CFI Leaders Respond to United Nations “Durban II” Conference
April 21, 2009
Austin Dacey, CFI’s representative to the United Nations:
By making Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad its keynote speaker, the United Nation’s Durban Review Conference, dubbed “Durban II,” lived up to the infamy of the original anti-racism meeting in Durban, South Africa, back in 2001 (which disintegrated into an anti-Semitic, anti-Western hate-fest that was abandoned by Israel and the United States). Representatives from dozens of nations streamed out of the hall in Geneva during Ahmadinejad’s speech calling Israel a “paragon of racism,” and railing against Zionist-controlled governments of the West. Still, I am determined to focus on the positive story: by imagining it.
Read the full article at Religion Dispatches here .
Justin Trottier, executive director of the Centre for Inquiry/Canada:
Such is the irony of the world that a body containing the words “United Nations” and “Human Rights Commission” could be hijacked by a single view of a single religion to enforce a gross violation of human rights. Much has been said about the UN Human Rights Commission resolution to combat “defamation of religion,” but having led the Canadian Atheist Bus Campaign, freedom to criticize religion is of particular personal concern. So here are a few reasons I’m as offended by this attempt at censorship as are the censors by anything that borders on what they consider blasphemy.
Read the full statement on the National Post Website here .
#1 Ophelia Benson on Thursday April 23, 2009 at 9:08am
‘Much has been said about the UN Human Rights Commission resolution to combat “defamation of religion,”’
Not all that much! Not as much as one would think; not as much as should have been. Most major media have been bizarrely silent on the subject lo these many years.