Though Ottawa, following the footsteps of Washington and Tel Aviv, boycotted the United Nations Durban Review Conference held in Geneva (Switzerland) – Several Canadian groups, such as, Canadian Labour Congress, African Canadian Legal Clinic, Canadian Arab Federation, Metro-Toronto Chinese and South Asian Clinic, Ontario Council of Agencies Serving Immigrants, National Anti-Racism Council of Canada, Colour of Poverty, Karuna Community Services, Coalition of Black Unionists, and Independent Jewish Voices.
Racism against aboriginal, Black, Asian, Arab and Muslim communities in particular – has reached to its peak in Canada since September 11, 2001.
“The Canadian government should have been a part of this process. We consider the governments’ shameful withdrawal nothing less than a failure to conform to its UN obligations. Fortunately civil society groups are here to share with the international community inputs designed to eliminate the pernicious grip of racism, – Karl Flecker, the Anti-Racism and Human Rights Director for the Canadian Labour Congress.
“African-Canadians continue to struggle against colour-coded economic disparity, criminalization, and racial profiling,” – Margaret Parsons, who represented the African Legal Clinic at Durban II.
“Arab Canadians like Mahar Arar and Abousafian Abdelrazik have been marooned in their birth countries by our government. They have been subjected to torture and horrific human rights violations because of flawed anti-terrorism measures and willful political negligence,” – Mohamed Boudjenane from Canadian Arab Federation.
The final declaration of Durban II was approved by voice vote. While Vatican delegation voiced its satisfaction with the document – the delegations from Islamic Iran called Israel a ‘racist entity’ and western countries boycotting the conference being tools of organized Zionism. Meanwhile the judges from the Organization of the Islamic Conference (IOC) and Norwegian lawyers accused Israel of war crimes and ethnic cleansing during its recent invasion of Gaza Strip.
According to the Norwegian criminal code, the courts can open proceedings that include serious international violations of human rights. AFP has reported that a group of Norwegian lawyers have decided to charge Tzipi Livni (prime minister at the time) and Ehud Barak (defense minister at the time) – asking for their extradiction and arrest.
Daily Toronto Star in an editorial (April 22) condemned Ottawa’s decision to boycott Durban II conference. As expected, Bernie Farber CEO of Canadian Jewish Congress, an Israeli lobbying group – blasted the daily for the editorial while calling names to Iranian president Ahmadinejad (CJC website, April 24, 2009).
Rifat Khan of Mississauga in his letter to the Editor (Toronto Star, April 24, 2009) wrote:
“The fact is, Israel is a racist and brutal state. Read Jimmy Carter’s book Palestine Peace not Apartheid. The tragedy of the Holocaust committed by the West resulted in the creation of Israel on the lands, homes and towns of Palestinian people, resulting in a Palestinian catastrophe.
The U.S. and the West have financed and sponsored Israeli state terrorism and brutal occupation of Palestine. They have equipped Israel with nuclear weapons and the most sophisticated arms on which they have committed crimes in the region.
The U.S., the West and the U.S. Zionists have destroyed a proud civilized nation of Iraq in an illegal war based on fraud. They are now going after Iran to hide the atrocities and Israeli occupation of Palestine.
The president of Iran talks about how the financial disaster carried out by the Wall Street mafia gangsters resulted in the sufferings for hundreds of millions of people losing their savings and pension plans and have brought our country and the rest of the world to the brink of disaster, while the gangsters withdrew to their gated communities and the taxpayers have to bail out the financial institutions. Soon they will be back again. Read “The crash’s real victims: the destitute,” by the Star‘s Olivia Ward.
Our leadership and the news media don’t have the guts or the morals to criticize Israel.”
The Independent Jewish Voices posted on their website on April 13, 2009:
“As Canadian Jews, we support and will attend the Durban Review of the World Conference Against Racism in Geneva, April 20-24. We do so because we are concerned about all expressions of racism. Unfortunately, there are Zionist and pro-Israeli groups coming to Geneva on April 20, working to derail this crucially important conference in the name of observing the holocaust…….
Independent Jewish Voices (Canada) condemns the Israel Lobby for attempting to derail the World Conference Against Racism and the Durban Review. We strongly object to the attempt by leading apologists for Israel’s war crimes and violations of humanitarian law to discredit the Durban Review Conference and we condemn the Canadian government for colluding with them by refusing to participate in the Durban Review.”
The Durban II Anti-Racism Review Conference ended with great success on April 24, 2009 with UN Human Rights Commissioner Navi Pillay’s statement: “The Conference was a proof of celebration of tolerance and dignity for all, and it produced a meaningful outcome enshrining a common aspiration to defy racism in all its manifestations and work to stamp it out wherever it may occur….The few governments (Israel and its puppets) that had chosen to stay away from the Conference, they should now evaluate the outcome document on its own merit and substance and rejoin international efforts to combat racism as mapped out by the outcome document…..”
