I didn’t follow the Durban conference closely but still couldn’t miss all the propaganda around it. Reading through my emails this weekend, below are links to and excerpts from a few interesting pieces on the conference:
Seumas Milne – The Guardian: What credibility is there in Geneva’s all-white walkout?
What do the US, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, the Netherlands, Germany, Poland, Italy and Israel have in common? They are all either European or European-settler states. And they all decided to boycott this week’s UN conference against racism in Geneva even before Monday’s incendiary speech by the Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad which triggered a further white-flight walkout by representatives of another 23 European states.
Navi Pillay, The High Commissioner of Human Rights – final press release:
It was very difficult. I had to face a widespread, and highly organized campaign of disinformation. Many people, including Ministers with whom I spoke, told me that the Durban Declaration and Programme of Action, which as you know was agreed by 189 states at the original World Conference Against Racism in 2001 was anti-Semitic, and it was clear that either they had not bothered to read what it actually said, or they were putting a cast on it that was, to say the least, decidely exaggerated.
Muzzlewatch has excellent coverage of the conference (day by day) here - very interesting stuff (don’t miss out the commentary on Darfur ‘activists’ )
Also from this weekend’s email reading, commentary on the Bil’in International Conference:
From speech by Iyad Bornat of the Friends of Freedom and Justice (translated by Dr. Mazin Qumsiyeh)
To all the world we say that the Palestinian Arab people are still suffering a grave injustice and massacre at the hands of brutal occupation in the shadow of dreadful international silence and sometimes with full support [of the West] to injustice. Yet, we continue to cling to our land as done for centuries despite the killing, the demolition, the siege, the starvation, the expulsion, the land and water confiscation. My people are suffering and its time to end the injustice. History will not forgive those who are partners in crime. The future will see new smiles on the faces of our children, a future of peace and love between people. Those children in my country today do not know the sea and are forbidden to even wonder into nature into their fields where the guns of the occupiers target them.
Nobel Laureate Accuses Israel of Ethnic Cleansing
“I believe the Israeli government is carrying out a policy of ethnic cleansing against Palestinians here in east Jerusalem,” said Maguire, who won the 1976 Nobel prize for her efforts at reaching a peaceful solution to the violence in Northern Ireland.
