This is the full version of the statement delivered on 23 January 2006 to the 4th session of the Intergovernmental Working Group on the effective implementation of the Durban Declaration and Program of Action held from 16 to 27 January 2006 at the Palais des Nations, Geneva. Chairman: Ambassador Juan Martabit (Chile)

Thematic analysis on Racism and Globalization (Agenda item 6): Debate: 23 January. Statement by David G. Littman - Text in full

Mr Chairman, this will be a joint statement on behalf of the 3 NGOs: Association for World Education, International Humanist and Ethical Union and Association of World Citizens. We wish to make a few comments to the Special Rapporteur on Racism - and ask him three specific questions.

But first let me say how shocked we were to read the remark by Roman Jäggi of the Swiss UDC party - reported in the Les Temps of Geneva on 14 January. He took umbrage at your criticism of certain human rights issues in Switzerland... because they emanated from "...a Senegalese." The same daily published a condemnatory reaction to this racist remark [see the letter from the Secretary-General, Carrefour de reflection et d'action contre le racisme anti-noir, Les Temps, 19 Jan. 2006].

We have consistently condemned ad hominem attacks at the UN, as indicated in our text. Mr Chairman, your spontaneous no-nonsense reaction last Monday to one such unruly example was in that same spirit, and as NGOs, we wish to thank you sincerely for upholding UN rules.

[In a written statement, we covered this same issue in detail (E/CN.4/2003/NGO/229: Improving UNCHR/NGO relations: end ad hominem attacks on NGO and other representatives), and have recently submitted a written statement to the 62nd session covering this matter, and also various suggestions on NGO rights in a future Council [E/CN.4/2006/NGO/1]. In view of the seriousness of such personalised attacks, especially at the Commission and the Sub-Commission, we have appealed for a legal opinion to be issued by the competent UN authority, and for a new general rule of procedure to be introduced by which any personal attack against a speaker would be ruled 'out of order' by Chairpersons of UN bodies.]

I. In regard to the destruction and desolation policy in Darfur, which we referred to in our statement at the opening meeting (all our texts, including this one are on the outside table), we did not quote the allegations provided in your Report to the Commission (E/CN.4/2005/18/Add.1) in which you refer to a consistent pattern of racial discrimination.

Recently, the Secretary-General's Special Representative for Sudan, Jan Pronk, declared: "Looking back at three years of killings and cleansing in Darfur, we must admit that our peace strategy so far has failed. All we did was picking up the pieces and muddling through, doing too little too late." [13 Jan. UN website]. And UN High Commissioner for Refugees, Antonio Guterres, commented a day before that Darfur represents "the most pressing political and humanitarian problem we have in Africa today." [Reuters, 12 Jan.] And on the very day this 4th session began, he was again quoted by Reuters as saying: "In my opinion, Darfur is the most dangerous crisis point in Africa and in the world in general" adding, that the "deteriorating situation in [Darfur] threatens [African] regional stability." [Reuters, 17 Jan.].

This was the opinion of AU Commission Chairman Alpha Oumar Konare of Ethiopia too [9 Jan.]. On 10 December - Human Rights Day, we appealed to AU Representatives to the UN in Geneva, in which we expressed our astonishment that AU Chairmanship for 2006 might go to Sudan, a State whose policies and practices flout universally recognised human rights standards. 50 African human rights and humanitarian organizations also expressed their total dismay, and we are still hoping that common sense will prevail on such a crucial issue for the stability and peace of Africa, especially as yesterday - according to reports by AFP ["Sudanese police target rights groups before African Summit"] and Reuters ["Rights delegates detained cat AU summit in Sudan"], Sudanese police targeted human rights groups even before the opening of the AU Summit in Khartoum today.

Our 1st question relates to this ghastly, racist tragedy - qualified as 'genocide' by a 566 to 6 vote in Sept. 2004 by the Parliament of the European Union, and by others. Sir, have you received a reply from the Government of Sudan, and - in view of recent UN reports, to which we have referred - will you now recommend that article 2 of the Convention on the Prevention & Punishment of the Crime of Genocide be invoked for Darfur? ['point of order' by Sudan]

II. Sir, on a second issue, and regarding your Report to the General Assembly of 19 August 2005 [A/60/283], we were struck by your analysis [§B 19] of a thematic discussion on genocide, which is quoted in our text: "the Special Rapporteur stressed the importance of achieving intellectual and cultural agreement on the need to prevent genocide." You referred, inter alia, to "the importance of memory in the prevention of genocide.... Forgetting, hiding or obliterating the history of genocide perpetrated against a people also contributes to weakening the universal struggle against genocide."

Mr Chairman, at a Teheran conference on 26 October ['The World without Zionism'], the Iranian President called for Israel to be "wiped off the map". He predicted: "very soon the stain of this disgrace [Israel] will be purged from the centre of the Islamic world." He warned peacemakers: "Anybody who recognizes Israel will burn in the fire of the Islamic nation's fury." (*)

[Subsequently, in his early December speech to the Organization of the Islamic Conference in Mecca, President Mahmoud Ahmadinejed stated that "the Islamic world faces many serious problems and challenges," but the major problem was "the presence of the Zionist occupation in the heart of the Islamic region." Its "judicious removal", he predicted, "will pave the way to the appearance of Islam's power in the successful management of global [matters]." This was followed in another speech by his assurance that all kinds of oppression would come to an end once the rule of Islam prevailed worldwide.] (*)

[The United Nations - often referred to as 'the international community' - should heed these words now and particularly his ideological reference in the Teheran speech to "the struggle between the Islamic world and the front of the infidels." This is the key to the strategic 'Ideology of Jihad' (Jihad means 'struggle'); Hitler's Mein Kampf ('My Struggle') was not so very different in spirit - with "true Aryans" pitted against non-Aryans. In this twenty-first century, a major clash could easily arise between tolerant democratic societies - whether "Western" or otherwise, where freedom of speech is enshrined - and those forces that wish to destroy the "Other" in the West, East, North or South, because they are still considered to be "infidels" and not "true believers."]

Mr Chairman, as recently as three weeks ago [5 January 2006], a television discussion on the Holocaust was shown on Iran's Channel 2. Excerpts translated into English by MEMRI were published under the title: 'Iran TV Discussion on the Myth of the Gas Chambers and the Truth of The Protocols of the Elders of Zion.' The concluding words of an Iranian political analyst [Dr Majid Goudarzi] confirmed the official goal of the President of the Islamic Republic of Iran: "I hope that one day humanity will reach the conclusion that the only solution for this cancerous growth [Israel] is surgery." (**)

Only a week ago, the day the Working Group began its 4th session, an International Herald Tribune article had the caption: "Teheran to convene conference on Holocaust 'myth.'" In this same context, we wish to quote from CHR resolution 2005/5: [Inadmissibility of certain practices that contribute to fuelling contemporary forms of racism, racial discrimination, xenophobia and related intolerance, which reaffirmed "the provision of the Durban Declaration in which States condemned the persistence and resurgence of neo-Nazism, neo-Fascism and violent nationalist prejudice [that] could never be justified in any instance or in any circumstances." (§1)], which refers to practices that do "injustice to the memory of the countless victims of crimes against humanity committed in the Second World War (...) and poison the minds of young people, in particular in the year of the 60th anniversary of (...) the liberation of Auschwitz and other concentration camps, and that these practices may be incompatible with the obligations of States Members of the United Nations under its Charter and are incompatible with the goals and principles of the Organization." (§3) The Special Rapporteur was asked "to continue to reflect on this issue and to make relevant recommendations in his report." Governments and NGOs also.

What an irony that on 1 November this "direct and public incitement" for the destruction of a Member State of the United Nations - in total defiance of article 2 of the UN Charter, and coupled with a reiterated denial of the Holocaust - the General Assembly designated '27 January' each year as: "an annual International Day of Commemoration in memory of the victims of the Holocaust."

Sir, during this very week at the United Nations in New York several events have been organised to mobilise civil society so as to help prevent current and future acts of genocide. It includes an NGO briefing on 26 January for a comprehensive theme: 'Remembrance & Beyond.' We hope that the shameless "direct and public incitement to commit genocide" by the Iranian president - and the repetitive Iranian denials of the Holocaust - will be evoked on that occasion, especially in relation to the pertinent article 3 (c) of the 1948 Genocide Convention. Having read the 'Conclusions and Recommendations' of your Report [E/CN.4/2005/18/Add.4],

Our 2nd question relates directly to this global matter. Sir, will you be in New York for any of these UN meetings and do you have 'recommendations' to make about President Ahmadinejed's calls for genocide - and his Holocaust denials?

III. The last point refers to 'Islamophobia'. We shall quote an extract from your same Report to the Commission: ['Defamation of Religions and Global Efforts to Combat Racism: Anti-Semitism, Christianophobia and Islamophobia']. In the 'Recommendations' of your Report E/CN.4/2005/18/Add.4, you state:
"the Special Rapporteur recommends that the Muslim minorities concerned and the Muslim countries promote dialogue with other religious and spiritual traditions, combat not only all forms, expressions and practices of discrimination, hostility or denigration of other religions, cultures and communities, including anti-Semitism and Christianophobia, but also, in the context of efforts to combat terrorism and to counter strategies associating Islam with violence, oppose any use of Islam to legitimize or justify political violence. They must, in this spirit, promote internal debate within Islam, so that, in its theological, cultural and geographical diversity, Islam can affirm itself as the principal agent of its internal development and accept, in a spirit of dialogue, critical external commentary, [not reduced to Islamophobia, which alone can respond to legitimate questions and to prejudices and stereotypes vis-à -vis Islam.]" [§34]

Since 2003, several of our NGOs have tried in vain to stress this aspect by a simple request regarding Resolution 2005/3: Combating defamations of religions sponsored since 1999 by the Organization of the Islamic Conference (OIC).

In that same year, the representatives of different religious communities promulgated the 1999 Spiritual Appeal of Geneva [signed by UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan, Gro Harlem Bruntland (then Direct-General of the WHO), Mary Robinson (then HCHR), Cornelio Sommaruga (then President of the ICRC), and Sadako Ogata (then HCR)]. This same Spiritual Appeal brought Christians, Jews and Muslims together again on 22 March 2003 to St. Peter's Cathedral, Geneva

[to proclaim:

Together, we denounce all reference to God to justify and foster hatred.
Together, we appeal to resist all use of this conflict to bring communities into confrontation.
Together, we wish to consolidate community and religious peace.
Together, we bear witness to our hope and our faith in God.]

On that occasion, Mr Hafid Ouardiri, representative of the Mosque in Geneva, joined all present in unequivocally condemning the use of any religious motive to justify the killing of civilians: men, women and children. Since then, various appeals have been made at both the Commission and the Sub-Commission - in particular to the OIC and its Members States - for two major paragraphs to be inserted:

1) Strongly deplores all references to God in order to justify any form of violence, hatred and the use of any religious motive to kill civilians: men, women and children;
2) Condemns all who blaspheme and defame religion by claiming to kill in the name of God.

However, all such appeals have not yet been heeded which, unfortunately, would seem to indicate that the OIC is not able - or authorised - to act on Islamic theological questions.

We always refer in UN statements to those moderate and courageous Muslims who publicly condemn barbaric 'Jihadist-martyrdom' bombings, carried out in the name of Allah - and we last quoted them in our joint NGO statement to the Sub-Commission on 26 July. [AWE, AWC, IHEU - see website IHEU] (***)

Mr Chairman, our 3rd and last question to the Special Rapporteur on Racism: Sir, do you agree with this request - and would you recommend to the OIC sponsors of the resolution on 'Combating defamation of Religions' - that the above paragraphs should be inserted? Alternatively, an unambiguous and universal condemnation of all those who publicly 'defame' a religion by any theological justification for calls to kill in the name of God?

Thank you, Mr Chairman.
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(*) For references / translation into English, see MEMRI Special Dispatch No. 1013, "Iranian President at Tehran Conference: 'Very Soon, This Stain of Disgrace [i.e. Israel] Will Be Purged From the Center of the Islamic World and this is Attainable'", 28 Oct. 2005, http://memri.org/bin/articles.cgi?Page=countries&Area=iran&ID=SP101305 and MEMRI, Special Report - N° 39, 5 January 2006: "Iranian Leaders: Statements and Positions" (Part I): Challenges Facing Islam, 1. Iranian Pres. Ahmadinejad, p.13. http://memri.org/bin/opener_latest.cgi?ID=SR3906 ; also two reference to Iranian sources: Joumhourie-e Eslami (Iran) 8 Dec. 2005; IRNA (news agency) 18 Dec. 2005.

(**) To view this Special Dispatch in HTML, visit MEMRI: "Iran/Antisemitism Documentation Project N° 1072, 18 January 2006: http://www.memri.org/bin/opener_latest.cgi?ID=SD107206 To view the clip, visit:
http://www.memritv.org/search.asp?ACT=S9&P1=997

(***) See the website of the International Humanist and Ethical Union at: http://www.iheu.org/uncampaign/complaint The very latest translations into English refer to the bombings in Amman, Jordan - see in MEMRI, Special Dispatch Series - N° 1073: Arab Columnists Criticize the Justification of Terrorism, , 19 January 2006. To view this Special Dispatch in HTML, visit: http://www.memri.org/bin/opener_latest.cgi?ID=SD107306