[News] How Israel orchestrated the real Geneva hate fest against Black and Brown people
Anti-Imperialist News
news at freedomarchives.org
Thu May 14 17:02:06 EDT 2009
May 14, 2009
<http://www.sfbayview.com/2009/the-facts-how-israel-orchestrated-the-real-geneva-%e2%80%98hate-fest%e2%80%99-against-black-and-brown-people/>The
facts: How Israel orchestrated the real Geneva
hate fest against Black and Brown people
by Arlene Eisen
On Saturday, April 18, two days before the United
Nations Durban Review Conference (DRC) officially
convened, anti-racist demonstrators from every
continent and nearly every struggle in the world
filled the streets of downtown Geneva. A sea of
flags, banners and posters spoke for indigenous
people from Bolivia, Mexico and Guatemala, the
landless former slaves of Brazil, Tamils
struggling for survival in Sri Lanka, a huge
contingent of Dalits demanding an end to the
caste system, Black delegates from the U.S. and
other points in the Diaspora calling for
reparations and freedom for political prisoners,
Africans from the continent, many European
migrants from the third world and their
supporters and a variety of groups in solidarity
with the Palestinian people. Some had handmade
signs: Zionism equals racism and Israel is an Apartheid State.
At the rally, Doudou Diène, Special Rapporteur
on Contemporary forms of Racism, Racial
Discrimination, Xenophobia and related
intolerance and a scholar from Senegal, spoke.
He emphasized that racism is rooted in slavery
and colonialism, including settler colonialism.
He pointed out that the Israeli occupation of
Palestine continues a tradition of settler
colonialism and racism. The crowd applauded. Not a heckler was in sight.
Most of us at the demonstration had heard the
news that the U.N. Office of the High
Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) - the
organizer of the Conference - had attempted to
appease the United States and Israel by deleting
language supporting reparations for slavery and
self determination for the Palestinian people.
But the Obama administrations threat to continue
the boycott begun by Bush and Israel in 2001 did
not dampen the spirits of the demonstrators that
afternoon. After the demonstration, various NGO
caucuses met, many for the first time, attempting
to prepare position papers that would pressure
the DRC to be more responsive to grassroots
anti-racist movements. We were about to learn
that we had been thoroughly outmaneuvered.
Most were unaware that for nearly two years,
hundreds of militant pro-Israeli activists and
the Israeli Foreign Ministry had been
coordinating their plans to sabotage the DRC. The
fiercely pro-Israel
<http://www.ngo-monitor.org>NGO-Monitor named at
least 17 Zionist organizations that had been
monitoring and protesting the Durban Review
Conference since May 2007 - only a few months
after the U.N. General Assembly itself had passed
a resolution to convene the Durban Review Conference.
Role of the Israeli Foreign Ministry
On Sunday, Feb. 24, 2008, Israels Foreign
Minister at the time, Tzipi Livni, announced
Israels decision to boycott the DRC. On Feb. 25,
Haviv Rettig Gur reported in the Jerusalem Post
that some 30 Jewish organizations from around the
world were scheduled to meet the following day
with the Israeli Foreign Ministry to coordinate
efforts at preventing the Durban Review
Conference from becoming an anti-Israel and
anti-semitic hate fest. According to the
Jerusalem Post, at that meeting, with the
guidance of the head of the NGO Unit of the
Foreign Ministry, they formed a task force to
coordinate efforts for Durban II.
At the time, Bush was still president and all the
2008 presidential candidates were competing with
each other to be recognized as the staunchest
Israeli ally. Israel had no reason to doubt U.S.
backing when it took the lead in the
international campaign to derail the DRC. Through
every U.S. presidency, Israel has been the
largest recipient of U.S. foreign aid - currently
$3.1 billion in military aid and nearly double
that in non-military grants. U.S. aid has built
and maintained Israels army - the fourth most
powerful in the world - the same army that has
keeps a defenseless Palestinian population under
siege, occupied for the last 42 years and
expelled and dispossessed for the last 60 years.
Most recently, Israel inflicted 22 days of
relentless round-the-clock bombing on the sliver
of land of Gaza where 1.5 million Palestinians
are caged. That bombing killed some 1,400 people,
wounded 4,336 and terrorized the entire
population. Israel perpetrated this crime against
humanity with impunity, confident of the support
of the Obama administration and most European allies.
Israel is aware that as a settler-colonial
regime, its power rests on violence underwritten
by the U.S. But U.S. support for Israels
permanent war against the Palestinian people
requires perpetuation of the myths: Israel is a
democratic, not apartheid state and Israel
wants peace and is only defending itself against fanatic Arab terrorists.
In Durban, the 2001 Worldwide Conference Against
Racism (WCAR), sponsored by the U.N., cracked
Israels hegemonic narrative of the the Middle
East conflict. The final Durban Declaration and
Program of Action (DDPA), signed Sept. 8, 2001,
by all U.N. members except the U.S. and Israel,
reflected the even-handed diplomacy of the
worlds official state representatives.
We are concerned about the plight of the
Palestinian people under foreign occupation. We
recognize the inalienable right of the
Palestinian people to self-determination and to
the establishment of an independent State and we
recognize the right of security for all States in
the region, including Israel, and call upon all
states to support the peace process and bring it
to an early conclusion. (paragraph 63,
<http://www.unhchr.ch/pdf/Durban.pdf>http://www.unhchr.ch/pdf/Durban.pdf)
Other paragraphs expressed deep concern regarding
anti-semitism and Islamophobia and affirmed that
the Holocaust must never be forgotten.
Despite the declarations moderation, the U.S.
and Israel denounced it as anti-semitic and
walked out. The corporate media echoed the
pro-Israeli narrative that demonized the Durban
Conference as an anti-semitic hate fest. Then,
before the U.N. or any of the 150 countries that
signed the declaration could defend it, the Twin Towers were bombed.
The Western corporate media sealed the reputation
of Durban in a tomb of anti-terror, anti-Muslim
hysteria. How convenient for the Zionists to
resurrect the misrepresented ghost of WCAR in
order to launch their campaign to discredit and
derail the 2009 Durban Review Conference.
The Zionists comprehensive strategy
Before any reader jumps to the conclusion that
this author is resorting to the traditional
anti-semitic canard by creating a fictional
Zionist conspiracy, please note that Michael
Jordan, frequent contributor to the pro-Israel
online news service JTA, openly bragged about the
power of their plot. The cornerstone of the plan
was to campaign for an international boycott of
the conference and then to accuse any critics of being anti-semitic.
On April 28, 2009,
<http://jta.org/news/article/2009/04/28/1004727/the-jewish-conspiracy-against-durban-ii-no-seriously>he
wrote: This time, however, the Jews actually did
conspire, albeit openly, to sabotage the conference. [my emphasis]
The World Jewish Congress[1] met with officials
from 17 U.N. member states to push for a boycott.
Hudson Institute scholar Anne Bayefsky banged the
anti-Durban drum for months in the U.S. media,
including the National Review, the New York Daily
News and Forbes. And Israeli officials pressed
their allies that intended to participate in the
conference not to tolerate any anti-Israel resolutions.
But for the most part, Durban IIs organizers
and participants did not want to point the finger
at the Jews for the anti-Durban effort for fear of being labeled anti-semites.
The Jerusalem Post, Israels newspaper of record,
reported frequently on the growing lobbying
efforts to render the Durban Review Conference
irrelevant by convincing the world community -
read Europe and the U.S. - to boycott it. A Sept.
28, 2008, article specifically detailed a
concerted three-pronged strategy: 1) To call for
states to boycott the conference; 2) To urge
governments and private donors not to fund either
the conference or the NGOs; 3) To organize and
galvanize a pro-Israeli presence at the
conference. While the article didnt publicize
it, the strategy also involved pressure from
inside the U.N. - especially the U.N. Office of
the High Commissioner for Human Rights - through
staff members who were relatively pro-Israel.
1. Lobbying for boycott
Virtually all pro-Israel forces were mobilized to
press for boycott. During the presidential
campaign, Obama shamelessly pandered to the
American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC)
- the influential lobbying organization. Yet he
also had a huge political debt to Black voters
and had encouraged his candidacy to be used as an anti-racist symbol.
Thus, many of his supporters were shocked Feb.
27, 2009, just five weeks into his presidency,
when Obama declared the U.S. would not attend the
U.N. Durban Review Conference unless its outcome
document were changed to drop all references to
Israel, reparations for slavery and the
defamation of religion. However, Obamas
spokespeople added that they would be prepared to
re-engage if the negotiations brought about a
shortened text of the document that met their criteria.
AIPAC immediately issued a
<http://www.aipac.org/Publications/PressAIPACStatements/AIPACApplaudsObamaAdminBoycottDurban2.pdf>press
release that applauded Obamas boycott of the
U.N.s celebration of racism and vile anti-semitic activity.
Encouraged by the Obama administrations open
endorsement of Israels year-old boycott, Zionist
forces intensified their campaign to widen the
boycott to destroy any possibility of a
successful conference. For example, on March 9,
2009, The Jerusalem Post reported that Dr. Moshe
Kantor, president of the European Jewish Congress
- an umbrella organization for many Zionist
organizations - called on the European Union to boycott the conference.
While only a handful of European countries
followed the lead of U.S. and Israel, the threat
of a wider boycott accomplished another
objective. On March 17, conference organizers
announced their attempt to appease Israel, the
United States and their fence-sitting allies by
revising the Draft Outcome Document. They removed
all references to Israel as a perpetrator of
racial discrimination, cut out any mention of the
Palestinians right to self determination and
also excised all language related to reparations,
an acknowledgement that the transatlantic slave
trade was a crime against humanity and a proposal
to strengthen the Working Group of Experts on
People of African Descent. But fearing resistance
from the Non-Aligned Countries, African countries
and other Islamic countries, conference
organizers balked at Obamas final demand to
totally renounce the hard-won Durban Declaration
and Programme of Action (DDPA) of 2001.
2. Choking off funding for the conference
In addition to pressure for boycott and weakening
the conferences anti-racist program and
documents, the Zionist strategy aimed to withhold
funding from the U.N. conference itself and potentially hostile NGOs.
The U.N.s budget only met part of the
conferences needs. The rest had to be raised
from voluntary contributions from states and
civil society, including major philanthropists
like Ford and Soros Foundations. It is possible
that Zionist pressure on the U.S. and other
governments to withhold funds from the U.N.
backfired. With no funds from the U.S., funds
donated by Iran, Libya and others became more significant.
However, the campaign to starve the NGO Forum and
any individual NGO that didnt tow the Israeli
line had more success. In October 2008, the NGO
Monitor sent an open letter to U.N. Secretary
General Ban Ki-Moon calling on him to avoid
providing official sponsorship or funding for
another NGO Forum that is likely to be a venue
used to promote hatred and anti-semitism.
Various other Zionist organizations - including
the Simon Wiesenthal Center, the American Jewish
Committee and Human Rights First, sent similar letters.
In 2001, the NGO Forum in Durban included 8,000
people and lasted more than a week. U.N. and
other financial support enabled many grassroots
people to participate and radicalize the process.
The forums political influence was significantly
responsible for the U.N. DDPAs endorsement of
reparations, self-determination for the
Palestinian people and generally strong stand
against racism. Israels strategy for 2009 was to
torpedo any NGO Forum with the potential of exerting an anti-Zionist influence.
In preparatory meetings, each time NGOs called
for an NGO Forum in Geneva in 2009, Jose
Dougan-Beaca, the coordinator of the
Anti-Discrimination Unit of the OHCHR, emphasized
that an NGO Forum was impossible because of lack
of money and facilities. Dougan-Beaca was
responsible for conveying information in both
directions between the NGOs and the OHCHR. But a
delegate from Independent Jewish Voices of Canada
who attended those meetings reported that he
became a partisan advocate for the pro-Israel NGOs.[2]
The pro-Israel Magenta website published detailed
reports of those preparatory meetings. Those
reports confirm Ralphs impression. In addition
to citing financial constraints, Dougan-Beaca
attempted to lower the NGOs sights for the
conference by emphasizing the DRC was mandated to
be a review conference, not intended to expand on
the DDPA. Therefore it would be appropriate for
NGO attendance to be much reduced and NGOs should
not attempt to strengthen the DDPA.
In the end, rather than a fully funded official
NGO Forum, barely 300 NGO representatives
straggled into private venues away from the U.N.
complex on the weekend before the DRC convened.
And fewer than 1,100 authorized NGO delegates
were able to come to Geneva at all. During the
conference itself, pre-authorized side events
that featured speakers on approved topics were
supposed to meet the NGO need for a political
platform. These side events reflected both Israels and the U.S. agenda.
Two weeks before the conference began, for
example, the Office of the High Commissioner for
Human Rights informed a Palestinian Refugee
Rights Organization (Badil) that
Palestinian-related side events would not be
permitted. There was no such restriction on pro-Israel events.
It is important to understand that the campaign
continues to financially strangle anti-racist
NGOs that may criticize Israel. On April 26, the
day after the conference adjourned, in a piece
titled, Geneva Walkout Isnt Enough
(www.ynetnews.com), Diane Meskin praised the NGO
Monitors campaign to cut off funding for all
anti-Israel NGOs. She wrote, The EU has much to
do if it truly wants to fight anti-semitism,
racism and the perpetuation of anti-Israel
propaganda on the world stage. It must put its
money where its mouth is and stop funding NGOs
that use these funds to promote the
delegitimization of Israel
She explicitly
named funding organizations that must cut off
named grantees - many of whom have supported a diversity of anti-racist causes.
3. Mobilizing a strong pro-Zionist (and disruptive) presence at DRC
Pro-Israel forces at the conference had their
marching orders: Protect Israel from criticism of
its most recent genocidal blitzkrieg and invasion
of Gaza and gag any discussion of the occupation
of Palestine itself. Uniformly, pro-Israeli
groups worked to keep the focus on Iran, the
holocaust, anti-semitism and Muslim complicity in
Darfur. They talked about the persecution of the
Roma and about Rwanda, but attempted to silence
all mention of land seizures, the apartheid wall,
separate roads, checkpoints, home demolitions,
economic strangulation, mass incarceration, theft
of water and all the other racist assaults on the Palestinian people.
Throughout 2008 and during the months of 2009
leading right up to the conference, meetings of
the Preparatory Committee in Geneva, Regional
Meetings in Latin America, Africa, Europe, Asia
and among the Islamic States and Intersessional
Meetings all invited input from NGOs. Those NGOs
with closer ties to the grassroots were
invariably poorly funded and could not afford
travel and lodging in Geneva. Thus, NGOs more
closely linked to governments - especially
pro-Israel NGOs - had a disproportionate presence at the preparatory meetings.
For example, the pro-Israel NGO based in the
Netherlands - I-CARE, funded by the Magenta
Foundation - attended the preparatory meetings
and posted detailed accounts of those meetings on
their website. Many of those accounts describe
some of the numerous attempts by pro-Israel
organizations to sidetrack conference planning.
The World Jewish Congress created the highly
selective
<http://www.icare.to/livereport/index.php?option=com_content&view=category&layout=blog&id=2&Itemid=3&lang=en>World
Jewish Diplomatic Corps - young professionals, an
elite force on the ground to attend the
Preparatory Meetings to argue for human rights.
Reports by I-CAREs representatives at those
meetings reflect Israels particular concern with
both the influence and composition of the
<http://www.un.org/durbanreview2009/bureau.shtml>Bureau
of the Preparatory Committee that had
responsibility to prepare the agenda and draft
decisions for consideration by PrepCom and
address all issues pertinent to its work
Ms.
Najat Al-Hajjaji, the permanent ambassador from
Libya to the U.N. in Geneva and past chair of the
Human Rights Council, chaired the bureau. Bureau
vice chairpersons from the Global South
outnumbered delegates from Europe 11 to 7,[3] and
the Cuban ambassador to the U.N. in Geneva,
Resfel Pino Alvarez, who is also the respected
chair of the Non-Aligned Movement, was named vice-chairperson-rapporteur.
Two websites central to efforts to implement
Israels anti-DRC strategy have been the
<http://www.unwatch.org>www.unwatch.org,
affiliated with the American Jewish Committee,
and the
<http://www.ngo-monitor.org>www.ngo-monitor.org,
based in Jerusalem. The latter was founded with
the objective to end the practice used by
certain self-declared humanitarian NGOs of
exploiting the label universal human rights
values to promote politically and ideologically
motivated anti-Israel agendas. They functioned
as promoter, clearinghouse and publicist. Some 16
months before the conference, the Dec. 22, 2008,
Jerusalem Post reported that the World Union of
Jewish Students formed a special task force of 60
students who would travel to Geneva to defend Israel.
According to
<http://www.unwatch.org>www.unwatch.org, there
were a total of 314 newly-registered NGOs with a
total of 1,073 delegates at the DRC and some 370
delegates belonged to only two of the Jewish
student unions that attended. If the delegates
from all the myriad pro-Israel organizations and
media are counted,[4] it is likely that more than
half those who attended the conference in Geneva
came with the sole purpose of building a
pro-Israel presence and preventing any anti-Israel expression.
Response to the pro-Israel juggernaut
From the first day of the conference we saw the
waves of disruption of Ahmedinejads speech -
coordinated in both the General Assembly and the
NGO auditorium. Some 200 pro-Israel activists
then attempted to block the entrance to his press
conference. Similar disruptions of side events
frustrated attempts to discuss Islamophobia. And
large well-publicized panels and
carefully-orchestrated rallies that featured
famous Zionist celebrities were sympathetically
reported by a compliant Western corporate media.
Even within the U.N. OHCHR, at least one press
officer gave pro-Israel statements to the
press.[5] All this made many non-Zionist
participants feel that pro-Israel forces had
hijacked the conference with military-like planning and precision.
By the second day, NGO advocates for reparations,
land for the landless, the rights of Dalits,
self-determination for the Palestinian people and
a myriad of other anti-racist demands began to
regroup. But suddenly, the U.N. OHCHR announced
that the Outcome Document of the DRC would be
approved by consensus before the close of the
second day of the five-day conference. There
would be no opportunity to repair the damage done
by the U.N. OHCHRs appeasement of the U.S. and Israels demands.
Nevertheless, a group of African and African
Diaspora NGOs, progressive Islamic NGOs and those
in solidarity with the Palestinians, migrants and
many others continued to meet informally and
strategize. They vowed to continue the struggle
for recognition of their demands in other venues
- including, perhaps, a Durban 2010. Anti-Zionist
Jewish organizations[6] - whose presence at the
conference was totally eclipsed by the pro-Israel
forces - had met earlier and were heartened by
the growing strength of the BDS movement to press
for boycott, divestment and sanctions against Israel.
Setback and encouragement for anti-racist movements
At least 145 U.N. member states endorsed the
Outcome Document by consensus. The very first
paragraph reaffirmed the Durban Declaration and
Program of Action as it was adopted at the World
Conference against Racism in 2001. Moreover,
delegate after delegate reiterated the praise
that the South African Foreign Minister and
spokesperson for the Africa Group gave to the DDPA:
The DDPA is viewed as an inspiration that would
define the 21st century as the century that
restored to all their human dignity. It provides
a solid and concrete basis for every country to
develop its own measures to combat all forms of
racism, and to strengthen the protection regime
for victims of racism, racial discrimination,
xenophobia and related intolerance.
In the end, only 10 countries - all European or
European-settler states - boycotted the DRC. At
least 17 state delegates[7] expressed disapproval
of the boycott in their official statements. In
the language of diplomats, they denounced the
boycott as revealing a lack of commitment to
overcoming racism. More than 100 remaining
delegates implicitly criticized the boycott orchestrated by Israel and the U.S.
Yet, pressure from the U.S. and Israel did
succeed in preventing serious strengthening of
the 2001 DDPA. For example, most delegations from
Africa and the Africa Diaspora had been working
for the DRC to adopt measures to provide
effective tools for implementing a commitment to
reparations[8] and establishing a racial
equality index and timetables by which specific
progress could be assessed. They also called for
a Permanent Forum for People of African Descent,
not simply a panel of experts.
But in the end, perhaps in order to prevent the
majority of European countries from following the
boycotters, the Outcome Document was silent on
these issues. Moreover, Ban Ki-Moon and Navi
Pillay explicitly repudiated Ahmedinejads
speech, which had affirmed Palestines right to
self-determination. Pillay admitted in her press
conference on April 24 that she believed her
denunciation of Iran was the price the EU
demanded not to join the boycott. Except for
Argentina, the 15 countries that explicitly
denounced Iran were all European.[9]
Some 18 countries - none of them European -
explicitly supported the Palestinian peoples
right to self determination and criticized to
varying degrees Israels denial of Palestinian
rights.[10] Most of these, plus Azerbaijan and
Pakistan, were among the 15 that called for
stronger measures against Islamophobia. Finally,
16 countries - all except Japan from the Global
South - expressed concern for protecting migrants
against racist attacks and the final Outcome
document included protections for migrants that
most European countries had opposed.[11] In sum,
about half the delegates took definite stands in
their speeches on the most controversial issues
of the conference. Their stands demonstrate the
endurance of North-South oppressor-oppressed relations.
Israel is a bastion of European civilization, a
settler colonial state, on the edge of the
African continent. To survive as a Jewish state -
by definition an apartheid state - Israel is
perpetually consolidating and expanding its
narrative that turns the reality of its racist
colonial project on its head. The global hegemony
of U.S.-led imperialism is cracking. U.S. and
European complicity with Israel demonstrates how
white supremacist states will increasingly join
forces and circle the wagons when threatened.
The U.N.s Durban Review Conference once again
dramatized a lesson many learned long ago:
Appeasing settler colonial, neo-colonial and
imperialist powers only emboldens them. The
Palestinian Authority and other Muslim States
(including Iran) agreed to a consensus document
that omitted any mention of Israel or Palestine.
The African and Caribbean States signed onto a
consensus document that omitted mention of reparations.
But the U.S. never compromised in its
unconditional support for Israel and opposition
to reparations. Hopefully those NGOs and others
who argued, Lets just focus on our issues. The
Palestine-Israeli conflict is just a distraction
from the real struggle against racism, learned
from Israels campaign to destroy the conference.
Just as the U.S., Europe and those bribed by them
are united in their project to maintain their
hegemony, African and African Diaspora people,
Asian and indigenous people - all colonized and
formerly colonized people - need unity.
Endnotes
[1]
<http://www.worldjewishcongress.org>www.worldjewishcongress.org
identifies the WJC as an international
organization which represents organizations in 80
countries from Argentina to Zimbabwe. It has
headquarters in New York City, a research
institute in Jerusalem and affiliate offices in
Brussels, Budapest, Buenos Aires, Geneva,
Johannesburg, Moscow, Ottawa, Paris and Sydney.
The WJC Office in Geneva hosted the
International Jewish Caucus at the DRC even
though it had called for states to boycott the
conference at its January 2009 Plenary.
[2] Diana Ralph. No Anti-Semitism at Durban II:
Canada Should End its Boycott. Outlook Magazine.
Vol 47 #1, Jan/Feb 2007, pp. 17-18.
[3] From Africa, the vice chairs included
representatives from Cameroon, South Africa and
Senegal; from Asia: India, Indonesia, Iran,
Pakistan, Turkey; from South America: Argentina,
Brazil, Chile; and from Europe: Armenia, Croatia,
Estonia, Russia, Belgium, Greece and Norway.
[4] Some of the Zionists organizations with
delegates in Geneva were World Jewish Congress,
American Jewish Congress, European Jewish
Congress, Australia/Israel and Jewish Affairs
Council, Canadian Jewish Congress, International
League Against Racism and Anti-Semitism, The
Simon Wiesenthal Center, Bnai Brith Canada,
Bnai Brith International, International
Association of Jewish Lawyers and Jurists, Human
Rights First, Rabbis for Human Rights, Hadassah,
Jewish Council for Public Affairs, Jewish Council
for Racial Equity, Union of Jewish Women of South
Africa, Institute for Advancement of Human Rights, American Jewish Committee.
[5] Pierre Hazan, a staff member of the Office of
the High Commissioner for Human Rights, author of
a pro-Israel book on the Six Day War and fellow
of the Congressionally-funded U.S. Institute of
Peace, mocked the DRC as an immense ritual of
collective atonement and social purification.
(quoted by www.news24.com April 17, 2009)
[6] There may have been others, but this author
is aware of representatives of Neturei Karta, an
Israeli-based group of orthodox Jews who believe
Zionism is antithetical to Judaism (see
www.nkusa.org), Independent Jewish Voices based
in Canada (ijv at magma.ca) and the International
Jewish Anti-Zionist Network-IJAN that identifies
Israel as a settler colonial state. (http://www.ijsn.net/home/)
[7] Brazil, China, Cuba, Ecuador, Organization of
Islamic Councils, Indonesia, Iran, Lesotho,
Namibia, Nigeria, Norway, Spain, Sri Lanka,
Swaziland, Tanzania, Uganda and Uruguay. U.N.
Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon, U.N. High
Commission for Human Rights Navi Pillay and a
number of others explicitly criticized the boycott.
[8] Twelve countries explicitly advocated for
Reparations: Angola, Barbados, Cuba, Guyana,
Haiti, Iran, Jamaica, Libya, Namibia, Suriname,
Tanzania and Zimbabwe. Many others suggested that
former colonial countries had the responsibility
to ease poverty, forgive debt and assist in the
economic development of the Global South.
[9] Argentina, Austria, Belgium, Denmark, France,
Ireland, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Norway, Portugal,
Slovenia, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, and United Kingdom.
[10] Bahrain, Cuba, Egypt, Guyana, Indonesia,
Iran, Kuwait, League of Arab States, Lebanon,
Libya, Morocco, Nicaragua, Palestine (PLO),
Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Sudan, Syria, United Arab Emirates
[11] Argentina, Burkina Faso, Cuba, Ecuador,
Greece, Haiti, Honduras, Japan, Jordan,
Mauritius, Mexico, Nigeria, Philippines, Senegal, Tanzania and Turkey.
Arlene Eisen is a writer based in San Francisco,
who, since the 1960s, has been active in
anti-imperialist struggles. Most recently she
edited Second Lines, the newsletter of the
Peoples Hurricane Relief Fund, traveled to South
Africa where she joined a project to document the
Black Consciousness Movement and participated in
the United-Against-Racism-U.S.A. delegation to
the U.N. Durban Review Conference in Geneva. She
can be reached at
<mailto:arlene_eisen at sbcglobal.net>arlene_eisen at sbcglobal.net.
Freedom Archives
522 Valencia Street
San Francisco, CA 94110
415 863-9977
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