Vote on freedom of expression marks the end of Universal Human Rights
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.
Roy W Brown
Geneva, 29 March 2008
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Freedom of Expression
I have known for some time that freedom of expression is disappearing from our lives. So little can be said these days without being considered "offensive" to someone. I had plenty of "offensive" things expressed to me as a child, when people in England found out that my mother had been born in Germany. The war was still too fresh in people's minds then, and despite the fact that my mother's father died in a German Concentration Camp people still showered us with verbal abuse. I learned to let it wash over my head and demonstrate by actions that I was a person worth knowing and respecting.
Human rights are all about respecting others. There is little respect anywhere in the world these days, and those who do show respect are often considered weak and in turn abused for showing it. The top eschelons of power to me show the least respect, and it doesn't matter which country they belong to, or which type of culture they follow. This is why the UN Human Rights Council was so important, but like others before it, those who have only contempt for everyone else but themselves and their immediate "gang" have destroyed its whole purpose and meaning - because to them it was a serious threat to curtailing their selfish contemptable activities and arrogance.
Soon, even this type of comment won't be allowed, and human rights will be ignored even more. People are too afraid, and unwilling to risk what little they have for an ideal, yet they are actually endorsing it by not making some form of public statement against those who would destroy what should be a basic human "right" and denigrate any form of responsibility that comes with that right.
Unlike some others, I was not surprised by this tactic, but I was saddened that so much of what I predicted would happen has happened, and this is but one step on the road to totally world slavery.
The silent film, Metropolis, showed workers coming into the workplace, in unison, their heads bowed, clearly so demoralised that they were no better than employee fodder for the machines. Those machines may have been using steam as their power, unlike today where we use electricity, but the same thing is happening around you. People are being slowly demoralised, used as robotic fodder to feed and support inhuman machines who now rule our lives. The people in charge of our governments and other organisations believe they are in charge but they are mistaken, and that mistake is being compounded all the time. Human rights no longer exist. Having water, or food, is no longer a human right, even though a human can't exist very long without them. Clean air should be a right but is being ignored again for the use of machines which take a select few humans to another part of the globe.
It has now got to the stage whereby any human being who tries to point out flaws in someones actions or words will be hounded, imprisoned, even killed, to ensure false ideals become paramount and allow the abusing controllers of the worst governing bodies in the world to continue destroying the humans under their care.
Respect is required if freedom of expression and human rights are to flourish, but respect - and in turn truth and wisdom - have been the first casualties, and soon nearly of the human race will follow.
Violence works!
I just can't let it go...
So here just some thoughts about violence...
Strangely I do see a lot of resemblance in the reactions of most people about the amendment and the way in which an individual victim copes with violence.
Terror installs fear. A fear that keeps us hostage. And that fear limits us in our thoughts and actions.
Descartes stated: “Je pense donc je suis” (I think, so I am).
But who are we if our thoughts are ruled by fear?
So terror undermines the most important fundaments of our identity.
In one-on-one long term violence isolation is a very strong weapon used by terror.
Terrorism can make it so that finally there are no more places left where one can really feel safe. An attack can happened almost anywhere…
Isolation can also be achieved by alienation of one’s own identity through the destruction of symbols and objects with which one has a personal bond. Destruction of the right to express your own thoughts and feelings can certainly count here, big time!
After all Stendhal said we can not really have an identity without the other. Imagine the consequences of no longer being allowed to show yourself as you really are. One might as well not exist at all!
Fear, pain and oppression without the possibility of escape usually leads to denial as a coping strategy. Denial is an all round process without distinction. It makes it almost impossible to allow any feelings. Everything is repressed. Which results in even more isolation because we become a numb stranger to our environment and even to ourselves.
As a result the victim goes in to a survival mode well known as the Stockholmsyndrome. Every move and every thought is now ruled by the desire to avoid escalation, conflict and violence! Action and reflection are now totally oriented towards the desires of the bully.
In the end one does no longer think about what one really wants, determined by ones own personal, values, desires and morals. One only tries to anticipate and accord with what the bully wants according to his values, desires and morals. This is the moment were one loses one’s sole… The moment where hell really starts. And this end result of “total self loss” creates an even worse dependency on the bully!
Suffering from a Stockholmsydrome is not limited to individuals. Entire nations can undergo this. One can, for example, refer to Chamberlain giving Sudetenland to Hitler, hoping this “peace loving guy” will now be happy and keep quit. (1938 Munich Agreement).
Considering the cowardly attitude of the media worldwide I now believe the only way to bring this news to the world as much as possible is by asking all that feel the same to place it at news sites, forums, blogs, and so on… on every possible occasion, and in a dry temperate manner that gives no excuse for censorship.
Religion is like a fart. It’s best to keep it to yourself!
re; Freedom of Expression
This very dangerous world wide movement, shown by the vote against free will, by the self-indoctrinated followers of Islamic idealism, who working endlessly , age after age, towards the centralization of all human thought, justified by Koranic verse , as has been clearly put forth with this vote ... if this voted movement finds it’s planned means to an end, it’s idealistic final fruition , it will, by default, bring a new dark age to mankind, destroy for ages the free will of human adventure , destroy the Western ideas of humanity to man that has built the modern moralist world. Ideas of morality that those of western heritage has so long been in learning how to execute, so many have died in the name of it’s many righteous causes. We cannot let just disappear from the annals of our collective histories.
It is high time , that the Western world, the civilized world, stop ignoring the age’s upon age’s of tribalism, culturalism, and individual idealism, and that these traits of individualism, seen in every nation ever formed , are the personal traits of our crowning glory as human beings, , the center pieces, so to speak, of very being, as members of the collective human family. The world is dynamic, in all it’s works, in it’s very nature, and this is a very unique human nature, it cannot be by ignorance nor faith simply outlawed , it cannot ignored , and do so, you do only at your own and all of mankind’s risk. It is High Treason to humanity and our collective heritage!
The Human Rights Organizations of the Western World, these in my view, must defend that which is ours... our collective heritage our rights of free will, we cannot through weakness , nor even high minded morality, allow the Islamic world to hold Western culture hostage to a dangerous, an end time idealism.
End of Universal Human Rights
Roy Brown "gets it". Ten years ago, 'only' the "lunatic fringe" American gun-owners denounced the UN. Their reasons included issues that don't concern the majority of humanists. Now, the corruption of the UN has entered the humanist domain. This is demonstrably Good.
Welcome. Welcome to the nightmare, which we, as a nation--tragically--nurtured and encouraged, for all the best of reasons.
What do we do now? Now that we understand that wealthy and powerful nations and groups of people are committed to dominating the world in the (violent) name of Islam, just what do we do?
Are humanists going to 'find' Allah; are Christians, Jews, Hindi, and Buddhists going to convert?
I'm not interested in "doing something", just to say we responded. I want to know what we can do that will be effective in warding off this threat of Evil. Let us find ideas and leaders. We need a vision capable of enveloping the threat and rendering it harmless.
The end of a season...
I’m shocked to read this.
Possibly due to traumatic repression it took me a whole day to understand this was not some cynical joke but a historical marker!
The fact that the media in my country did not report on this (the “news” of the day was some local stars learning to dance) contributed remarkably to my instant depression.
And finding an almost complete lack of response here, as well as after mailing this information to my acquaintances made it all the worse.
If they insist on keeping this amendment in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, I believe it would be nice, even humane, to just add one more: the absolute worldwide right to kill oneself easily and in dignity with freely dispensed suicide pills, even for psychological or philosophical reasons.
This of course is somewhat in contradiction to Sharia-law and many other religions, but possibly a tiny exception could be allowed considering the huge advantage it brings.
A lot of non convertible “infidels” would be disposed of, of their own free will, without a scandal, nor an effort!
All in favour please vote now…
Ah, when to the heart of man
Was it ever less than treason
To go with the drift of things,
To yield with a grace to “reason” (?),
And bow and accept the end
Of a love or a season?
- Robert Frost
German traslation of this report
I just worked on a german translation. Please find it here (1) and here (2).
I can also recommend reading the speech of Charles Malik who was the main author of the Universal Declaration on Human Rights under
http://www.udhr.org/history/talkon.htm
it explains what was actuallly the idea of human rights ...
Very serious
That shift is very serious. Our media did not report about it at all.
I am sure that even if
I am sure that even if religions are exempted from any criticism under any amendment to freedom of speech, the most violations of the amendment would be reported from the muslim countries. If you want to hear any religion being defamed, listen to any sermon for friday's prayers in any mosque. Many in the Islamic world have no qualms when it comes to criticizing judaism, christianity, or hinduism. It would be pertinent to report the abuses of religious freedom to the delegates from Islamic countries that are carried out in their own countries.
Personally though i think that this is a very sad day. I am all for freedom of expression and I believe that the most vehement opposition to freedom to expression comes from those whose ideology cannot stand the test of reason.
China and religious discrimination
I find it curious that China has voted in favour of this resolution, considering their violent suppression of Falun Gong adherants, Tibetan Buddhists and Uighur Muslims. Will the Government of China now stop saying nasty things about the Dalai Lama?
Response to the end of Universal Human rights.
Maybe the rumours that the Islamics want to take over the world and impose their tyrranical religion on everyone is true. This sure makes it appear that way, esp since some countries were bulldozed and alike. I certainly would hate to be a POW now. :(
End of Universal Human Rights
Mriana, I fear it's not a rumor. Now what?
Strategy matters
Never mind blaming the Islamists. We have our own Christianists who would do the same kind of thing if they were given the power.
The decision was clearly made by a majority of people for whom power is an absolute and overrriding value, perhaps starting with the way they got their own seats.
We probably need to figure out a way to reduce the importance of that kind of power in those organizations. Or we simply have to accept that the structure of organizations like that will never legitimize anything but the amoral use of power.
It's not a failure of universal human rights. It's a failure of an organization that was never set up in so it could have affirmed their necessity.
This doesn't work. Let's keep trying until we find omething that does.