Testimony at the UN
Interactive Dialogue with the UN Special Rapporteur on
contemporary forms of racism, racial discrimination,
xenophobia, and related intolerance
Speech before UN Human Rights Council 5th Session
11 June 2007
Delivered by Caroline Gross, UN Watch Fellow
Thank you, Mr. President.
UN Watch commends Special Rapporteur Diene for his valuable work in combating racism. We address two issues.
First, the report before us cites Iran for three anti-Semitic acts:
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Convening an international conference “questioning the truth of the extermination of the European Jews by Nazi Germany”1;
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Organizing an earlier Holocaust denial cartoon contest; and
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President Ahmadinejad’s repeated calls for Israel to be “wiped off the map.”2
Just last week, Secretary-General Ban condemned the Iranian leader for his latest statement inciting to “destruction of the Zionist regime.”
Mr. Diene, because the Iranian president continues to violate the Genocide Convention’s Article 3 prohibition against incitement to destroy a national group, what steps can be taken to enforce the Convention’s Article 1 obligation to prevent?
Second, your report identifies the inherent connection between Iran’s anti-Semitism and its promotion of other racist theories. I quote:
By organizing this conference, President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad demonstrated his intention to legitimize the revisionism of other forms of racism, in particular, by inviting […] symbolic figures of anti-black racism in the United States of America, such as the Ku Klux Klan — whose main intellectual and ideological platform is the racial inferiority of black people and the need for their physical elimination.3
It seems we have a government whose leaders say one thing when they speak in Africa — but quite another thing in Tehran, where they celebrate David Duke, a man who says that black people are violent, lazy, primitive and promiscuous.4
Similarly, when the Iranian leader addresses the General Assembly, he talks a lot about “human dignity” and “justice”. Yet in December, this same Assembly condemned Iran for treating its minorities with neither dignity nor justice. Resolution 61/176 on human rights violations in Iran cites the following:
…increasing discrimination and other human rights violations against persons belonging to ethnic and religious minorities […] including Arabs, Azeris, Baluchis, Kurds, Christians, Jews, Sufis and Sunni Muslims; the escalation and increased frequency of discrimination and other human rights violations against members of the Baha’i faith […] and recent violent crackdowns on Arabs, Azeris, Baha’is, Kurds and Sufis.
This policy and practice of racial discrimination violates not only international human rights law. It also contravenes the basic principles of Iran’s own Constitution—including its guarantees of human dignity and equality under Articles 2, 3 and 14.5
Mr. Diene, what steps can you take to further protect Iran’s minorities from their government’s policies of racial discrimination, xenophobia and intolerance?
1 Report of 12 January 2007, A/HRC/4/19 at 16.
2 Report of May 2007, A/HRC/5/10 at 21.
3 Id. at 21.
4 See, e.g., “David Duke: In His Own Words,” http://www.adl.org/special_reports/duke_own_words/on_blacks.asp.
5 Article 2 (6): “The Islamic Republic is a system based on belief in […] the exalted dignity and value of man, and his freedom coupled with responsibility before God; in which equity, justice, political, economic, social, and cultural independence, and national solidarity are secured…” Article 3 (14): “securing the multifarious rights of all citizens, both women and men, and providing legal protection for all, as well as the equality of all before the law.” Article 14: “…the government of the Islamic Republic of Iran and all Muslims are duty-bound to treat non-Muslims in conformity with ethical norms and the principles of Islamic justice and equity, and to respect their human rights.”
