Today’s U.N. Human Rights Council special session on Sri Lanka (click for UN Watch speech) ended in disgrace, with the U.N. lavishing praise on the very government it was meant to hold to account. Following is the play-by-play.
First, Sri Lanka proposed an updated revised text of its self-congratulatory resolution. Though this incorporated some of the non-contentious proposals of the Swiss-EU draft, the text remained a shameful distortion of reality and of human rights. Continue reading ‘New low: U.N. rights council praises Sri Lanka after mass killings’
Click here for the full U.N. Human Rights Council summary of the morning meeting May 27 of the Special Session on Sri Lanka.
Click here for previous blog posting on Algeria, Syria speeches: “Algeria, Syria allege ‘double standards’ in Sri Lanka session”
Highlights from U.N. summary:
Continue reading ‘Human Rights Council continues Special Session on situation of human rights in Sri Lanka’
UN Watch Oral Statement to the
UN Human Rights Council Special Session on Human Rights in Sri Lanka
Delivered by Marissa Cramer, Geneva, 27 May 2009
On Protecting Human Rights vs. “Internal Affairs”
Thank you, Mr. President.
UN Watch is alarmed by the human rights situation in Sri Lanka, and calls for immediate action to help all innocent victims.
Continue reading ‘UN Watch slams Sri Lankan violations in speech to UN Human Rights Council’
In a speech to the UN Human Rights Council today, the Libyan-sponsored group “Nord Sud 21″, founded in 1989 to manage the Moammar Kaddafi Human Rights Prize, criticized the session on the human rights situation in Sri Lanka, echoing the argument of the Sri Lankan government and its allies that only countries “from the region” should be entitled to call a session, and not Western states.
Today at the U.N. Human Rights Council, debate continued at the special session on Sri Lanka, where ten thousand civilians have been killed since December, and hundreds of thousands are in dire need, as explained at the session’s opening yesterday by High Commissioner for Human Rights Navi Pillay.
Still, several continued to complain that the session is unnecessary, with Arab and Muslim states additionally trying to change the subject by bringing up, expressly or by implication, conflict situations involving Israel, or Western states in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Continue reading ‘Algeria, Syria allege “double standards” in Sri Lanka session’
At the U.N. Human Rights Council today, a special session was held to address the urgent situation in Sri Lanka. While the High Commissioner for Human Rights, the EU and other Western states pushed for a commission of inquiry to assess the human rights violations of both the Tamil Tigers and the Sri Lankan government, a number of countries and regional groups used the session to praise Sri Lanka and rail against the states who called for the session. Continue reading ‘Debate rages at Sri Lanka session’
This letter sent on May 15 by Cuba to the U.N. Human Rights Council shows how the Havana regime and its allies in the Non-Aligned Movement, which include numerous other repressive states, tried to use diplomatic tactics to block international scrutiny of Sri Lanka’s human rights violations. Fortunately, this one failed, and the session will be held tomorrow. However, other measures are being employed by the rogues, who dominate the council, to erode the final resolution.
Geneva, May 25, 2009 – Geneva-based human rights group UN Watch today expressed “serious disappointment” today over a “toothless” draft resolution on Sri Lanka submitted today by Switzerland and other Western states for tomorrow’s U.N. Human Rights Council emergency session. Continue reading ‘UN Watch slams “toothless” Swiss-EU draft U.N. resolution on Sri Lanka’
Today at the U.N. Human Rights Council informal consultations were held on the draft text for the special session on Sri Lanka to be held this Tuesday. The meeting was chaired by Muriel Berset of Switzerland, sponsor of the text, along with representatives of the European Union (the Czech Republic), Chile and Mexico. The group took pains to emphasize their “cooperative” and “consensus” approach, underscoring the special deference shown to Sri Lanka in contrast to the approach taken toward other countries that the council has censured — Israel, 26 times; Myanmar, 4 times; and North Korea, twice. Continue reading ‘Sri Lankan U.N. envoy lashes out at Western “colonizers” over emergency meeting of human rights council’
By Bernard-Henri Lévy (Source: Huffington Post)
Here is an open letter I have co-signed along with Elie Wiesel and Claude Lanzmann:
Who declared in April 2001: “Israel has never contributed to Civilization in any era, for it has only ever appropriated the contributions of others” — and added almost two months later: “the Israeli culture is an inhumane culture; it is an aggressive, racist, pretentious culture based on one simple principle: steal what does not belong to in order to then claim its appropriation”? Continue reading ‘UNESCO: The Shame of a Disaster Foretold’
Sri Lanka is not waiting quietly to be scrutinized by Monday’s emergency session of the U.N. Human Rights Council, which was initiated by Western states to address the dire situation of that country’s civilians. Today the Sri Lankan government made a bid to pre-empt and subvert the process by introducing its own resolution — one that praises its actions. Continue reading ‘Sri Lanka preempts emergency U.N. session with self-congratulatory resolution’
This morning’s organizational meeting for the 11th session of the U.N. Human Rights Council began with a presentation of the session’s draft agenda by the council’s president, Nigerian Ambassador Martin Uhomoibhi. He noted that the session will begin the afternoon of June 2 and will include panel discussions on the topics of women’s human rights and climate change.
Controversy over potential Sri Lanka panel
But controversy erupted when the president discussed the need to “creatively use panel discussions,” widely perceived as a means to address the urgent human rights situations not on the council’s agenda, specifically, the situation in Sri Lanka. (It is still uncertain whether or not the required 16 signatures have been reached to call for a special session on that issue). He said that further specific details on the panel will be provided at a later date.
Continue reading ‘Human Rights Council President: “We are not subverts”’
By Marissa Cramer
The president of the U.N. General Assembly, Father Miguel d’Escoto Brockmann, held a meeting with NGO representatives in Geneva today to discuss his latest plans for a summit on the financial crisis and its impact on development to take place the first week of June. Most of his talk was devoted to criticizing the “greed” and “underlying moral and ethical crisis” of the West that he claimed is the root cause of most of the world’s social and economic problems.
Continue reading ‘UNGA President d’Escoto Brockmann bashes West on global finance’
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