The West Must Bear Witness to Iran’s Prisoners

Oct. 25, 2011

By Linda Frum, Member of the Canadian Senate

Last month in New York, in the shadow of the sham “human rights conference” known as Durban III, I had the honour of attending a counter-conference organized by the human rights organization UN Watch.

At this conference, leading dissidents and human rights activists from Iran, Syria, Cuba, Burma, North Korea and China assembled to shine a light on the extreme human rights violations that the UN’s corrupt “Human Rights Council” would rather ignore.

One of the most touching pieces of testimony at the UN Watch conference was a letter smuggled out of Iran’s notorious Evin Prison, read aloud by Iranian human rights activist Banafsheh Zand-Bonazzi. I have put this letter into the record of the proceedings of the Senate of Canada as a show of solidarity with the suffering of its author, a brave and principled ayatollah whose only crime was to advocate in favour of the separation of religion and government.

According to Amnesty International, poor prison conditions, torture and ill treatment have left Ayatollah Boroujerdi in a dangerously precarious state of health. I read his letter aloud to the Senate to honour his courage and that of his family and supporters and to let them know that we in the Senate of Canada bear witness to their struggle and to the leadership and criminal treatment of this good man.

Here is his message:

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GENEVA – In a show of support for the Geneva-based UN Watch group, the White House stated it was “deeply disappointed” that United Nations rules for credentialing non-governmental organizations to yesterday’s world racism summit were used “to silence voices critical of the Durban process.”

“We are very grateful to President Obama’s Administration for speaking out against this dangerous attempt to chill free speech in the UN debate on human rights,” said UN Watch director Hillel Neuer, who was in New York to organize a summit of prominent exiles and dissidents that met this week in parallel with the General Assembly. (www.ngosummit.org)

‘At the same time, we’re surprised and, frankly, disappointed that UN rights chief Navi Pillay, the leading UN figure in the Durban process, has declined to speak out against this injustice, which stains the reputation of her anti-racism office.”

Also speaking out for UN Watch was U.S. Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen (R-FL), Chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee. She said the Durban conference “benefitted extremists” in “welcoming the participation of a Qaddafi-funded front group” while “banning the UN Watch group.”

UN Watch was barred from participating today in yesterday’s summit of world leaders to commemorate the 2001 Durban racism conference, but admitted the group North South 21, which gives out the Moammar al-Gaddafi Human Rights Prize. Details here.  See UN Watch letter below.

The Geneva-based UN Watch, an accredited non-governmental observer with the world body, urged UN rights chief Navi Pillay, who oversees the UN’s anti-racism campaign, to condemn UN Watch’s unprecedented exclusion from a UN meeting — for which it was given no reasons, notice, or opportunity to object.

In a letter to UN Watch (click here), the office of High Commissioner of Human Rights Navi Pillay pledged to pass on UN Watch’s appeal to the General Assembly, but has so far refused to speak out against the discriminatory decision.

UN Watch and 20 human rights NGOs are today organizing a major parallel summit of dissidents next to the UN, featuring famous victims of the regimes that promote the Durban meeting.

The UN may have admitted the Qaddafi Prize group thanks to its close ties to Jean Ziegler, a long-time official of the UN Human Rights Council, said UN Watch.

According to a recent Swiss TV report, Ziegler played a significant role in North-South 21, the Geneva group created by the Libyan regime to manage the Qaddafi Prize and spread propaganda for the Qaddafi regime. Most recently, Ziegler helped edit a 2010 book that effusively praised Col. Qaddafi by comparing him to the philosopher Jean-Jacques Rousseau. The publication was distributed by North South 21 at the Council in November while the human rights record of Libya was being examined, and effusively praised by most countries.

______________________

Ms. Navanethem Pillay
UN High Commissioner
for Human Rights
Palais des Nations
1211 Geneva 10

September 15, 2011

Dear Madam High Commissioner,

We write to strongly protest the UN’s unprecedented decision to exclude UN Watch, an ECOSOC-accredited non-governmental organization, from next Thursday’s high-level meeting to commemorate the Durban Declaration. The rejection of our application was carried out without any notice or semblance of due process, and is an act of discrimination. We appeal to you, as the leading figure of the UN’s anti-racism effort, to speak out against this deplorable decision and to demand that it be immediately reversed.

As you know, on July 7th your office wrote to UN Watch and invited us to apply to participate at the Durban commemoration, saying that non-governmental organizations are essential in combating racism. We immediately applied, providing detailed documentation on our extensive activities, at the UN and elsewhere, to combat racism and discrimination. We attended the first two Durban conferences in 2001 and 2009.

Suddenly, from a posting on a UN website—only one week prior to the event—we now learn that UN Watch is one of four groups to be rejected from next week’s meeting. We were given no notice, no reasons, and no chance to contest the decision. This flouts the basic principles—which you have so articulately advocated on the world stage—of accountability, transparency, and due process. As the only watchdog group mandated to monitor the UN according to the principles of its charter, our voice is essential. We urge you to speak out against this injustice, which undermines the UN’s credibility in combating discrimination.

Sincerely,

Hillel C. Neuer
Executive Director
UN Watch

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 ___________________________________________________________________________________

The UN’s red carpet for tyrants: We’re hosting our own assembly where repression isn’t welcome

BY YANG JIANLI

Monday, September 19th 2011

United Nations General Assembly, held annually in New York, is a permanent fixture of the diplomatic calendar. Just as inevitably, in the year that passes between each session, the world undergoes changes on a scale from the significant to the enormous.

This Wednesday, when President Obama opens the general debate of the Assembly’s 66th session, those changes will impact most visibly upon the roster of world leaders not in attendance.

Few, for example, will forget Libyan Col. Moammar Khadafy’s 2009 appearance, when he delivered a rambling, 1-1/2-hour speech, tossed aside a copy of the UN charter and called the Security Council a “terror council.”

In 2011, Khadafy’s regime will be invisible. His key UN diplomats already defected in February.

Similarly, thanks to the political convulsions across the Middle East, other repressive regimes – from Egypt, from Tunisia – will be absent this year, never to return.

Even so, for every collapsed tyrannical regime, there are several more that have retained power. And they, too, will be represented in New York, and treated with all the respect we afford duly elected leaders of constitutional, multiparty democracies.

From the Middle East, their number includes Syria, Sudan and Iran – whose president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, will be attending the Assembly for the seventh year in a row.

More broadly, this club of tyrannies includes Zimbabwe, Cuba and, of course, my own country, China, a Security Council member.

This depressing reality underlines the greatest challenge of the UN system, which has never distinguished between democracies and dictatorships – despite the fact that the UN is sworn to universally uphold the same human rights for all peoples, regardless of where they live.

Given this paradox, how is meaningful action possible on urgent human rights violations, such as China’s brutal crackdown this year on citizens who dared to peacefully gather for walks around Chinese cities?

The GA’s prearranged agenda precludes such discussions. When the world body does make the news, it’s about the outrageous theatrics of its participants: Ahmadinejad denying the Holocaust, say, or Venezuelan dictator Hugo Chavez suggesting that former President George W. Bush was Satan.

The UN’s bloc of authoritarian states are all too powerful to prevent the democratic impulses sweeping the world from surfacing in the world body. Back in March, after Libya was finally suspended from the UN’s Human Rights Council, I had occasion to address that body. Recalling the case of Liu Xiaobo, a writer serving an 11-year jail sentence for advocating freedom, I asked how China’s Communist regime, whose victims run into the millions, could remain as a member. I was interrupted by China and Cuba and never received an answer.

That is one of the many reasons why I will be joining an international coalition of dissidents and human rights organizations in New York this week. Led by UN Watch, a Geneva-based NGO that works the UN’s corridors on behalf of human rights victims across the world, we will hold a parallel summit to combat discrimination and persecution. It’ll take place within a stone’s throw of the UN’s headquarters on the banks of the East River.

Like me, many of the summit’s participants are dissidents who were imprisoned for the sole crime of promoting democracy.

Rebiya Kadeer, the voice of China’s oppressed Uyghur minority, was jailed for five years, two of them in solitary confinement. Ahmad Batebi, an icon of Iran’s student democracy movement, was tortured for eight years in an Iranian prison. The mullahs never forgave the July 17, 1999, cover of The Economist, showing a photo of Batebi with the bloodied T-shirt of his friend, shot at a peaceful rally. Grace Kwinjeh, the Zimbabwean dissident and journalist, was tortured in prison by President Robert Mugabe’s thugs. Now in exile, she fights the regime’s victimization of women.

These and other participants, like Berta Antunes of Cuba and Jacqueline Kasha of Uganda, took extraordinary risks for the causes they represent.

Together, we will produce a series of proposed human rights resolutions for the UN to adopt, based upon a common principle: The use of fear as an instrument of government must be banished forever.

Freedom from fear was promised by the UN in the preamble to the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Rest assured that until this basic freedom is taken seriously in those halls, our voices will ring loud.

Jianli is a leading Chinese human rights advocate. An eyewitness to the Tiananmen Square massacre of 1989, he now lives in the United States, where he founded Initiatives for China, a pro-democracy organization.

Link to New York Daily News: https://www.nydailynews.com/opinions/2011/09/19/2011-09-19_the_uns_red_carpet_for_tyrants.html#ixzz1YP7kj7OX 

The post Issue 308: “The UN’s red carpet for tyrants: We’re hosting our own assembly where repression isn’t welcome” – Op-ed in today’s NY Daily News appeared first on UN Watch.

______________

U.N. Watchdog Group Barred From ‘Racism’ Meeting

But a group with close ties to Gaddafi is cleared to attend

By Patrick Goodenough
Sept. 15, 2011

(CNSNews.com) – A watchdog group that has frequently angered human rights-violating regimes at the United Nations has been blocked from attending next week’s controversial “Durban III” racism meeting in New York.

U.N. Watch, based in Geneva and accredited by the U.N., has been excluded from a list of 88 approved non-governmental organizations, but a group with close ties to Libya’s former Gaddafi regime was approved to attend next Thursday’s event.

The high-level meeting marks the tenth anniversary of the Durban Declaration and Plan of Action (DDPA), first adopted in Durban, South Africa. The U.S. and at least 10 other Western democracies have announced they will not attend, because both the 2001 “Durban I” and a 2009 review conference, “Durban II,” picked out Israel for condemnation.

Queries sent to the U.N.’s NGO Branch on Wednesday about the process of NGO accreditation received no reply, but according to a U.N. Web site, the final list of civil society groups permitted to attend was “approved by Member States.”

Among those on the list is the Geneva-based group, North-South 21 (“Nord-Sud 21” in French), a group funded by Muammar Gaddafi in the late 1980s to administer something called the “Al-Gaddafi International Prize for Human Rights.”

Past recipients of the award include former Cuban president Fidel Castro – described in the citation as a “freedom fighter” (1998), the “children of Iraq, victims of hegemony and embargo” (1999), Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez (2004), and Roger Garaudy (2002), a French communist-turned-Muslim who was convicted in 1998 on charges of denying the Holocaust.

Another recipient of the Gaddafi Prize was Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan, who won the award last year and early this year was criticized at home for not repudiating it.

Nord-Sud 21 was a participant in an NGO Forum that was held on the sidelines of Durban I in 2001.  Attendees recall that the event was characterized by pro-Israel speakers being shouted down while pro-Palestinian groups circulated anti-Semitic caricatures and posters equating Israel with Nazi Germany and apartheid South Africa.

Pro-Palestinian protestors demonstrate in Geneva on the eve of the “Durban II” conference in Geneva. (Photo: ICARE)

The forum’s final document declared Israel to be “a racist, apartheid state” and called for the establishment of a tribunal to bring Israelis to justice for “war crimes, acts of genocide and ethnic cleansing.”

Nord-Sud 21 also took part in the April 20-24, 2009 event Durban II in Geneva, where it hosted a side-meeting to complain about the fact that a final text being considered by participating governments did not include language directly referring to Palestinian occupation and Israeli “apartheid,” according to a European anti-racist monitoring group that monitored the week’s events.

(In the end the Durban II text reaffirmed the DDPA, which singled out Israel alone for criticism, by identifying “Palestinian people under foreign occupation” as victims of racism. Durban III is similarly set to “reaffirm … the full and effective implementation of the Durban Declaration.”)

‘Ominous sign’

While U.N. member states have decided to allow Nord-Sud 21 to participate in Durban III, they have ruled out attendance by U.N. Watch, which monitors the U.N. Human Rights Council in Geneva.

U.N. Watch executive director Hillel Neuer said late Wednesday that the U.N. had given no reasons for turning down its application.

It was the first time ever that U.N. Watch had been “barred” from a U.N. meeting, he told CNSNews.com, calling it an “ominous sign that the only U.N. watchdog group is being kept out.”

It was “telling,” Neuer added, that a Gaddafi “front group” was being welcomed.

“It is an embarrassment for the U.N.” he said, adding that U.N. high commissioner for human rights Navi Pillay should speak out.

U.N. Watch has become a thorn in the side of countries on the Human Rights Council that have poor human rights records.

Its representatives have used their brief speaking slots to accuse governments of abuses and hypocrisy – using direct language seldom heard in U.N. chambers – and frequently are interrupted by complaints from delegates of such countries as Cuba and China.

In an unusual but effective tactic, U.N. Watch has at times used its time slot to feature a guest – such as the former commander of British forces in Afghanistan who defended the conduct of Israel’s 2008-9 offensive against Hamas in Gaza; and a Syrian opposition supporter who last month challenged countries like China, Russia and Pakistan by name, asking them how they could justify their “support for a regime that slaughters its own people.”

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The Geneva-based rights group called on other EU states and democracies worldwide to follow suit.

“The Durban process has been marked by ugly displays of intolerance and anti-Semitism, and that is not something that should be  commemorated,” said UN Watch executive director Hillel Neuer.

“We are further concerned by the timing and venue, given that New York will have just held solemn ten-year memorials for those murdered in the September 11 terrorist attacks.”

“UN Watch is fully committed to combating discrimination, intolerance, and bigotry, and to promoting human rights for all.  We call on all democracies to join us in opposing the attempts by dictators and bigots to use the Durban process to hijack this noble cause.”

See Italian and Dutch announcements below.

___________________

Netherlands Not Attending UN anti-Racism Meeting

THE HAGUE, 23/07/11 – The Netherlands will not be present in New York on 22 September at the celebration of the 10th anniversary of the Durban Declaration. Italy and the Czech Republic are also boycotting the conference because some countries use it for anti-Israeli propaganda.

In the South African city of Durban in 2001, it was agreed to combat worldwide racism, xenophobia and discrimination. The Netherlands, Italy and the Czech Republic wanted to include in the final statement of the meeting in September “that all participating states emphatically distance themselves from the linking of subjects that have nothing to do with the fight against racism,” but “because it is not possible to get such a guarantee, the three countries now see themselves forced to no longer participate in the preparations for the celebration, and also not to attend it, ” the foreign affairs ministry said Friday.

“A number of countries have in the past continually put the peace process in the Middle East in the centre of the discussions on combating racism, xenophobia and discrimination, along with which denying Israel’s right to exist,” according to the ministry. Although they are boycotting the conference, “the Netherlands will of course continue to make active efforts to combat racism, xenophobia and discrimination in more productive ways.”

_______________________________

Declaration by Italian Foreign Minister Franco Frattini

Rome 22 July 2011

For some time now we have had some reserves over the exercise known in the UN sphere as the “Durban Process”, because over the years it has been instrumentalised in political terms. The Process has been transformed from a forum for debate on and coordination of international action against racism, discrimination and xenophobia, into a tribunal for accusations against Israel.

It was for this reason more than any other that we decided not to take part in 2009 in the “Durban II” Review Conference. And it was for that same reason that Italy, along with other Western and European Union countries, voted against convening the event celebrating the 10th anniversary of Durban. This is scheduled to take pace on 22 September 2011 in New York, at Heads of State and Government level.

In the negotiations under way in recent weeks in New York on the content and organisation of September’s event, we therefore took steps, with the EU partners whose thinking reflects ours in this respect, to seek to avoid the shift of emphasis that took place in the conferences of 2001 and 2009. I recall the address by the Iranian President, Ahmadinejad, on that latter occasion, in which, inter alia, he legitimised the Holocaust denial theories. For this reason, we asked for the final document to explicitly recognise that past references, in the context of the Durban Process, to the specific situation of the Middle East are not part of the international commitment against racial discrimination. We feel that any axiomatic linkage between racism and Israel’s defence of its right to exist as a state is unacceptable.

Unfortunately, however, just some weeks before the forthcoming event, I have to say that this request was not accepted. In these circumstances, I feel that the minimum conditions for Italy to take part in the commemoration on 22 September are not in place.

Italy reiterates it commitment to combat racism and all forms of intolerance and discrimination. We continue to view international cooperation in this sector as one of the key instruments to improve the protection and promotion of human rights throughout the world.

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The Geneva-based rights group called on other EU states and democracies worldwide to follow suit.

“The Durban process has been marked by ugly displays of intolerance and anti-Semitism, and that is not something that should be  commemorated,” said UN Watch executive director Hillel Neuer.

“We are further concerned by the timing and venue, given that New York will have just held solemn ten-year memorials for those murdered in the September 11 terrorist attacks.”

“UN Watch is fully committed to combating discrimination, intolerance, and bigotry, and to promoting human rights for all.  We call on all democracies to join us in opposing the attempts by dictators and bigots to use the Durban process to hijack this noble cause.”

See Italian and Dutch announcements below.

___________________

Netherlands Not Attending UN anti-Racism Meeting

THE HAGUE, 23/07/11 – The Netherlands will not be present in New York on 22 September at the celebration of the 10th anniversary of the Durban Declaration. Italy and the Czech Republic are also boycotting the conference because some countries use it for anti-Israeli propaganda.

In the South African city of Durban in 2001, it was agreed to combat worldwide racism, xenophobia and discrimination. The Netherlands, Italy and the Czech Republic wanted to include in the final statement of the meeting in September “that all participating states emphatically distance themselves from the linking of subjects that have nothing to do with the fight against racism,” but “because it is not possible to get such a guarantee, the three countries now see themselves forced to no longer participate in the preparations for the celebration, and also not to attend it, ” the foreign affairs ministry said Friday.

“A number of countries have in the past continually put the peace process in the Middle East in the centre of the discussions on combating racism, xenophobia and discrimination, along with which denying Israel’s right to exist,” according to the ministry. Although they are boycotting the conference, “the Netherlands will of course continue to make active efforts to combat racism, xenophobia and discrimination in more productive ways.”

_______________________________

Declaration by Italian Foreign Minister Franco Frattini

Rome 22 July 2011

For some time now we have had some reserves over the exercise known in the UN sphere as the “Durban Process”, because over the years it has been instrumentalised in political terms. The Process has been transformed from a forum for debate on and coordination of international action against racism, discrimination and xenophobia, into a tribunal for accusations against Israel.

It was for this reason more than any other that we decided not to take part in 2009 in the “Durban II” Review Conference. And it was for that same reason that Italy, along with other Western and European Union countries, voted against convening the event celebrating the 10th anniversary of Durban. This is scheduled to take pace on 22 September 2011 in New York, at Heads of State and Government level.

In the negotiations under way in recent weeks in New York on the content and organisation of September’s event, we therefore took steps, with the EU partners whose thinking reflects ours in this respect, to seek to avoid the shift of emphasis that took place in the conferences of 2001 and 2009. I recall the address by the Iranian President, Ahmadinejad, on that latter occasion, in which, inter alia, he legitimised the Holocaust denial theories. For this reason, we asked for the final document to explicitly recognise that past references, in the context of the Durban Process, to the specific situation of the Middle East are not part of the international commitment against racial discrimination. We feel that any axiomatic linkage between racism and Israel’s defence of its right to exist as a state is unacceptable.

Unfortunately, however, just some weeks before the forthcoming event, I have to say that this request was not accepted. In these circumstances, I feel that the minimum conditions for Italy to take part in the commemoration on 22 September are not in place.

Italy reiterates it commitment to combat racism and all forms of intolerance and discrimination. We continue to view international cooperation in this sector as one of the key instruments to improve the protection and promotion of human rights throughout the world.

The post Italy and Holland pull out of UN’s Durban III conference on racism appeared first on UN Watch.

“The Durban process was marked by ugly displays of intolerance and anti-Semitism, and that is not something that should be  commemorated,” said UN Watch executive director Hillel Neuer.

“We are further concerned by the timing and venue, given that New York will have just held solemn ten-year memorials for those murdered in the September 11 terrorist attacks.”

“UN Watch, founded by US civil rights pioneer Morris Abram, is fully committed to combating discrimination, intolerance, and bigotry, and to promoting human rights for all.  We oppose the attempts by dictators and despots to use the Durban process to hijack this noble cause.”

The government of Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper was the first to announce it would not participate in the planned “Durban III” summit of world leaders, followed by Israel and the United States.

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UN Watch calls on other EU states to follow

GENEVA — UN Watch commended the Czech government for announcing that it will stay away from the UN’s Sept. 22nd commemoration of the 2001 Durban conference, a supposed anti-racism gathering that turned into what many called a global festival of hate.

The Geneva-based rights group called on EU states and other democracies to follow suit, noting that Italy and the Netherlands recently joined the Czechs in delivering a tough statement at a June 24 UN meeting, objecting to the 2001 Durban declaration’s politicized references to the Middle East. A first draft for the Sept. 22 declaration has been circulated and will be presented next week at a UN meeting.

“The Durban process has been marked by ugly displays of intolerance and anti-Semitism, and that is not something that should be commemorated,” said UN Watch executive director Hillel Neuer.

“We are further concerned by the timing and venue, given that New York will have just held solemn ten-year memorials for those murdered in the September 11 terrorist attacks.”

“UN Watch, founded by US civil rights pioneer Morris Abram, is fully committed to combating discrimination, intolerance, and bigotry, and to promoting human rights for all.  We call on all democracies to join us in opposing the attempts by dictators and despots to use the Durban process to hijack this noble cause.”

Canada was the first to announce it would not participate in the planned “Durban III” summit of world leaders, followed by Israel and the United States.

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UN Watch Calls on other EU states to follow

GENEVA — UN Watch commended the Czech government for being the first EU state to declare that it will stay away from the UN’s Sept. 22 commemoration of the 2001 Durban conference, a supposed anti-racism gathering that became a venue for mass displays of hatred.

The Geneva-based rights group called on EU states and other democracies to follow suit, noting that Italy and the Netherlands joined the Czechs in presenting a firm position at a June 24 UN meeting, objecting to the 2001 declaration’s politicized references to the Middle East.

A first draft for the Sept. 22 declaration has been circulated and will be presented next week at a UN meeting.

In a statement issued today, UN Watch recalled that the Durban process has been marked by ugly displays of intolerance and anti-Semitism, and that is not something that should be commemorated.

UN Watch is further concerned by the timing and venue, given that New York will have just held solemn ten-year memorials for those murdered in the September 11 terrorist attacks.

UN Watch is fully committed to combating discrimination, intolerance, and bigotry, and to promoting human rights for all. For that reason we call on all democracies to join us in opposing the attempts by bigoted despots to use the Durban process to hijack this noble cause.

Canada was the first to announce it would not participate in the UN’s “Durban III” summit of world leaders, followed by Israel and the United States.

In 2009, additional countries to pull out of the Durban II meeting included Italy, the Netherlands, Germany, Poland, Australia and New Zealand. France and the UK did not walk out, but asserted firm red lines that helped deter pernicious language from entering the text as well as hateful side events from being organized under UN auspices.

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As world leaders will commemorate the 10th anniversary of the 2001 Durban Declaration on racism and discrimination, a coalition of 25 non-governmental organizations will be holding a parallel summit, adjacent to the UN, to give voice to victims worldwide, according to a statement issued today by UN Watch, an independent human rights monitoring group based in Geneva.

The NGO Human Rights Summit, to be organized by UN Watch in partnership with an international civil society coalition, will take place on September 21-22, 2011, beginning on the same day as President Obama will open the annual session of the UN General Assembly.

“This will be a golden opportunity for human rights groups to turn an international spotlight on some of the most pressing situations, demand action for victims, and urge the UN to remove violator states from the membership of its human rights agencies,” said Hillel Neuer, executive director of UN Watch.

“To that end, our international coalition of NGOs will hold a parallel summit of human rights dissidents, pro-democracy and anti-racism activists. When Iran, Syria, China, Cuba, Zimbabwe and other repressive governments present a politicized agenda to shield their own abuses, human rights activists will instead focus attention on the victims most in need of global attention, including those protected under the Durban Declaration’s Article 2 prohibition against discrimination based on political or other opinion,” said Neuer.

“The NGO summit will demand action on urgent situations of genocidal racism as well as the massacre of peaceful protesters and the targeting of pro-democracy advocates around the world. Victims of discrimination and gross human rights abuses from Sudan, China, North Korea, Iran, Cuba, Venezuela, Syria, Zimbabwe and elsewhere will testify about their persecution and demand that the world leaders gathered at the UN address their situations,” said Neuer.

Speakers at the NGO summit will include victims of persecution, former prisoners of conscience, parliamentarians, human rights experts and activists. Themes to be addressed by the panel sessions will include genocide, discrimination against women, discrimination against gays and lesbians, and discrimination based on religion or political opinion. The summit will conclude with a joint declaration demanding action on urgent situations.

UN Watch was founded in 1993 to monitor the UN according to the principles of its Charter and to promote human rights for all. Based in Geneva, it recently brought human rights victims from China, Libya, Sudan and elsewhere to testify before UN bodies. In the past year, UN Watch led a global coalition of human rights groups to keep Libya and Syria off the UN Human Rights Council. The watchdog organization is regularly quoted by major media worldwide on UN and human rights issues.

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