Redefining Free Speech at the UN – Part I

Posted on June 23, 2008
Filed Under Censorship, Freedom from Religion, Freedom of Religion, Freedom of speech, Honor killing, Human Rights, Human Rights Council, International, IslamoFascism, Libya, Pakistan, Political lies, Racism, Religion, Sharia law, UN, crime, culture, honor killings, islam, political corruption, politics, prejudice, violence, wife abuse, women, women's rights | Comments Off

I fully believe that discussions of religious laws are best left to those practitioners of the particular religion who specialize in the jurisprudence of that creed. The only time that I can see a strong exception to the above is when the practice of a religious precept clashes with basic human rights. Such an exception applies especially when the silencing of the discussion is done within the hallowed halls of the UN, an institution whose sole existence is to defend human rights and dignity regardless of creed, regardless of gender, regardless of skin color or ethnic origin.

The Counterterrorism Blog reported the following:

Jihad Against Freedom of Speech at the United Nations

By Jeffrey Imm

The United Nations’ Human Rights Council (UNHRC) has no problem with its members suggesting that the 9/11 attacks were an “inside job” perpetrated by the United States on itself. The human rights of America’s 9/11 victims are not a priority for UNHRC’s Richard Falk, the special rapporteur on human rights in the Palestinian territories, who engages in 9/11 conspiracy propaganda, while working for an organization headquartered in New York City funded by U.S. tax dollars. This is Richard Falk’s protected freedom of speech.

Denying the role of Jihadists in the 9/11 attacks is apparently perfectly acceptable freedom of speech for the UNHRC, but criticizing Sharia law is another story.

On June 16, 2008, UNHRC president Doru Romulus Costea announced that criticism of Sharia law will not be tolerated by the UNHRC, based on the complaints and pressure by Islamist delegates to the UNHRC. In effect, the Islamist nations represented at the UNHRC have effected a Jihad against freedom of speech at the United Nations when it comes to criticizing Sharia or Islamic supremacist (aka Islamist) theocratic ideologies that threaten the freedom and lives of innocents around the world. This again demonstrates the key imperative of control for Islamists – in this case in terms of controlling ideas, thoughts, and words of an international organization intended to promote human rights. Outgoing UNHRC Commissioner Louise Arbour subsequently raised concerns about debates on Sharia becoming “taboo” within the United Nations group, stating that it “should be, among other things, the guardian of freedom of expression.”

The UNHRC ban on debate regarding Sharia came as a result of a three minute joint statement by the Association for World Education with the International Humanist and Ethical Union (IHEU) to the Human Rights Council on women’s rights and the impact of Sharia law. These NGOs sought to address international issues of violence against women, specifically, the stoning of women, “honor killings” of women, and female genital mutilation, as a result of Sharia law.

The Islamic Republic of Pakistan, the Islamic Republic of Iran, and the Arab Republic of Egypt vehemently criticized this attempted NGO message, interrupting it via “16 points of order”, for an hour and twenty-five minutes per the IEHU. Jihad Watch provides a full transcript of the debate. The Egyptian UNHRC delegate claimed that silencing these NGOs was necessary to ensure “that Islam will not be crucified in this Council,” but the fact is that Islamist forces seek to silence any debate on Sharia at all – anywhere, any time.

The UN and its various committees have been steadily and unflinchingly advancing into irrelevance, into becoming yet another tentacle of IslamoFascism. No prior attempt has been so blatant, no move has been so contrary to the UN’s own expressed ideals of human rights as the attempt to stifle any discussion into the rights of at least half of mankind. It is obvious, by this latest move, that women under Sharia Law are no more than a despised piece of property to be dealt with, used, abused and disposed of at the whim of their male owners. Honor killings are not expressly mandated by Sharia, they are merely the tolerated remnants of cultures unable and unwilling to become equal partners in the developing the opportunities afforded us by the 21st century. And yet… it is that very failure that keeps them down, uneducated and poor!

In 2002, the UN Development Programme commissioned a Special Report by Arab scholars. Its findings were based on conditions found in 14 of the 22 Arab states. As The Economist wrote:

WHAT went wrong with the Arab world? Why is it so stuck behind the times? It is not an obviously unlucky region. Fatly endowed with oil, and with its people sharing a rich cultural, religious and linguistic heritage, it is faced neither with endemic poverty nor with ethnic conflict. It shook off its colonial or neo-colonial legacies long ago, and the countries that had revolutions should have had time to recover from them. But, with barely an exception, its autocratic rulers, whether presidents or kings, give up their authority only when they die; its elections are a sick joke; half its people are treated as lesser legal and economic beings, and more than half its young, burdened by joblessness and stifled by conservative religious tradition, are said to want to get out of the place as soon as they can.

One of the main reasons (according to Special Report) for the Arab world being so stuck behind the times, even if there are other important ones as well, is their treatment of women.

[...]•Women’s status. The one thing that every outsider knows about the Arab world is that it does not treat its women as full citizens. The report sees this as an awful waste: how can a society prosper when it stifles half its productive potential? After all, even though women’s literacy rates have trebled in the past 30 years, one in every two Arab women still can neither read nor write. Their participation in their countries’ political and economic life is the lowest in the world.

Governments and societies (and sometimes, as in Kuwait, societies and parliamentarians are more backward than their governments) vary in the degrees of bad treatment they mete out to women. But in nearly all Arab countries, women suffer from unequal citizenship and legal entitlements. The UNDP has a “gender-empowerment measure” which shows the Arabs near the bottom (according to this measure, sub-Saharan Africa ranks even worse). But the UN was able to measure only 14 of the 22 Arab states, since the necessary data were not available in the others. This, as the report says, speaks for itself, reflecting the general lack of concern in the region for women’s desire to be allowed to get on.

Since mankind’s survival as a species depends on the women no less than it depends depends on men, we must therefore assume that women too are human and that they have the same rights to live and prosper as their Arab male counterparts. Therefore any discussion of honor killings or general mistreatment of women in the lands of Araby is a legitimate and necessary part of the discussions of the UN Human Rights Council. When the Human Rights Council, seeks to ban such discussions it effectively dismisses its own moral authority to discuss human rights anywhere else in the world!

But, gentle reader, you might argue that the Council’s own composition is such that any discussion of human rights within its midst is no more than a sick joke. You are right! The UN Human Rights Council came as a result of its predecessor the UN Human Rights Commission having itself become a caricature of what it was supposed to be when it elected Libya to the Commission’s chairmanship in 2003. As a result, the Commission was dispersed and the Council approved in its place.

..the resolution establishing the Council specified that “members elected to the Council shall uphold the highest standards in the promotion and protection of human rights” and will be subject to periodic review. Each member nation of the Council must be approved individually and directly by a majority (96 of 191) of the members of the General Assembly, in a secret ballot (in contrast to the former Commission, voting for which took place within ECOSOC). Council membership is limited to two consecutive terms, and any Council member may be suspended by a two-thirds vote of the Assembly. The Commission concluded its work on 16 June 2006, making way for the first meeting of the Council which was held on 19 to 30 June 2006.

Of the 47 seats in the council, 7 countries are universally acknowledged as fully functioning democracies, while the rest have very mixed records – at best – if not absolutely dismal ones when it comes to the exercise of human rights. An overwhelming majority of the council’s members, charged with upholding the highest standards in the promotion and protection of human rights fail to comply with the rules by which they were appointed. How can anyone with a modicum of common sense, with a modicum of intelligence expect a fair and representative discussion of issues that truly affect at least 50% of mankind? How can a society prosper when it stifles half its productive potential?