HUMAN RIGHTS GROUPS PROTEST
SWISS
NOMINATION OF KHADDAFI ALLY TO UN POST
Jean Ziegler: the U.S. is an "imperialist dictatorship
responsible for all the world's misery." In 1989, Ziegler co-founded the
"Khaddafi Human Rights Prize." In 2002, he won it
himself.
Latest Update: With the
joint letter below, UN Watch leads a campaign by over 20 human rights and
other non-governmental organizations (NGOs) to protest the outrageous and
offensive nomination by Switzerland of its national, Jean Ziegler, to a
new UN post.
No one symbolizes the abuses of the discredited and
now-defunct Human Rights Commission more than Mr. Ziegler, a close ally of
the Libyan dictator. Fortunately, two countries have now also protested to
the Swiss Government.
Many more need to add their voices, with European states
bearing a special obligation since the nomination of Ziegler falls under
one of the three slots assigned to the Western European and Others Group.
Regrettably, Switzerland still refuses to cancel its
nomination. Swiss Foreign Ministry spokesman Jean-Philippe Jeannerat,
offering continued unqualified support for the nomination, says that Mr.
Ziegler is “one of the best specialists in civil, human and cultural
rights.” (Le Matin, April 23, 2006.) To add your name to
our protest, Take
Action here. http://www.kintera.org/TR.asp?ID=M7165232910884817027888865
Re: NGO Statement Opposing the Nomination of Jean
Ziegler to a New UN Post
April 11, 2006
Ambassador Blaise Godet
Permanent Mission of Switzerland
to the
United Nations Office and to
the other international organisations in
Geneva
Rue de Varembé 9-11 (6th floor)
CH - 1211 Geneva
20
Geneva, Switzerland
Dear Ambassador Godet,
We, the undersigned human rights activists and non-governmental
organizations, are gravely concerned to learn that Switzerland has
nominated Jean Ziegler—founder of the "Muammar Khaddafi Prize for
Human Rights"—for the position of expert on the UN Sub-Commission for the
Promotion and Protection of Human Rights. For the sake of human
rights victims world-wide, and to avoid casting a shadow upon the
reputation and credibility of the United Nations as a whole—particularly
its new Human Rights Council, which is supported by Switzerland—we
strongly urge your Government to rescind its decision.
For six years, Mr. Ziegler has systematically abused his mandate as the
UN Special Rapporteur on the right to food, neglecting many of the world's
food emergencies in order to pursue an extremist political agenda that
includes support for repressive rulers like Cuba's Fidel Castro and Libyan
Colonel Muammar Khaddafi. Mr. Ziegler's tenure, which is set to expire
shortly, embodied everything that was discredited about the old Commission
on Human Rights: gross politicization, selectivity, lack of
professionalism and lack of credibility. (See "Blind
to Burundi: Jean Ziegler's Neglect of the World's Food Emergencies,"
UN Watch report, October 2004.)
Mr. Ziegler has a long and notorious record of supporting dictators and
human rights violators. It is therefore difficult to understand why
he was ever appointed to a UN post in the first place:
- Mr. Ziegler's support and special affinity for totalitarian rulers
has been documented by Dr. Jan Marejko, the Swiss philosopher and
journalist: "[Ziegler] went to Hanoi during the '80s, where he
heaped praise upon General Vo Nguyen Giap and had kind words for Ho Chi
Minh with whom he spent 'unforgettable moments drinking tea under a
golden sun'. . . The fact that hundreds of thousands of Vietnamese were
at this time desperately trying to escape their country in search of
freedom [...] was not worthy of consideration. Indeed, it would be
hard to find an intellectual more stained by collaboration with evil
regimes in the 20th century than Mr. Ziegler." (J. Marejko,
"Che Guevara Lives at the UN," August 2002.)
- In 1989, shortly after the Libyan bombing of Pan Am Flight 103 that
killed 260 innocent men, women and children, Jean Ziegler announced the
establishment of the "Muammar
Khadaffi Human Rights Prize", in cooperation with the Libyan
dictator. ("Le Nobel de Khadhafi-Les autorités libyennes créent un
nouveau prix des droits de l'homme; Jean Ziegler met la main à la pate,"
L'Hebdo, April 27, 1989.)
- This award was then used to celebrate recipients such as Roger
Garaudy, a notorious Holocaust denier. Yet Mr. Ziegler never
renounced his actions. On the contrary: Mr.
Ziegler himself won the prize in 2002. After a public
outcry caused him to declare that he would not accept the award, Mr.
Ziegler refused to acknowledge the obscenity of receiving a prize named
after a human rights criminal. Rather, he said, "I told my Libyan
interlocutors that I could not accept an award or distinction from any
country because of my responsibilities at the United Nations."
Jean Ziegler:
apologist for repressive rulers like Colonel Khaddafi and Fidel
Castro.
What is worse, however, is to nominate Mr. Ziegler now —after
witnessing the gross abuse of his UN mandate. As you know, this past
July Mr. Ziegler became the only UN human rights expert in history to
be denounced by his own organization's highest officials.
("Annan slams UN official," JTA, July 8, 2005; "Gaza comments by rights
expert irresponsible— UN," Reuters, July 7, 2005.)
Both Secretary-General Kofi Annan and High Commissioner for Human
Rights Louise Arbour publicly denounced Mr. Ziegler for having
compared Israelis to Nazis, a classic manifestation of anti-Semitism as
defined by the European Union.
Mr. Ziegler's record of UN abuse is well known:
- During the first four years of his mandate, Jean Ziegler publicly
criticized the U.S. on 34 occasions. Yet he never spoke out for
the hungry or criticized any party in 15 of 17 countries deemed by the
U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization to have a man-made food
emergency. And of the 2 food emergency countries that he did criticize,
he only did so once with respect to one (Ethiopia) and three times with
respect to the other (Sudan). (Food emergencies ignored: Burundi,
Central African Republic, Chad, Democratic Republic of the Congo,
Republic of the Congo, Cote d'Ivoire, Eritrea, Guinea, Haiti, Liberia,
Russian Federation (Chechnya), Sierra Leone, Somalia, Tanzania,
Uganda).
- Jean Ziegler almost never criticizes any government other than the
U.S. and Israel. When he does, he suddenly dons the gloves of ginger
U.N. diplomacy. Hence the Sudanese atrocities in Darfur for Ziegler are
merely a cause for "concern," the role of the Khartoum regime in
atrocities only "alleged." By contrast, the United States is an
"imperialist dictatorship" responsible for all the world's misery, the
U.S. is committing "genocide" in Cuba, and Israel commits "state terror"
and "war crimes" with the U.S.'s blessing. Mr. Ziegler has never used
such denunciations against the government of Sudan, or any other country
.
In summary, the appointment of Mr. Ziegler would cause grievous harm to
the new Human Rights Council. As a strong advocate of the Council,
we respectfully urge Switzerland to rescind its nomination of Mr. Ziegler
for this or any other UN position.
Sincerely,
Mohamed Abdulmalek
President
Libya
Watch for Human Rights
Manchester, United
Kingdom
Libya Human Rights
Solidarity
Geneva, Switzerland
Sylvia Iriondo
President
Madres y
Mujeres Anti-Represion por Cuba
(Mothers & Women against
Repression)
Miami, United States
Angel De Fana
Director
Plantados Until
Freedom and Democracy in Cuba
Miami, United
States
Vo Van Ai
President
Vietnam Committee
on Human Rights
Paris, France
Charles Mwape
Regional Director for
Africa
Hope for Africa International
Lusaka,
Zambia
Hillel Neuer
Executive Director
UN
Watch
Geneva, Switzerland
Patrick
Gaubert
President
International League Against
Racism
and Anti-Semitism
(Ligue Internationale Contre le
Racisme
et l'Antisémitisme)
Paris, France
Jose Mathew
Executive Director
Don
Bosco Ahaylam
New Delhi, India
Wendy Wright
President
Concerned Women
for America
Washington, DC, United States
Babette Francis
National & Overseas
Coordinator
Endeavour Forum
Sydney,
Australia |
Virginia Swain
Director
Institute for
Global Leadership
Worcester, Massachusetts, United
States
Yolanda L. Jackson
International
Liaison
Women's Sports Foundation
New York,
United States
Simonne Piazzini
UN
Representative
Towns Agency for North-South
Cooperation
(Agence des cités pour la
coopération
Nord-Sud)
Geneva, Switzerland
Kok Ksor
President
Montagnard
Foundation
Spartanburg, South Carolina, United
States
Naghma Imdad
Executive
Director
Savera
Islamabad,
Pakistan
John Suarez
Director
Cuban Democratic
Directorate
Miami, United States
Ms Sally Thompson
Deputy Executive
Director
Thailand Burma Border
Consortium
Bangkok, Thailand
Sara Winkowski
President
International
Council of Jewish Women
Montevideo, Uruguay
C. Gwendolyn Landolt
National Vice
President
REAL Women of Canada
Ottawa,
Canada
Bernice Dubois
Board Member
European
Council of WIZO Federations
Geneva,
Switzerland
|
cc: UN Secretary-General Kofi
Annan
UN High
Commissioner for Human Rights Louise
Arbour
The Right
Honourable Mr. Stephen Harper, Prime Minister of Canada
|
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