Anti-racism conference overshadowed by controversy
Updated
The tag "hatefest" continues to haunt a planned U-N anti-racism conference, with fears of a sizeable boycott amid claims of anti-Semitism.
Canada and Israel won't be attending and the U-S has said the proposed final statement for the April 20 conference is unsalvagable. Australia is also under significant pressure to pull out and says it will if the final statement is an anti-Semitic, anti-Israeli harangue.
Presenter: Linda Mottram
Speakers: Mark Dreyfus, Australian Labor Party MP; Stephen Smith, Australia's Foreign minister; Rupert Colville, spokesman, UN High Commissioner for Human Rights
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MOTTRAM: Durban two as its been dubbed, is named for the South African city that hosted the first U-N World Conference Against Racism in 2001. It was deeply tainted, described by some as a hatefest. Mark Dreyfus is an Australian Labor M-P.
DREYFUS: Certainly there were aspects of the non-government organisation events that occurred in Durban that were absolutely a hatefest.
MOTTRAM: There were anti-Semitic placards, t-shirts and chants from some at the NGO sideline conference. But that wasn't the main conference. And the final document from the main conference ran to more than 340 paragraphs, most laudable and Australia's government at the time said those positives should be protected and nurtured. Australian M-P Mark Dreyfus says it wouldn't be a UN document without swathes of acceptable text. But several concerns he says were contained in the document, including that Israel was singled out as an example.
DREYFUS: I think everybody would understand just to take an example if New Zealand were the only country that was named in the document alone of the countries of the world for real or imagined human rights wrongs, Australia would be very concerned and not just because New Zealand's our closest neighbour. We'd be concerned because its inappropriate for a single country to be treated in that way.
MOTTRAM: Now, as the April 20 review conference draws near, Canada and Israel have pulled out; the Obama administration, after attending a preparatory meeting to try to find a way to work with the conference, has said the proposed final document is unsalvagable. So it won't go unless there's a totally new document. Other states are also expressing concerns. And Australia's under pressure too. Foreign minister Stephen Smith has told Parliament Australia will give the process every chance to come up with a document that's acceptable.
SMITH: The Australian government will give very careful consideration to what if any changes are made to the text to see whether it is appropriate for Australia to participate in the conference. If we formed the view that the text is going to lead to nothing more than an anti-Jewish anti-Semitic harangue, an anti-Jewish propaganda exercise, Australia will not be in attendance.
MOTTRAM: Rupert Colville is spokesman for the U-N High Commissioner for Human Rights. He says the trend is worrying.
COLVILLE: Coz I think if you want a good text you need to be in the room basically, you need to be in the room arguing your case so if countries pull out prematurely I think that could almost become a self-fulfilling prophecy. They may doom the text to be less good as a result.
MOTTRAM: He stresses the Geneva conference is not the same as the Durban meeting -- it won't be nearly as large to start with -- and says it suits those who want to kill the review conference to allow the two to be confused. But isn't the wider lesson that issues such as the Israel-Palestinian question, are so contentious that its impossible to manage them in such a wide-ranging forum? Rupert Colville again.
COLVILLE: These are very contentious issues but I think its a bit pathetic if they can't get together and discuss these issues in an international forum and its also a bit sad because racism, intolerance, xenophobia these are very real, very serious problems all across the world. Its not simply a question of anti-Semitism and the Middle East.
MOTTRAM: So they should be dealt with, goes the arguement, because failure to do so sets a potential path to gross human rights abuses, crimes against humanity, genocide. But while some, like MP Mark Dreyfus, are willing to give the process a bit longer, for others engagement with countries like Libya, Cuba and North Korea is a line they won't cross. And some say its time to abandon Durban and start again.
