The club of tyranny
The UN has once again negated any claim it can make to representing freedom and justice in the world and protecting human rights. Last week, the whimsically named UN Human Rights Council turned freedom of expression into its extinction and in so doing removed the last vestiges of its own credibility. As the International Herald Tribune reported, the Organisation of Islamic Conference (OIC), a 57-member bloc of mainly African and Asian nations which effectively acts as a jihadi front and whose influence at the UN appears to be growing all the time, put forward a motion initiated by Egypt and Pakistan, which was passed 32-0, to get the UN’s expert on free speech police individuals and news media for negative comments on Islam and report to the council on all instances in which individuals ‘abuse’ their freedom of speech by giving expression to racial or religious bias. In short, the UN has now voted to force the official charged with protecting freedom of expression to suppress it instead.
The resolution adopted attempts to legitimize the criminalization of expression,’ said Warren W. Tichenor, the U.S. ambassador to the UN in Geneva.As Reuters India reported:
Reporters Without Borders called the changes ‘dramatic’ and said the growing influence of the OIC in the Human Rights Council was ‘disturbing’. ‘…All of the council's decisions are nowadays determined by the interests of the Muslim countries or powerful states such as China or Russia that know how to surround themselves with allies,’ it said. The free speech non-governmental organization Article 19 joined with an Egypt-based rights group, the Cairo Institute for Human Rights Studies, in a joint statement saying the council process was being repeatedly misused ‘to push for an agenda that has nothing to do with strengthening human rights and everything to do with protecting autocracies and political point scoring.’ And the India and Britain-based International Humanist and Ethical Union (IHEU) said the Council ‘stands exposed as no longer capable of fulfilling its central role: the promotion and protection of human rights.’
The Council kept firmly away from taking any action over China's handling of recent protests in Tibet, although there was some muted criticism from Western countries. It had earlier dropped special investigations into Cuba's rights record.
Well, there’s a surprise. The UN really is no more than a club of tyranny.