Racism Archives - UN Watch

UN committee probes Palestinian antisemitism

unwatch — Fri, 16 Aug 2019 00:44:29 +0000

UN Watch founder Morris B. Abram, expert member of the United Nations Sub-Commission on Prevention of Discrimination and Protection of Minorities, addressing the world body on January 15, 1964, when the world body voted to endorse Abram’s draft of the International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination, which UN Watch upheld in its appearance at the UN this week.

GENEVA, August 15, 2019 — On the conclusion of the first examination of the Palestinian record on racism by the UN’s Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination (CERD), UN Watch commended the 18-member expert body for asking the representatives of President Mahmoud Abbas to explain the prevalence of of antisemitism in Palestinian textbooks and the mistreatment of minorities in Palestinian-controlled areas.

UN Watch’s founder, civil rights leader Morris Abram, was a key drafter of the committee’s core document, the convention to eliminate racism, when he served as a UN expert in the 1960s. A new book to be published in December, “Touched with Fire: Morris B. Abram and the Battle against Racial and Religious Discrimination,” recount this history.

Ahead of the panel’s findings and recommendations due on August 29th, UN Watch Executive Director Hillel Neuer issued the following statement:

“What happened this week was unprecedented. Since 1974 when Yasser Arafat and the PLO were welcomed into the United Nations, this if the first time that the world body’s spotlight was officially placed on Palestinian racism, discrimination and antisemitism.”

“UN Watch submitted a major legal brief, and our Legal Advisor Dina Rovner yesterday appeared before the committee to document systematic anti-Jewish hate and other forms of racism incited daily by Palestinian Authority and Hamas officials, preachers, school books, TV stations, and social media.”

“Importantly, several committee experts used our materials to ask serious questions of the Palestinian delegation. Sadly, despite their signing of UN treaties, the Palestinian side failed to show any sense of accountability, instead repeatedly pointing the finger at Israel as an excuse. The Palestinians declined to explain why, for example, their newspapers and websites publish grotesque caricatures of Jews that look straight out of Der Sturmer.”

“UN Watch trusts that the committee’s findings will not be influenced by the Palestinian attempt to politicize the review session, and by their transparent strategy of deflection, and that it will instead apply real scrutiny to Palestinian laws and practices, pressing them to curb some of their most virulent forms of racism and antisemitism.”

“Astonishingly, while dozens of EU-funded Palestinian NGOs routinely address UN sessions on Israeli actions, and submit voluminous reports, not a single one of these groups submitted a report at this week’s first-ever UN review of the Palestinians’ record on racism. Only one, Al Haq, showed up at the last minute, possibly to mitigate this embarrassment. The effective boycott by these groups of a UN meeting on Palestinian human rights was the elephant in the room that no one dared to mention.”

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UN created global culture that made discussion of Islamist ideology taboo

unwatch — Wed, 27 Jul 2016 01:40:33 +0000

Testimony before the UN Human Rights Council, delivered by UN Watch executive director Hillel Neuer, in debate on report of the UN special rapporteur on racism and discrimination, June 28, 2016.
Mr. Rapporteur, Thank you for your report on xenophobia, which mentions genocide, in paragraphs 29 and 38; the Middle East in paragraphs 57 to 61; and Islamophobia in paragraphs 33, 34, 51, 56, and 63.
Now last week, experts of this council found that the Islamic State is committing genocide, against the Yazidis. Mr. Rapporteur, given that genocide is the ultimate manifestation of racism, is there a reason why the genocide of Yazidis—the only ongoing genocide recognized by this council—was not mentioned anywhere in your report?
I call your attention to the elaborate ideology behind the killings practiced by ISIS. This was brought to light last August in a major New York Times investigative report entitled “ISIS Enshrines a Theology of Rape; Claiming the Quran’s support, the Islamic State codifies sex slavery in conquered regions of Iraq and Syria and uses the practice as a recruiting tool.”
The newspaper interviewed 21 women and girls who escaped the Islamic State, and examined its official communications. It found that the systematic rape of women and girls from Iraq’s Yazidi religious minority has become deeply enmeshed in the organization and radical theology of the Islamic State, one year after the group announced it was reviving slavery as an institution.
The article shows how an Islamic State fighter, in the moments before he raped a 12-year-old girl, took the time to explain that what he was about to do was not a sin. He insisted that because the girl practiced a religion other than Islam, the Quran, in his view, not only gave him the right to rape her — it condoned and encouraged it.
Mr. Raporteur, would you consider examining how this genocidal theology developed, and where it came from? Are there UN member states who bear at least partial responsibility, through their funding of fundamentalist religious and educational institutions?
Mr. Rapporteur, over the past 15 years, as we’ve been discussing racism and discrimination under the Durban Declaration, why was this global scourge, killing innocents from Iraq to Nigeria, Orlando to Paris, never part of the official narrative?
Why, on the contrary, were the few human rights activists, journalists, and intellectuals, who tried to sound the alarm, accused of racism and Islamophobia?
Do you believe we at the UN help create a global culture that made this discussion taboo? Did the Durban process fail Yazidis, Christians, and Shia Muslims now facing genocide?
I thank you.

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Who will address the plight of victims of genocide?

unwatch — Fri, 18 Mar 2016 11:15:29 +0000

Statement by UN Watch
Panel on the Incompatibility Between Racism and Democracy
31^st session of the Human Rights CouncilDelivered by Mr. Samuel Talalay, March 18, 2016

Mr. President,

More than a half century ago, UN Watch founder Morris Abram was a leading advocate in the American civil rights movement led by Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King. He also served here, as a United Nations expert against discrimination.

It was Mr. Abram who won the 1963 U.S. Supreme Court case that recognized African-American voting rights, under the principle of “one person, one vote,” and who went on to head the United Negro College Fund.

In 1993, guided by the same vision of human rights and equality, Morris Abram founded UN Watch. Today, the fight against bigotry remains at the core of our mission.

In our view, a society that believes in liberal democracy—in the values of human rights, equality and freedom—is a society that gives to bigotry no sanction, to persecution no assistance.

Mr. President,

It is with this legacy, and with these principles, that UN Watch urges the United Nations to take responsibility to combat the worst form of racism: genocide.

Yesterday Secretary John Kerry recognized that ISIS is “responsible for genocide against groups in areas under its control, including Yezidis, Christians, and Shia Muslims.”

ISIS has captured and enslaved thousands of Yezidi women and girls – selling them at auction, raping them at will, and destroying the communities in which they had lived for countless generations.

To help mobilize world attention for these victims of genocide and crimes against humanity, UN Watch and 20 others NGOS recently gave their annual Geneva Summit Women’s Rights Award to two heroes: Iraqi MP Vian Dakhil, who speaks out for the Yazidi victims, together with Dr. Jan Kizilhan, a German psychologist who is treating many of the most severe cases of Yazidi women victimized by ISIS.

Mr. President, we ask the panel: If indeed genocide is happening, why does this UN Human Rights Council session have no resolutions, urgent debates, or commissions of inquiry? Who will address the plight of these suffering victims?

I thank you, Mr. President.

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Issue 557: "A great evil has been loosed upon the world"

unwatch — Tue, 10 Nov 2015 08:06:55 +0000

Today is 40th anniversary of UN’s 1975 “Zionism is Racism” canard

UN Watch pays tribute to the two great UN ambassadors whose eloquent speeches in the Nov. 10, 1975 debate are remembered more than anything said by the Soviet or Arab delegates who sponsored the resolution, which itself was repealed in 1991 following the demise of the Soviet Union. Today we feature the speech by Ambassador Daniel Patrick Moynihan; tomorrow, that of Ambassador Chaim Herzog.

Speech by U.S. Ambassador Daniel Patrick Moynihan

For video excerpt, click here. For text and audio of the full speech, click here.

The United States rises to declare before the General Assembly of the United Nations, and before the world, that it does not acknowledge, it will not abide by, it will never acquiesce in this infamous act.

Not three weeks ago, the United States Representative in the Social, Humanitarian, and Cultural Committee pleaded in measured and fully considered terms for the United Nations not to do this thing. It was, he said, “obscene.” It is something more today, for the furtiveness with which this obscenity first appeared among us has been replaced by a shameless openness.

There will be time enough to contemplate the harm this act will have done the United Nations. Historians will do that for us, and it is sufficient for the moment only to note the foreboding fact. A great evil has been loosed upon the world. The abomination of anti-semitism — as this year’s Nobel Peace Laureate Andrei Sakharov observed in Moscow just a few days ago — the abomination of anti-semitism has been given the appearance of international sanction. The General Assembly today grants symbolic amnesty — and more — to the murderers of the six million European Jews. Evil enough in itself, but more ominous by far is the realization that now presses upon us — the realization that if there were no General Assembly, this could never have happened.

As this day will live in infamy, it behooves those who sought to avert it to declare their thoughts so that historians will know that we fought here, that we were not small in number — not this time — and that while we lost, we fought with full knowledge of what indeed would be lost. …

The proposition to be sanctioned by a resolution of the General Assembly of the United Nations is that “Zionism is a form of racism and racial discrimination.” Now this is a lie. But as it is a lie which the United Nations has now declared to be a truth, the actual truth must be restated.

The very first point to be made is that the United Nations has declared Zionism to be racism — without ever having defined racism. “Sentence first — verdict afterwards,” as the Queen of Hearts said. But this is not wonderland, but a real world, where there are real consequences to folly and to venality. …

What we have here is a lie — a political lie of a variety well known to the twentieth century, and scarcely exceeded in all that annal of untruth and outrage. The lie is that Zionism is a form of racism. The overwhelmingly clear truth is that is it not.

[Here Moynihan discusses at length how the Jewish people includes individuals of different colors and ethnic origins, and that converts become Jewish regardless of race.]

Now I should wish to be understood that I am here making one point, and one point only, which is that whatever else Zionism may be, it is not and cannot be “a form of racism.” In logic, the State of Israel could be, or could become, many things, theoretically, including many things undesirable, but it could not be and could not become racism unless it ceased to be Zionist. …

The terrible lie that has been told here today will have terrible consequences. Not only will people begin to say, indeed they have already begun to say that the United Nations is a place where lies are told, but far more serious, grave and perhaps irreparable harm will be done to the cause of human rights itself. The harm will arise first because it will strip from racism the precise and abhorrent meaning that it still precariously holds today. How will the people of the world feel about racism and the need to struggle against it, when they are told that it is an idea as broad as to include the Jewish national liberation movement? …

There is this danger, and then a final danger that is the most serious of all. Which is that the damage we now do to the idea of human rights and the language of human rights could well be irreversible.

The idea of human rights as we know it today is not an idea which has always existed in human affairs, it is an idea which appeared at a specific time in the world, and under very special circumstances. It appeared when European philosophers of the seventeenth century began to argue that man was a being whose existence was independent from that of the State, that he need join a political community only if he did not lose by that association more than he gained. From this very specific political philosophy stemmed the idea of political rights, of claims that the individual could justly make against the state; it was because the individual was seen as so separate from the State that he could make legitimate demands upon it.

That was the philosophy from which the idea of domestic and international rights sprang. But most of the world does not hold with that philosophy now. Most of the world believes in newer modes of political thought, in philosophies that do not accept the individual as distinct from and prior to the State, in philosophies that therefore do not provide any justification for the idea of human rights and philosophies that have no words by which to explain their value. If we destroy the words that were given to us by past centuries, we will not have words to replace them, for philosophy today has no such words.

But there are those of us who have not forsaken these older words, still so new to much of the world. Not forsaken them now, not here, not anywhere, not ever.

The United States of America declares that it does not acknowledge, it will not abide by, it will never acquiesce in this infamous act.

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UN Racism Expert Condemns Antisemitism – But It Is Not Enough

unwatch — Fri, 12 Jun 2015 13:24:56 +0000

In his regular report (A/HRC/29/46) to the 29th session of the UN Human Rights Council on contemporary forms of racism, the Special Rapporteur, Mr. Mutuma Ruteere, focuses on the issue of racial profiling, which in his view affects primarily people of African descent and Middle Eastern origin. However, in his second report (A/HRC/29/47) that will be presented to the same HRC session, the Special Rapporteur addresses the issue of the resurgence of neo-Nazi ideologies.
Muslim and Jews, as well as the Roma communities are the minority groups suffering the most from stigmatization and violence in their respective countries, as pointed out by the Special Rapporteur. Political leaders have used the constant stigmatization of certain “vulnerable groups,” especially during austerity periods to justify “high unemployment rates, cuts in social benefits and increasing poverty.”
Indeed, the Special Rapporteur acknowledged that constant “racist and xenophobic violence continues to be perpetrated by extremist movements and groups, including neo-Nazis, skinheads and other right-wing movements, against Roma, Muslims, [and] Jews.” For instance, Jewish schools and cemeteries have been painted with swastikas and anti-Jews slogans, while gravestones were defiled and broken.
Besides the continuing racist and xenophobic violence, the Special Rapporteur identified Holocaust denial and distortion of history as major issues, which “are generally motivated by strong anti-Semitism.” The Special Rapporteur is concerned about those views, which “perpetuate long-standing anti-Semitic prejudices and stereotypes.” Such attempts to falsify history contribute to the dissemination of Nazism and have been condemned by the Special Rapporteur. In fact, he emphasized the importance of criminalizing Holocaust denial in national law, as it is the case in a number of countries. In addition, in a clear reference to Iran, the Special Rapporteur expressed concern “about allegations regarding a cartoon competition disdaining the Holocaust and insulting the victims and remaining survivors of that tragedy.”
Despite considerable recent efforts made by States to fight against “extremist political parties, movements and groups” as well as neo-Nazis and right-wing extremist movements, racist and xenophobic violence, especially against the Jewish communities remains as one of the principal challenges in today’s world. Therefore, the Special Rapporteur highlighted two key policy measures to counter those challenges, such as “awareness-raising programmes” and adopt “a victim-centred approach.” Instead, he just recalled the importance of collective action regarding good practices, by including “civil society and international and regional human rights mechanisms […] to counter extremist political parties, movements and groups.”
Nevertheless, the Special Rapporteur has ignored the scourges of antisemitism originating from the left, Islamic fundamentalist circles, as well as governments, especially in the Middle East. He also did not send any communications regarding antisemitism in his last “Communications Report on Special Procedures (A/HRC/29/50). Indeed, after the peak of anti-Semitic attacks in Europe, with the attack against the Hyper Casher in Paris in January 2015, the Rapporteur did not take any action on the issue. In a period when anti-Semitism has reached a new height, the Special Rapporteur ought to address this phenomenon more holistically.

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UN Racism Expert Condemns Antisemitism – But It Is Not Enough

unwatch — Fri, 12 Jun 2015 13:04:10 +0000

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UN Watch's Geneva rights summit draws world attention, spotlights Boko Haram, ISIS, China, Cuba, France, Iran, North Korea, Pakistan, Russia, Tibet, Turkey, Venezuela

zadmin — Tue, 24 Feb 2015 11:50:53 +0000

Issue 528
UN Watch’s Geneva rights summit draws world attention, spotlights Boko Haram, ISIS, China, Cuba, France, Iran, North Korea, Pakistan, Russia, Tibet, Turkey, Venezuela

COURAGE AWARD GOES TO RAIF BADAWI, WOMEN’S RIGHTS AWARD TO IRANIAN JOURNALIST MASIH ALINEJAD
Covered in Le Monde, The Guardian, CNN, Deutsche Welle, Toronto Star, France 4, Swiss TV

GENEVA, Feb. 24, 2015 – The Geneva-based human rights group UN Watch today led a coalition of 20 NGOs in giving a rare UN platform to the Nigerian girl who jumped off a truck to escape from Boko Haram, the student leaders of the Hong Kong umbrella protest, and courageous dissidents and victims from China, Cuba, Iran, Tibet, Pakistan, Turkey, North Korea and Venezuela.

The 2015 Geneva Summit for Human Rights, which opened yesterday in a packed UN chamber below the Human Rights Council, concluded today in an adjacent conference center before an audience of 500 human rights activists, diplomats, journalists and students.

The summit aims to place critical human rights situations on the world agenda days before foreign ministers gather on Monday in Geneva to open the annual session of the UN Human Rights Council.
Worldwide media coverage focused on the Nigerian girl who escaped the Boko Haram kidnapping (“Bring Back Our Girls”); a memorial to the murdered Charlie Hebdo journalists by two of their Paris colleagues, Philippe Val and Caroline Fourest; and the bestowal of awards to jailed Saudi blogger Raif Badawi, and to Masih Alinejad, creator of a viral Facebook page that allows Iranian women to show hijab-free photos of themselves.

Notable speakers also included:
· Alex Chow & Lester Shum, Student leaders of Hong Kong protest movement
· Pierre Torres, French Journalist held hostage by ISIS for 10 months
· Yeon-Mi Park, 21-year-old North Korean defector
· Il Lim, North Korean defector and former slave laborer
· Ashiq Masih, Husband of Asia Bibi, Christian mother of five on death row in Pakistan for blasphemy
· Dicki Chhoyang, Foreign Minister of Central Tibetan Administration
· Maria Corina Machado, Venezuelan opposition leader persecuted by Maduro regime (by video)
· Yang Jianli, Former Chinese political prisoner, survivor of Tiananmen Square massacre
Canada, the Czech Republic and the U.S. co-sponsored yesterday’s UN opening session. Some 15 governments also met privately with the dissidents and victims at a meeting hosted by the Canadian Mission in Geneva.

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Celebrating Equality on Martin Luther King Jr. Day

zadmin — Mon, 19 Jan 2015 11:44:43 +0000

Issue 522

Celebrating Equality on Martin Luther King Jr. Day

UN Watch founder Morris B. Abram with Rev. Martin Luther King and other fellow civil rights activists, Washington, DC, November 17, 1965. Veteran leader A. Philip Randolph launched the White House Conference on Civil Rights with a call for a “Freedom Budget” to wipe out black ghettos in U.S. cities. Here at the start of the conference are (Left to Right): Morris Abram, Co-Chairman of the conference; Dr. King; Randolph; John Lewis, head of the Students for Non-Violent Action; William T. Coleman, Co-Chair.

In tribute to Martin Luther King Jr. Day, UN Watch invites you to listen to Dr. King’s “I Have A Dream” speech from 1963 — one of the greatest speeches in history. Click here for video.
UN Watch founder Morris Abram worked closely with Dr. King in the civil rights struggle. To read Ambassador Abram’s story about growing up amid segregation, “A House Divided Can’t Stand,” click here.
___________
ANNOUNCING UN WATCH’S 2015 GENEVA SUMMIT FOR HUMAN RIGHTS

www.genevasummit.org
___________
Nigerian Girl Escaped from Boko Haram to Headline UN Watch’s 7th Annual Human Rights Summit
Also featuring: Leaders of protest movements and top dissidents from Iran, Ukraine, Turkey, China, Cuba, North Korea, and more

GENEVA, January 19, 2014 — The kidnapping of nearly 300 girls by Boko Haram in Nigeria will be spotlighted at the seat of the UN Human Rights Council, when one of the escaped students will speak out for the first time, joining top-name dissidents from Iran, North Korea, Turkey, Ukraine and China for the 7th annual Geneva Summit for Human Rights and Democracy, on February 24, 2015.
The acclaimed annual conference is timed to take place in Geneva days before foreign ministers gather to open the 2015 UN Human Rights Council session, to be chaired this year by Germany.
“It’s a focal point for dissidents worldwide,” said Hillel Neuer, executive director of the Geneva-based UN Watch, which for the seventh year in a row will be organizing the annual event together with a cross-regional coalition of 20 other human rights groups.
The global gathering is recognized as a one-stop opportunity to hear from and meet front-line human rights advocates, many of whom have personally suffered imprisonment and torture.
“The speakers’ compelling and vivid testimonies will be a call to action for the U.N. to address the most pressing human rights situations around the world,” said Neuer.
Subjects on the program will include: the escalating attacks on journalists, religious intolerance, and the persecution of human rights defenders.

Admission to this year’s February 24, 2015 summit is free and open to the public, but registration is mandatory. For accreditation, program and schedule information, visit www.genevasummit.org.

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UN reviews racism in America

zadmin — Thu, 14 Aug 2014 16:21:06 +0000

When the UN examined racial discrimination in the U.S. this week, some experts could not withhold their anti-American sentiments.
CERD, the UN Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination, is a body of “independent experts that monitors [the] implementation of the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination by its State parties,” obliging states to submit regular reports on the implementation of the rights of the Convention.
The United States was questioned on a vast amount of topics, centered on the rights of minorities, with many Committee members providing fair criticism. Noureddine Amir, vice-chair person, headed CERDs’ review which citied racial profiling by U.S. law enforcement officers, a “lack of respect” for indigenous rights and extremist hate crimes against minorities among key concerns, with many CERD experts also imploring the U.S. federal government to further engage with state and local authorities, citing disparate state statistics and laws with regards to minority rights.

At times, however, it felt as if the Committee members were placing the U.S. delegates, and the United States in turn, on trial. Mr. Yong‘an Huang, a former Ambassador of the People’s Republic of China and now CERD expert, commented on how “the U.S. likes to play the role of world’s police but never to talk about the human rights situation in the country.” Another expert, Mr. Jose Lindgren Alves of Brazil, even compared the U.S. census data collection to the Nazis, “jokingly” stating that “whites call themselves Caucasian…are they all Georgian or Armenian?”, a categorization style which he felt was similar to “Aryan, like Hitler said.”
After a bombardment of questions and comments from the experts, midway through the second meeting on August 14, Chairperson Jose Francisco Cali Tzay of Guatemala, himself of indigenous American origin, had to remind Committee members that they had “questioned the U.S. delegation for four hours,” and that the latter only had “one hour and a half” to respond.
In its response, the United States attempted to address as many queries and criticisms as possible, reiterating current law and touching on future possibilities or difficulties relating to the separation of powers. At one point, Ms. Veronica Venture of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security had to correct Mr. Amir on statistics relating to detention times, which the latter had reported as double the actual figure.
As expected, there was mass interest in the review from the media and the civil society, leading the UN to reschedule it to a larger room in the grand Palais des Nations, while Iraq and Japan which are soon to be reviewed are relegated to the relatively smaller Palais Wilson. While it is completely legitimate to review the record of countries such as the U.S., regrettably, as is often the case, much more serious situations in many parts of world, including China, Russia and many countries in the Middle East, do not attract a comparable spotlight and remain largely ignored.

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UN Racism Expert Condemns Holocaust Denial

zadmin — Mon, 30 Jun 2014 09:28:19 +0000

Unlike its discredited predecessor, the Human Rights Council has not passed one single resolution condemning antisemitism. (The Commission on Human Rights used to condemn antisemitism in 3 separate resolutions each year. Not much has changed since our 2004-2007 The United Nations and Anti-Semitism Report Card.)
Yet, in a recent welcome development, Mr. Mutuma Ruteere, the UN’s expert on racism, discrimination, xenophobia and intolerance, had some tough words for antisemites across the world. In his most recent report, the expert dedicated an entire section to “Countering Holocaust denial and the distortion of History” and included another section outlining successful methods for combating neo-Nazis and skinheads.
In particular, the report explicitly defines and denounces modern Holocaust denial. The report defines Holocaust denial as 1) denying six million Jews were killed during the Second World War; 2) professing the Nazis had no official policy or intention to exterminate Jews; and 3) extermination and concentration camps such as Auschwitz-Birkenau never existed.
The expert explains that while the Holocaust “is one of the well-documented events in recent history,” Holocaust denial is driven directly by antisemitism and as a tool for advancing the conspiracy of Jewish world domination. This antisemitism, the expert continues, also manifests in overtly antisemitic events and actions such as a full military funeral of an SS officer, a celebration of a Nazi military victory, and the promotion of antisemitic views by a comedian [alluding to French “comedian” Dieudonne] and other public personalities.

Mr. Ruteere highlights several efforts and initiatives taken by countries to combat antisemitism. In particular, he “emphasizes the importance of criminalizing the approval, denial or belittlement of the Holocaust in national law.” The Czech Republic, France, Germany, Hungary, Israel, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Poland and Romania explicitly consider Holocaust denial a crime, a measure Mr. Ruteere believes is crucial in combating “racist ideologies” and “hate speech.”
Despite the fact, however, that many nations commemorate the Holocaust, antisemitism, Holocaust denial and conspiracy theories about Jews still “persist in societies across Europe.” One of the best practice for fighting such scourges, Mr. Ruteere notes, is through education and “recommends that States ensure that education about the Holocaust is included on school curricula.”
As a result, the UN expert recommends that all nations adopt provisions that add increased sanctions for crimes that are deemed to be motivated by antisemitism (paragraph 53) and to actively curb the rise and influence of neo-Nazi and skinhead groups (57/58). The UN expert also calls on all countries to actively preserve “Holocaust sites which served as Nazi death camps, concentration and forced labor camps” and “encourages states to take legislative, law enforcement and educational measures to put an end to Holocaust denial” (60).
Mr. Ruteere’s reminds the public of the oft used, yet seldom practiced adage of “never again,” that sadly remains ignored today. Mr. Ruteere writes, “The Holocaust is a powerful reminder of the need to protect, promote and defend human rights…by promoting Holocaust remembrance, Governments can also speak out against contemporary manifestations of racism, anti-Semitism and other related intolerance.”

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