban I not only led to Durban II. It played a role in the escalating and never-ending intifada against Israel and in the “hate Israel” mob demonstrations in the Islamic world and in the West, including on American and European campuses that have taken place ever since.
Let me suggest that President Ahmadinejad means exactly what he says. He does plan to implement another Holocaust against the Jews. We deny this at our own peril. And, Amadinejad does plan to “play,” shame and, if possible, defeat America in terms of Iran’s obtaining and using nuclear power. The arrest of Iranian-American journalist, Roxana Sabari, as an American “spy” is only the first of many steps in response to President Obama’s open hand and conciliatory tone.
Dr. Phyllis Chesler speaking at the Durban II Counter Conference, April 21, 2009, Fordham Law School, NYC
I have just returned from speaking at the second day of the Durban II “Counter-Conference” in New York City, organized by the American Association of Jewish Lawyers and Jurists (AAJLJ) and co-sponsored by an additional twenty six Jewish organizations , including NYC’s The Jewish Week. I hope that someday soon, many Christian, Hindu, Buddhist, and Muslim groups will organize similar counter-conferences along with Jewish groups.
The “Counter-conference” took place at Fordham University Law School and is running for five days to parallel Durban II in Geneva. Many good people are speaking here including Hon. Scott Stringer, Hon. Carolyn Maloney, Ambassador Richard Schifter, Hon. Jerahmiel S. Grafstein, Samuel M. Edelman, Ali H. Alyami, Andrew Apostolou, Jacqueline Murakatete, Ambassador Daniel Carmon, Hon. Irwin Cotler, Charles Asher Small, Michael Meyers, etc.
Some audience members at the Durban II Counter Conference
It is hard to know what to do when evil gets up on it’s hind-legs and preaches to the crowd. Keeping away is one sane approach and I am very glad that a number of governments, our own included, decided to do that. Getting up and walking out is nice too–that’s what some European countries did but they knew all along what kind of speech Amadinejad was going to make and they came anyway. (America only pulled out of Durban II at the very last possible moment). Demonstrating outside the forum held hostage to evil and hate speech is another chosen path. That is happening in Geneva as well. Finally, organizing a counter-conference elsewhere is also an honorable thing to do, which is why I agreed to speak.
Let me say that it is an outrage for America to pretend that the United Nations, as we know it, is worth funding. The organization has embarked on a very dangerous course which we, in the democratic nations, will have to stop, sooner or later. Sooner is always wiser. Continue Reading →
CBC interviews Naomi Klein, and badgers Anne Bayefsky
Think there may be a little bias at the BBC? Only their ombudsman would know for sure.
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Must see video. UN-HRC put in it’s place. From UN watch
The Durban II Snow Job: One giant leap backwards for humankind
The UN’s idea of an anti-racism conference entered the final stretch today with the planning committee deciding Iran ought to preside as a Vice-Chair, Libya will serve as the Chair of the “Main Committee” running the conference and Cuba will be the Rapporteur. All three human rights paragons will assume their new duties on the first day of “Durban II” set for Monday, April 20th.
Although the flowers are blooming by Lake Geneva, these Durban II preparations are best described as a massive snow job. The UN had set aside three days this week to hammer out a final document to be adopted formally at the conference itself. But Libyan Chair Najat Al-Hajjaji adjourned the meeting half an hour after it began – despite the fact that half of the 142-paragraph draft manifesto has not yet been agreed.
Al-Hajjaji is serving as the front for the Organization of the Islamic Conference (OIC) . Her not-so-hidden agenda is shared by the Secretary-General of Durban II, UN High Commissioner Navi Pillay. For Pillay, a native of Durban, South Africa, the Durban Declaration’s stature is of biblical proportion. Sitting at the podium side-by-side, Al-Hajjaji and Pillay’s strategy became painfully obvious to the hundreds of assembled diplomats and NGO representatives who thought they had came to talk about combating racism.
Their maneuver had two main elements. First, run out the clock. By adjourning rapidly, and probably for most of the next two days, the conference will be bound to start on Monday with the European Union at the table and the threat of a democratic pull-out gone. All UN diplomats are well aware of the fact that the EU will agree to just about anything when faced with the spectacle of a “failed” UN conference. EU members don’t have the numbers to prevail at the UN if a vote is called and therefore feign consensus instead of appearing to be “losers” to the folks back home. They are also fond of the UN as a means to outweigh the United States 27-1. And EU states wilt at the prospect of being labeled former colonial racists (by racists from the developing world.)
The second Al-Hajjaji-Pillay/OIC-UN move is to keep all disagreements behind closed doors as long as possible. This way, the damage done to combating racism in the backroom negotiations will be in the form of indecipherable ambiguous UN-eze by the time it is a done deal.
When Al-Hajjaji clocked out 30 minutes after showing up for work, she asked delegates to pick up a new draft of the “Durban II Outcome Document” on their way out the door. Little wonder she wanted no opportunity for public discussion. Here is what can be found in the latest draft of the UN’s new “anti-racism” bible:
- Condemnation of “foreign occupation” – aka Israel-bashing. Foreign occupation is said to be “closely associated with racism, racial discrimination…and contribute to the persistence of racist attitudes and practices…” In other words, labeling the Jewish nation as the world’s racist state is back.
- “Defamation of religions” returns under a new guise. The document professes “deep concern” about “the negative stereotyping of religions.”
- More of the Islamic assault on free speech. The draft “reaffirms that all dissemination of ideas based on…incitement to racial discrimination…shall be declared offences punishable by law…”
- More Iranian-driven references to “cultural diversity” – the diplomatic cover for the murder of homosexuals, judicially-sanctioned amputation of hands and feet, and the stoning of woman for alleged adultery.
- Renewed emphasis on the “transatlantic slave trade” and total rejection of a proposed mention of the trans-Saharan slave trade perpetrated by Arabs and other Africans.
- Additional emphasis on the adoption of “complementary standards” on racism and xenophobia – an Islamic idea designed to subvert the universal principles in existing treaties.
And lest anyone be under the impression that Durban II will go away come April 25th, the draft demands that the Durban Declaration be implemented or “mainstreamed” “in the whole UN system” forevermore.
Silencing public commentary on the abomination was not the only thing the OIC-UN nexus accomplished in the space of thirty minutes. Also quickly gaveled without comment was approval of 81 NGOs to participate in Durban II. Included among these illustrious “human rights” partners:
- The Independent Jewish Voices – a network composed largely of anti-Zionists preoccupied with driving a wedge between Jews and Israel.
- The Palestine Return Center which objects to the creation of a Jewish state with the tale of “ethnic cleansing of Palestine that began more than sixty years ago”.
- The Gaddafi International Charity and Development Foundation, headed by the son of Muammar al-Gaddafi. This fellow still insists that the Libyans convicted of the bombing of PanAm flight 103 were innocent.
- Continue Reading →
U.N Watch briefing. US returns to HRC
UN Watch Briefing
News and Analysis from UN Watch in Geneva Vol. 188 | March 31, 2009
U.S. Return to U.N. Council Justified If Obama Fights Orwellian Agenda
By Hillel Neuer
U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton announced today that Washington will seek membershp in the U.N. Human Rights Council, reversing the Bush Administration’s decision to steer clear of the deeply troubled body, created in 2006 ostensibly to reform its discredited predecessor.
Elections for rotating membership on the 47-nation council will take place at the General Assembly in May, with all 192 U.N. member states casting a ballot. The U.S. under the popular President Obama is virtually assured of election to the one of only 7 seats reserved for Western states. African and Asian states exercise a controlling majority with 26 seats.
Pathologically obsessed with scapegoating Israel — in more than 80 percent of all country resolutions (26 out of 33) — the council’s sessions routinely legitimize perpetrators, while turning a blind eye to millions of human rights victims around the world.
Whether we like it or not, however, the council is a permanent forum whose resolutions, translated into every language, exercise global influence on hearts and minds. As the successor to the Commission on Human Rights, it has noble origins: the commission was founded by Eleanor Roosevelt with the purpose of defending human dignity, but in later years found itself increasingly hijacked by the new U.N. majorities.
Thank Canada for Defending Human Rights Principles
Thank Canada for Defending Human Rights Principles
Feel free to edit the letter or subject line as you like.
“Blame Canada?” No. Thank Canada — for its principled votes at the U.N. to resist the political agenda of bigots and tyrants. The U.N. Human Rights Council is wholly owned and operated by Islamic states that legitimize Hamas and Hezbollah terrorism, supported by an automatic majority from China, Cuba, and other repressive regimes. Canada is the only country that has been willing to stand up and resist Orwellian resolutions that are destroying the true principles of human rights.
Thank Canada for courageously opposing the cynical abuse of the U.N.’s founding principles of universality, equality and fairness.
Please go to the UN WATCH site to send an email to Stephen Harper directly which will be CC’d to the House of Commons in Ottawa by clicking this link.