Tuesday, April 29, 2003
Anne Bayefksy writes a stunning indictment of the UN Human Rights Commission, and by extension, the UN itself. Have no doubt, the only reasons for our membership in the United Nations is in the realm of RealPolitik having nothing to do with true right and wrong - exactly the opposite of what most people believe.
Worth reading in full.
More than a quarter of the commission's resolutions condemning a state's human rights violations passed over the last 30 years have been directed at Israel. There has never been a single resolution on China, Syria or Saudi Arabia. The current session ended by defeating a resolution to criticize anything about the situation in Zimbabwe, and by eliminating the 10-year-old position of rapporteur on human rights in Sudan. This was despite a report of the U.N. rapporteur on torture informing commission members of the Sudanese practice of "cross-amputation"--amputation of right hand and left foot for armed robbery, and various cases of women being stoned to death for alleged adultery.
Commission meetings themselves are a platform for incitement to hate and violence. At this year's session, the Iranian deputy foreign minister threatened what he called a "vicious circle" of violence and future "extremism" resulting from the Iraq war. The Cuban representative demanded action against "the most critical case of . . . massive and flagrant violations of human rights [and] of the systemic institutionalization of racism--that of the United States." The Algerian delegate said: "The Israeli war machine has been trying for five decades to arrive at a final solution." The Palestinian representative called for the "elimination" of "Zionist Nazism."[...]