Human rights situation in the OPT – CHR/59th session – Summary record (excerpts)

COMMISSION ON HUMAN RIGHTS

Fifty-ninth session

SUMMARY RECORD OF THE 15th MEETING

Held at the Palais des Nations, Geneva,

on Tuesday, 25 March 2003, at 3 p.m.

Chairperson : Ms. AL-HAJJAJI (Libyan Arab Jamahiriya) 

CONTENTS 

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RACISM, RACIAL DISCRIMINATION, XENOPHOBIA AND ALL FORMS OF DISCRIMINATION:

(a)   COMPREHENSIVE IMPLEMENTATION OF AND FOLLOW-UP TO THE DURBAN DECLARATION AND PROGRAMME OF ACTION ( continued)

The meeting was called to order at 3.10 p.m.

RACISM, RACIAL DISCRIMINATION, XENOPHOBIA AND ALL FORMS OF DISCRIMINATION

(a)   COMPREHENSIVE IMPLEMENTATION OF AND FOLLOW-UP TO THE DURBAN DECLARATION AND PROGRAMME OF ACTION (agenda item 6) (continued ) (E/CN.4/2003/17, 18 and Add.1 and 2, 19 and Add.1, 20, 21, 23, 24, 122 and 127; E/CN.4/2003/G/36; E/CN.4/2003/NGO/3, 18, 32, 118, 119, 121, 123, 134, 140, 169, 185, 199, 220, 226 and 253)

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59.  Mr. SHARAFEDDIN (International Organization for the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination) said that the appearance of millions of demonstrators on the streets of over 600 cities throughout the world was proof of the wrong approach taken by evil and arrogant elements in the United States, United Kingdom and Israel, which were obsessed with pushing the world towards war and destruction. It was clear that the citizens of those countries were firmly opposed to their Governments’ aggressive policies.

60.   Iraq had been proved to have no weapons of mass destruction. Israel, on the other hand, had stockpiled nuclear, chemical and biological weapons that threatened the whole region. It also used all its might against the helpless Palestinians. Yet no word to stop the massacres or disarm Israel was heard from the leaders of the United States or the United Kingdom. The United States was challenging the world, contemptuously overruling the will of the nations, ridiculing the legitimacy of international law and trying to destroy the United Nations, the last obstacle to its aim of controlling the world. The Commission must halt the warmongers and their satanic schemes of evil.

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76.  Ms. FERRY (Cairo Institute for Human Rights Studies) said that, although for many people involved in the anti-apartheid struggle against the former South African regime, the term “apartheid” represented a special set of facts, human rights abuses and a political meaning specific to South Africa, that term had been legally defined, with a boarder meaning and applicability, by a number of international treaties as a war crime and a crime against humanity. Israeli actions and policies matched those definitions. Israel’s brand of apartheid was strikingly similar to the system used by South Africa, in that it resorted to dispossession, denationalization, separation and diverse inhuman acts and means of control, such as murder, torture and mass arrests and the suppression of human rights movements.

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The meeting rose at 6.05 p.m.