International Ethical and Humanist Union

For the past eleven years the organisation of the Islamic Conference (OIC), representing the 57 Islamic States, has been tightening its grip on the throat of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Yesterday, 28 March 2008, they finally killed it.

With the support of their allies including China, Russia and Cuba (none well-known for their defence of human rights) the Islamic States succeeded in forcing through an amendment to a resolution on Freedom of Expression that has turned the entire concept on its head. The UN Special Rapporteur on Freedom of Expression will now be required to report on the “abuse” of this most cherished freedom by anyone who, for example, dares speak out against Sharia laws that require women to be stoned to death for adultery or young men to be hanged for being gay, or against the marriage of girls as young as nine, as in Iran.

Former UN Secretary General Kofi Annan saw the writing on the wall three years ago when he spoke of the old Commission on Human Rights having “become too selective and too political in its work”. Piecemeal reform would not be enough. The old system needed to be swept away and replaced by something better. The Human Rights Council was supposed to be that new start, a Council whose members genuinely supported, and were prepared to defend, the principles of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

Yet since its inception in June 2006, the Human Rights Council has failed to condemn the most egregious examples of human rights abuse in the Sudan, Byelorussia, Iran, Saudi Arabia, China and elsewhere, whilst repeatedly condemning Israel and Israel alone.

Three years later Annan’s dream lies shattered, and the Human Rights Council stands exposed as incapable of fulfilling its central role: the promotion and protection of human rights. The Council died yesterday in Geneva, and with it the Universal Declaration of Human Rights whose 60th anniversary we were actually celebrating this year.

There has been a seismic shift in the balance of power in the UN system. For over a decade the Islamic States have been flexing their muscles. Yesterday they struck. There can no longer be any pretence that the Human Rights Council can defend human rights. The moral leadership of the UN system has moved from the States who created the UN in the aftermath of the Second World War, committed to the concepts of equality, individual freedom and the rule of law, to the Islamic States, whose allegiance is to a narrow, medieval worldview defined exclusively in terms of man’s duties towards Allah, and to their fellow-travellers, the States who see their future economic and political interests as being best served by their alliances with the Islamic States.

Yesterday’s attack by the Islamists, led by Pakistan, had the subtlety of a thin-bladed knife slipped silently under the ribs of the Human Rights Council. At first reading the amendment to the resolution to renew the mandate of the Special Rapporteur on Freedom of Expression might seem reasonable. It requires the Special Rapporteur:

“To report on instances in which the abuse of the right of freedom of expression constitutes an act of racial or religious discrimination …”

For Canada, who had fought long and hard as main sponsor of this resolution to renew the mandate of the Special Rapporteur, this was too much. The internationally agreed limits to Freedom of Expression are detailed in article 19 of the legally binding International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights and are already referred to in the preamble to the resolution. If abuse of freedom of expression infringed anyone’s freedom of religion, for example, it would fall within the scope of the Special Rapporteur on Freedom of Religion. To add it here was unnecessary duplication, and “Requesting the Special Rapporteur to report on abuses of [this right] would turn the mandate on its head. Instead of promoting freedom of expression the Special Rapporteur would be policing its exercise … If this amendment is adopted, Canada will withdraw its sponsorship from the main resolution.”

Canada’s position was echoed by several delegations including India, who objected to the change of focus from protecting to limiting freedom of expression. The European Union, the United Kingdom (speaking for Australia and the United States), India, Brazil, Bolivia, Guatemala and Switzerland all withdrew their sponsorship of the main resolution when the amendment was passed. In total, more than 20 of the original 53 co-sponsors of the resolution withdrew their support.

On the vote, the amendment was adopted by 27 votes to 15 against, with three abstentions.
The Sri Lankan delegate explained clearly his reasons for supporting the amendment:

“.. if we regulate certain things ‘minimally’ we may be able to prevent them from being enacted violently on the streets of our towns and cities.”

In other words: Don’t exercise your right to freedom of expression because your opponents may become violent. For the first time in the 60 year history of UN Human Rights bodies, a fundamental human right has been limited simply because of the possible violent reaction by the enemies of human rights.

The violence we have seen played out in reaction to the Danish cartoons is thus excused by the Council – it was the cartoonists whose freedom of expression needed to be regulated. And Theo van Gogh can be deemed responsible for his own death.

Freedom of expression is that right which – uniquely – enables us to expose, communicate and condemn abuse of all our other rights. Without freedom of expression and freedom of the press we give the green light to tyranny and make it impossible to expose corruption, incompetence, injustice and oppression.

But however important freedom of expression may be for us who live in the West, its overwhelming importance for those who live under the tyranny of Islamic law was highlighted by a courageous group of 21 NGOs from the Islamic States who issued a statement yesterday appealing to delegations to oppose the amendment. See http://www.article19.org/pdfs/press/petition-hrc.pdf

Incredibly, following the vote on the amendment, the Council descended even further into chaos. At the very last moment, Cuba introduced an oral amendment – clearly against the rules of procedure. When Canada objected they were overruled by the President. When Slovenia – on behalf of the European Union – tried to intervene on a point of order and ask for a ten-minute adjournment, they were ignored. When they tried to protest in another point of order their right to do so was challenged by Egypt, and the Egyptian objection was upheld.

The main resolution was then put to the vote and was adopted by 32 votes in favour, none against, with 15 abstentions.

The NGO community now needs to think carefully about what purpose can any longer be served by continuing our engagement with the Human Rights Council, and by fighting for values that are no longer accepted within the UN system. I have personally been involved with the Human Rights Commission and Council for the past five years and can see little benefit in continuing. Our well-argued position papers are ignored, our speeches are interrupted with repeated and irrelevant points of order, and we are not even supported in our efforts by the western delegations who, shockingly, did not even vote against today’s travesty, but abstained.

The Universal Declaration of Human Rights died yesterday. Who knows when, or if, it can ever be revived.

I used to wonder what States who felt it necessary to kill people because they change their religion thought they were doing in the Human Rights Council. Now I know.

The wafer-thin sham of an international consensus on the promotion and protection of human rights has finally been exposed for what it was – a sham. The fragmentation of human rights now appears inevitable. The proposed Islamic Charter on Human Rights (read “Duties towards Allah”) will certainly go ahead, as will the creation of a parallel Islamic Council on Human Rights. But the OIC will nevertheless continue to attend and dominate the UN Human Rights Council, thereby ensuring its continuing emasculation and descent into total irrelevance.

Just five months before he and more than 20 of his colleagues were killed by a terrorist bomb in Baghdad, the then High Commissioner for Human Rights, Sergio Vieira de Mello, wrote:

“Membership of the Commission on Human Rights must carry responsibilities. I therefore wonder whether the time has not come for the Commission itself to develop a code of guidelines for access to membership of the Commission and a code of conduct for members while they serve on the Commission. After all the Commission on Human Rights has a duty to humanity and the members of the Commission must themselves set the example of adherence to the international human rights norms – in practice as well as in law…”

States who are genuinely concerned with human rights should immediately withdraw from the Council until such time as all member states as well as those offering themselves for election agree to honour their pledges, and undertake to expel any member state which, having been put on notice regarding its human rights record, fails to put its house in order within a reasonable timescale. Failing this, what better tribute to Sergio de Mello could there be than to create an alternative organisation – Kofi Annan’s organisation of the willing - whose members agree to adopt Sergio de Mello’s guidelines and code of conduct – and are actually held to account.

Our readers may also want to read this article by "Circe":

UN Human Rights Council: Agent of worldwide Islamization

A currently 'non-binding' resolution of the UNHRC (April 12th) to globally prohibit defamation (seems to mean any negative critique) of religion –particularly Islam, threatens all who love freedom of speech and the right to criticize all ideologies including those called 'religions'. It threatens all who live under (Islamic) religious persecution because they will nolonger be able to expose or challenge the evil religious text and laws that underpin their repression. And, this decision changes completely the role of the HRC from protecting human rights to protecting one religion- Islam.

The UN is becoming an agent of Islamic control and the worldwide imposition of Sharia which forbids any criticism of Islam!

It is horrifying enough that Victorians have already lost the right to publicly criticize religions- ie Islam, for fear of offending a Muslim (telling the truth is irrelevant!) and being charged under the insane Religious Vilification Act, now the whole world will be forbidden from criticizing a religion that some clearly interpret in a way that threatens all others! (If there wasn't a 'problem' with Islamic text/law it wouldn't need such protection from analysis and criticism! Without such criticism, alternative, more 'tolerant' interpretations are impossible).

The resolution, presented by Pakistan and driven by the Organisation of Islamic Conference (OIC) requires the monitoring of the situation of Muslim and Arab peoples throughout the world and the 'defamation' of Islam with a view to improving their situation and halting 'defamation' ie criticism! (The entire world suffering Islamic repression, violence and threats are ignored!)

The resolution and details of the discussion can be found at Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR).

Some council comments re resolution (A/HRC/4/L.12) -'The Council expresses deep concern at attempts to identify Islam with terrorism, violence and human rights violations; notes with deep concern the intensification of the campaign of defamation of religions, and the ethnic and religious profiling of Muslim minorities, in the aftermath of the tragic events of 11 September 2001; …….further urges all States to ensure that all public officials, including members of law enforcement bodies, the military, civil servants and educators, in the course of their official duties, respect different religions and beliefs (does this mean police must not intervene when a Muslim male is beating a female because Koran sura 4.34 and Islamic law gives him the right to beat her!! Likewise for child marriage- Islamic text and law allows the marriage of pre-pubescent girls!!) and do not discriminate against persons on the grounds of their religion or belief, and that any necessary and appropriate education or training is provided; invites the Special Rapporteur on contemporary forms of racism, racial discrimination, xenophobia and related intolerance to regularly report on all manifestations of defamation of religions and in particular on the serious implications of Islamophobia on the enjoyment of all rights (note it does NOT consider the serious, repressive effect of Islam and sharia on the freedom and rights of women, non-Muslims!!); and requests the High Commissioner for Human Rights to report to the Human Rights Council on the implementation of this resolution at its sixth session.

The vote:

In favour (24): Algeria, Azerbaijan, Bahrain, Bangladesh, Cameroon, China, Cuba, Djibouti, Gabon, Indonesia, Jordan, Malaysia, Mali, Mauritius, Mexico, Morocco, Pakistan, Philippines, Russian Federation, Saudi Arabia, Senegal, South Africa, Sri Lanka and Tunisia.
Against (14): Canada, Czech Republic, Finland, France, Germany, Guatemala, Japan, Netherlands, Poland, Republic of Korea, Romania, Switzerland, Ukraine and United Kingdom.
Abstentions (9): Argentina, Brazil, Ecuador, Ghana, India, Nigeria, Peru, Uruguay and Zambia.

More than a third of the council's membership are members of the 57-nation Organisation of the Islamic Conference. Aided by China, Russia, India, Cuba, African countries and possibly Latin America, they dominate HRC proceedings. Most of those counties which supported the resolution aren't democracies as we understand them, nor do they adhere to the UN Human Rights Declaration. Muslims wrote their own Islamic declaration because the UN rights conflicted with Islamic law yet these nations control the UNHRC!!!!

The extreme danger of this 'resolution' becomes obvious when a quick glance around the world (see below) shows that Islam/Muslims are the main threat to both Muslims and non-Muslims throughout Islamic and non-Muslim countries. Unbelievably the HRC doesn't concern itself with the widespread, extreme hatred and violence spread by Muslims against Jews, Christians, Buddhists, Hindus …all non-Muslims! Islamic countries and those with Muslim majorities either ban other religions or persecute non-Muslims. Such nations are the often listed in UN reports as the most repressive and totalitarian in the world. Frequently those carrying out the violence quote Islamic text and use sharia law to legitimate their acts yet we are forbidden from criticising this text and law! They are the vilest abusers of other religions (and the individuals following them!) and this won't stop particularly when the UN resolution really only protects Islam! While Muslims enjoy every right and protection in the west, this is not the case for non-Muslims anywhere in the Islamic world.

Decent religions don't require the 'protection' of this absurd 'resolution'. Muslims have long claimed they will make sharia international law –this brings such a frightening prospect closer!.'

The resolution confuses religion and race- Islam isn't a race but a religious/political ideology with serious consequences for all.
Similarly discrimination against individuals is a different issue to the right to criticize 'belief' which is essential in western, open democracies. In our democracies different views can be tolerated, ridiculed, criticized and publicly debated without inciting violence towards others- that is civilized society.

What happened to an individual's right to freedom of thought and expression and our right to protect our society? We have every right to criticize religions that preach hatred and violence, abuse and repress women, threaten others and display values, practices and laws that we find offensive and unacceptable in civilized society eg child marriage, beating women, polygamy and instant divorce for men, slavery and sex with slaves etc.

And, while wasting time protecting Islam from 'defamation', these atrocities occurred/continued worldwide in April:

1. Sudan:

The Arab/Muslim janjaweed have destroyed hundreds of villages, killing the inhabitants, raping women/children and stealing livestock and enslaving women and children including black Muslims. Not to mention the decades long slaughter, enslavement, rape and dispossession of Sudan's animists and Christians!

2. Palestine:

a) U.N. school in Gaza attacked; protesters complain "the U.N. 'is turning schools into nightclubs.'"
b) "Hamas steals Mickey Mouse image to teach hate and Islamic supremacy (Mickey called farfur!).
c) New statistics show the sharp increase in internal violence in Gaza. Christian bookshop, internet cafes bombed. In the first three months of this year, 147 Gazans, including 10 children, were killed by fellow Palestinians, according to the Palestinian human rights group Al-Mezan.
d) Calls for genocide: ---On 13 April 2007, at a mosque in Sudan, the Acting Palestinian Legislative Council Speaker Sheikh Ahmad Bahr of Hamas stated -"Oh Allah, vanquish the Jews and their supporters. Oh Allah, vanquish the Americans and their supporters. Oh Allah, count their numbers, and kill them all, down to the very last one.

---30 March 2007 – the last day of the fourth session of the Human Rights Council – Hamas spokesman Dr. Ismail Radwan ended his “prayers to Allah” in a sermon with these words, broadcast on the Palestinian Authority’s TV:
“The Hour [Resurrection] will not come until the Muslims will fight the Jews and the Muslims will kill them, and the rock and the tree will say:

‘Oh, Muslim, servant of Allah, there is a Jew behind me, kill him!’”
And he concluded, to a packed mosque audience, with a call for “Jihad-fighting worshippers”: ..liberation through the rifle (Palestinian Media Watch Bulletin (12 April 2007).

3. Pakistan:

a) Jihadist video shows boy (looks barely 12) beheading man. Abdul Sattar for Associated Press:
b) 'Adulterers' stoned, shot (The Age, March 17 2007 ) “Pro-Taliban activists in a Pakistani tribal area stoned and then shot dead two men and a woman for alleged adultery. About 800 tribesmen watched the executions

4. Turkey:

Christians were tortured for three hours before assailants slit their throat (april 2007). "He had scores of knife cuts on his thighs, his testicles, his rectum and his back," (Dr) Ugras said. "His fingers were sliced to the bone. It is obvious that these wounds had been inflicted to torture him," he said. Agence France Presse,

5. Morocco:

Two suicide bombers blew themselves up Saturday in Casablanca near an American cultural center, just days after three suicide attacks stoked new fears of terrorism in this North African kingdom, an official said.

6. Iraq and every Muslim country — violence against others – Muslim and non-Muslim!

Non-Muslim countries suffer Islamic violence:

7. Thailand:

a) 70 year old Buddhist killed, burned in Thai Muslim south
b) Several bombs, dead police, children, 3 Buddhists killed -one also beheaded, officer lost arm and leg. (Apr 18,Yahoo news)
c)Since the Muslim insurgency January 2004, 67 teachers have been murdered: shot in front of their class, beaten to death or set alight in a savage protest against the Thai education system. Another 80 have been injured. The military provides escorts for teachers to and from school in hundreds of towns across the three southern provinces of Yala, Pattani and Narathiwat

8. Sweden:

Malmö is Sweden's third largest city and by far the worst city in Scandinavia when it comes to Muslim aggression. Riots, rapes, arson, vandalism, violence here and elsewhere….many articles over along period including April!

9) Norway:

a) Islam critic beaten unconscious ( Aftenposten:) Norwegian-Somalian Kadra, who became famous in Norway for exposing imam support of female circumcision, was beaten unconscious on Thursday. "I was terrified. While I lay on the pavement they kicked me and screamed that I had trampled on the Koran. Several shouted Allah-o-akbar (God is great) and also recited from the Koran," Kadra told VG. Kadra linked the attack to recent remarks in VG where she said that the Koran’s views on women needed to be reinterpreted.

b) Two out of three charged with rape in Norway's capital are immigrants with a non-western background according to a police study. The number of rape cases is also rising steadily. While 65 percent of those charged with rape are classed as coming from a non-western background, this segment makes up only 14.3 percent (total!) of Oslo's population. Norwegian women were the victims in 80 percent of the cases.

10. Canada:

a) Two Montreal Muslims charged with crimes targeting city's Jewish community
b) Muslims beat newspaper editor, warn him to stop "writing against Islam" (Editor and Publisher,)

11. India:

Osama exhorts Muslims in India to join the jihad (Press Trust of India,)

12. Philippines:

a) 70,000 flee as Muslim leader declares jihad in Sulu province
b) Jihadists behead seven Christians, deliver heads to military

13. Britain:

Endless discovering of more and more 'terrorists', plots, weapons etc. This ongoing discovery of more terrorist plots, weapons, hate filled videos, DVD's etc, training of our citizens in violent jihad constantly occurs for all western countries.

14. Australia:

a) Bible-reading Sydney Muslim woman 'raped as punishment'.
b) Aussie cleric praises jihadists. (AAP) Canberra's senior Muslim cleric has praised Islamic jihadists in Iraq and Afghanistan. Mohammed Swaiti called on God to grant “victory to mujahideen (Muslim holy warriors)” worldwide. While Sheik Swaiti translated his sermon into English for non-Arabic-speaking members, the imam of Canberra's only mosque omitted the praise for Islamic jihadists in the English version.
c) RADICAL Islamic literature, DVDs and websites are proliferating across Melbourne while authorities are seemingly helpless to stop the underground trade in hate talk. In tucked away Melbourne bookshops and prayer rooms, as well as online, text and recordings commonly slur Jews and urge followers to Islamise the world. The faithful are told to obey only Sharia law.

A Sunday Herald Sun audit of Islamic bookshops found dozens of books, pamphlets, DVDs and CDs with radical and sometimes violent messages.
(And we all know about Hilali, Omran, Zoud ..many others……what can you say!)

NO, this wasn't all. The reality is that the world needs protection from Islam as interpreted by many, yet the HRC protects Islam and ignores the plight of individuals who suffer endless Islamic violence and threats rarely reported in Australia (though we are starting to see it here to!). The violence, constant demand that the world change to suit Islam and aim of worldwide domination comes directly from text and laws that the UNHRC wants to forbid us from examining! It's time Australia and others exited this Islam controlled UN particularly as it constantly abuses the western world but never the Islamic world or the acts of Muslims and it forces Australia to accept dangerous, anti-western criminals like members of the Muslim Brotherhood because they face 'persecution' in even their own Muslim countries!!! (see 'We will decide who comes to this country ' on this site) The UNHRC aids repressive, totalitarian, worldwide Islamization!

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© 2008 Roy W. Brown

SOURCES:
http://www.iheu.org/node/3123
http://islammonitor.org/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=642&Itemid=64

URL: http://www.thepeoplesvoice.org/cgi-bin/blogs/voices.php/2008/03/31/vote_on_freedom_of_expression_marks_the_