UN Watch Defends UN Charter & Human Rights from Durban 2 Distortions

http://www.unwatch.org
UN Watch Intervention, 10 October 2008
Durban Review Conference
Delivered by Hillel Neuer

May I congratulate you, Mr. Chairman, on your assumption of this important task, to address concrete measures to combat all manifestations of racism, racial discrimination, xenophobia and related intolerance, and to implement the undertakings of the international community toward this end.

We wish to comment on the various proposals, and to offer several of our own.

In undertaking such task, this committee must be guided by the principles of the United Nations Charter of 1945, which guarantees human dignity and the equal rights of men and women, and the equal rights of all nations, large and small.

Equally must our committee be bound by the Universal Declaration of Human Rights of 1948, which was enacted, as stated in its Preamble, in wake of the contempt for human rights and the barbarous acts that outraged the conscience of mankind.

Indeed, those barbarous acts—six million acts of murder, which formed the Nazi genocide against the Jews—were preceded by a propaganda campaign, designed to promote hatred, to demonize and dehumanize the intended victims. With that in mind, Article 4 of the Convention on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination condemned such propaganda and prohibited states from inciting to racial hatred.

Before us today are proposals from the Asian groups submission. We just heard Iran and Syria propose paragraphs 68 and 69, which accuse Israel of, and I quote, practices of racial discrimination against the Palestinians and other inhabitants of the Arab occupied territories. [end quote] Related provisions accuse Israel of racial practices against Palestinians, and of committing a new kind of apartheid, a crime against humanity, a form of genocide, as well as aggression and acts of racism.

This text appears is new, appearing in a document just issued. Yet all here who are familiar with the events of the 2001 Durban conference will immediately recognize this text, because they are a reproduction, virtually verbatim, of the 2001 Tehran Declaration.

Category:

News & Politics

Tags:

• UN
• Watch
• United
• Nations
• anti-Semitism
• Durban
• Review
• Conference
• racism
• apartheid
• Hillel
• Neuer
• Israel
• Tehran
• II