Durban II, another opportunity missed
The racism conference had a chance to make a better world, but Israel became the target once more and it collapsed into debacle
Durban II ends today. The five-day conference in Geneva adopted a declaration running to 143 paragraphs. If weighty words count, then the world has taken a giant step forward in the fight against "racism, discrimination, xenophobia and other forms of intolerance".
Unfortunately, of course, life is more complex than that, especially when the countries that endorsed the sonorous phrases include some of the worst violators of human rights, with murder of opponents, suppression of women and homosexuals, slavery and savage punishments.
But while recognising that it's an imperfect world, shouldn't everyone – including especially those who boycotted or walked out of the conference – now rally round and endorse the declaration? The conference did little to achieve its real purpose – to review the extent to which countries have put anti-racism National Action Plans in place (only about 10 have done so). But doesn't its declaration deserve respect as an international statement of hope and aspiration for how we should behave towards each other?
Again unfortunately, the flaws are too great, both in the process and the document. The problem starts with the organisers, the United Nations, and its offshoot, the Human Rights Council. How did they manage to allow Iran's president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad to be the star speaker? Everyone knew he would be spitting venom; the only unknown was how much and how virulent. Yet he landed up as the keynote speaker on the opening day – leading to the extraordinary walking out of representatives of 23 states and organisations.
He seemed oblivious to the insult. But the Norwegian delegate got to the nub of it: freedom of speech, yes, but Ahmadinejad's speech "ran counter to the spirit and dignity of the conference … it promoted a spirit of intolerance".
If Ahmadinejad was the only head of state who wanted to attend, couldn't he have been (diplomatically) uninvited? Instead, UN officialdom provided him with a platform to be a one-man wrecking crew.
The Human Rights Council is itself a curious body, with strong representation by human rights abusers. They have a fixation about Israel and devote a high proportion of their meetings to the country. That could be justifiable if Israel was the only or the worst human rights offender, but it pales alongside places like Darfur, Zimbabwe, China, Sri Lanka and Iraq, which do not get anything like the same attention.
Perhaps part of the UN problem is in the lack of understanding of the issues at stake shown by Navi Pillay, the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights and secretary general of the conference. This is what she said in pleading against boycott moves: "I am fully aware that the reputation of the 2001 World Conference was tainted by the antisemitic behaviour of some NGOs on the sidelines."
That's a remarkable playing down of the 2001 conference held in Durban, South Africa. It is widely recalled as a "hatefest" that severely set back the anti-racism cause. NGOs frenziedly condemned Israel and the west to such an extreme extent that the government conference that followed refused to endorse their resolutions, the first and only time this has happened in UN history. Aziz Pahad, then deputy foreign minister of South Africa, Pillay's home country, later publicly apologised for the "disgraceful events" and said that his government regretted that antisemitic elements had "hijacked" the conference.
Should countries that boycotted this week's meeting – such as the US, Canada, Germany and Israel – have attended? Should the countries that walked out on Monday – such as France, Australia and Poland – have stayed to listen to Ahmadinejad and engaged him in debate?
Would it have been possible to sit down to a polite conversation with Adolf Hitler and persuade him that he was wrong to believe that Jews, Gypsies and Russians were sub-humans deserving only of mass death? Would there have been any point in trying to engage Ahmadinejad in debate, and in a large conference setting at that, to tell him his views are lunatic and evil?
Going beyond this, however, what has emerged from this week is depressing and worrying: during the Ahmadinejad diatribe, many in the conference hall, from Africa, Asia and Latin America, applauded and cheered his attack on Israel as a "racist state" and on the west.
Who wants to be involved with people who behave like this? Who wants to be associated with their nice-sounding words against racism and intolerance?
On Comment is free this week, while many denounced Ahmadinejad, some commenters supported him, showing no embarrassment at lining up with a man whose government denies elementary rights. Amnesty International reports large-scale arrests, incommunicado detention and torture of dissidents and minorities and persecution of religious minorities. Iran executes children under the age of 18. Adultery can be punished by death.
They also parrot Ahmadinejad's "Israel is racist, Zionism is racism" cry. Israel is certainly subject to attack for its oppression of Palestinians and its occupation. But the "racist" charge is as inaccurate and unthinking as the "apartheid" label. Israel has a Jewish majority and they have decided that they want a state for Jews. That is their right and it is nothing exceptional. Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, Egypt and a host of other countries declare themselves, even in their constitutions, to be Muslim or Arab states. Does anyone accuse them of racism? When Ahmadinejad pours out his Holocaust denial and his call to wipe out the Zionist, Jewish, state, read read more
No comments:
Post a Comment