Netherlands joins Geneva boycott
The Netherlands have joined other Western countries in boycotting the UN anti-racism conference, which began in Geneva today.
The draft final statement of the UN anti-racism conference is "unacceptable" to the Netherlands, foreign minister Maxime Verhagen said on Sunday.
"The anti-racism conference is too important to be hijacked for political purposes and attacks on the West. The Netherlands will not be a part of this," Verhagen said just before leaving for Washington for talks with US secretary of state Hillary Clinton.
Anti-Israel
The Netherlands joins the US, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Italy, Israel and Germany in boycotting the Geneva conference, which is a follow-up conference to the 2001 anti-racism conference in Durban, South Africa, which was marred by political bickering.
At that time, the US left the conference before a final meeting toned down some of the anti-Western and anti-Israel rhetoric in the draft final statement. This time around, the US and other countries decided to boycott the meeting ahead of the start of the conference.
Verhagen: "A number of countries, who still have a long way to go themselves when it comes to human rights, are abusing the conference to choose religion over human rights, to unnecessarily limit freedom of speech, to ignore gender-based discrimination and to implicitly single out Israel as the sole defendant."
Verhagen did not give any examples of anti-Israeli bias. The statement doesn't name Israel but contains a paragraph about "the need to address with greater resolve and political will all forms and manifestations of racism, racial discrimination, xenophobia and related intolerance, in all spheres of life and in all parts of the world, including all those under foreign occupation." According to Israel's ambassador to the UN in Geneva, Roni Leshno Yaar, "foreign occupation in the diplomatic world is code for Israel".
The Dutch anti-racism group Nederland Bekent Kleur (The Netherlands shows it colours) disagrees with Verhagen's decision. "By staying away from the conference, the Netherlands is saying it doesn't consider the fight against racism a priority. This is the wrong signal to give at a time when xenophobia is on the rise in the Netherlands," its president René Danen said on Sunday.
The French foreign minister said his country's ambassador to Geneva would attend, but would walk out immediately if the conference turned into a platform for racist comments against Israel. Britain had earlier said a delegation headed by Peter Gooderham, British ambassador to the UN in Geneva, would attend.
US president Barack Obama, speaking in Trinidad on Sunday after attending the summit of the Americas, said: "I would love to be involved in a useful conference that addressed continuing issues of racism and discrimination around the globe." But he said the language of the UN's draft declaration risked a reprise of Durban, during which "folks expressed antagonism toward Israel in ways that were often times completely hypocritical and counterproductive".
'Deeply disappointed'
The White House has been especially uneasy about efforts by Arab states to include a condemnation of "incitement to religious hatred" and to criminalise "defamation of religion".
It sees those efforts as an attempt to limit free expression in response to controversy over the Danish cartoons of the Muslim prophet Mohammed in 2006.
UN human rights chief Navi Pillay, who is hosting the conference, said she was "shocked and deeply disappointed" by the US decision not to attend. She conceded some countries were focusing solely on one or two issues to the detriment of the fight against intolerance, but said it is essential that the issue of racism be tackled globally.