[Reader-list] UN anti-blasphemy measures have sinister goals, observers say

[Naeem Mohaiemen]

UN anti-blasphemy measures have sinister goals, observers say

Steven Edwards ,  Canwest News Service
Published: Monday, November 24, 2008

UNITED NATIONS - Islamic countries Monday won United Nations backing
for an anti-blasphemy measure Canada and other Western critics say
risks being used to limit freedom of speech.

Combating Defamation of Religions passed 85-50 with 42 abstentions in
a key UN General Assembly committee, and will enter into the
international record after an expected rubber stamp by the plenary
later in the year.

But while the draft's sponsors say it and earlier similar measures are
aimed at preventing violence against worshippers regardless of
religion, religious tolerance advocates warn the resolutions are being
accumulated for a more sinister goal.

'(Pakistan's anti-blasphemy laws) have been used to intimidate
business partners, suppress any reformist ideas, jail people who
discuss women's rights,' say critics.

"It provides international cover for domestic anti-blasphemy laws, and
there are a number of people who are in prison today because they have
been accused of committing blasphemy," said Bennett Graham,
international program director with the Becket Fund, a think tank
aimed at promoting religious liberty.

"Those arrests are mad e legitimate by the UN body's (effective) stamp
of approval."

Passage of the resolution is part of a 10-year action plan the
57-state Organization of Islamic Conference launched in 2005 to ensure
"renaissance" of the "Muslim Ummah" or community.

While the current resolution is non-binding, Pakistan's Ambassador
Masood Khan reminded the UN's Human Rights Council this year that the
OIC ultimately seeks a "new instrument or convention" on the issue.
Such a measure would impose its terms on signatory states.

"Each time the resolution comes up, we get a measure of where the
world is on this issue, and we see that the campaign has been ramped
up," said Hillel Neuer, executive director of the Geneva-based
monitoring group UN Watch.

While this year's draft is less Islam-centric that resolutions of
earlier years, analysts note it is more emphatic in linking religion
defamation and incitement to violence.

That "risks limiting a broad range of peaceful speech and expression,"
Neuer argues.

The 2008 draft "underscores the need to combat defamation of
religions, and incitement to religious hatred in general, by
strategizing and harmonizing actions at the local, national regional
and international levels."

It also laments "Islam is frequently and wrongly associated with human
rights violations and terrorism."

But Western democracies argue that a religion can't enjoy protection
from criticism because that would require a judicial ruling that its
teachings are the "truth."

"Defam ation carries a particular legal meaning and application in
domestic systems that makes the term wholly unsuitable in the context
of religions," says the U.S. government in a response on the issue to
the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights.

"A defamatory statement . . . is more than just an offensive one. It
is also a statement that is false."

The paper also points out the legal difficulty of even defining the
term "defamation" since "one individual's sincere belief that his or
her creed alone is the truth conflicts with another's sincerely held
view of the truth."

Yemen, on behalf of OIC, successfully introduced the measure to the UN
General Assembly for the first time in 2005 after Pakistan first
tabled it 1999 for annual consideration in the Human Rights Commission
- the Council's forerunner.

Canada and other Western countries emphasize the distinction between
granting an "idea" rights - and defending the right of people not to
be discriminated against.

"Canada rejects the basic premise that religions have rights; human
rights belong to human beings," said Catherine Loubier, spokeswoman
for Foreign Affairs Minister Lawrence Cannon.

"The focus (here) should not be on protecting religions, but rather on
protecting the rights of the adherents of religions, including of
people belonging to religious minorities, or people who may choose to
change their religion, or not to practice religion at all."

Muslim countries say they are only trying to cut down of what they see
as extensive bias against Islam in the West. In the lead-up to
Monday's vote, many referred, for example, to the 2005 publication of
Danish cartoons that satirized Muhammad, and which touched off riots
through the Muslim world.

"Everybody is aware that there is a campaign in certain media to fuel
the fire of incitement to hatred and to disfigure certain persons or
figures through caricature," said one Sudanese diplomat.

But supporters of the Western position say the resolution and its
predecessors contribute to increasing discrimination based on
religion.

"From the human rights side of things, this is the opposite of what is
supposed to be happening," said Becket's Graham. "Instead of
protecting an individual, this resolution protects an idea, and relies
on hurt feelings as a source of judgment. It can only lead to a
jurisprudence of hurt feelings."

Canada says governments have abused laws against defamation or
contempt of religions to "prosecute and imprison journalists,
bloggers, academics students and peaceful political dissidents."

The Iranian parliament, for example, is currently weighing a draft
amendment to its penal code that would impose capital punishment for
apostasy.

But in an irony given Canada's stance, an anti-blasphemy law remains
in the Criminal Code. Experts point out it has not been used for a
prosecution in more than 70 years.

There's also consensus among opponents of the UN measure that people
most likely to be targeted by anti-blasphemy laws are Muslims in
Muslim countries.

"Pakistan has the (toughest) anti-blasphemy laws, and while they are
certainly used against lots of minority religions, they are used
mainly against Muslims," said Graham.

"They have been used to intimidate business partners, suppress any
reformist ideas, jail people who discuss women's rights."

But he also noted that anti-blasphemy themes have been cited in
countries that are predominantly non-Muslim.

"There are cases in Russia dealing people suing TV stations for airing
South Park and the Simpsons because they see them as defamatory to
Christianity," he explained.

"A lot of the violence in India dealing with Hindus and Christians is
being spurred on by accusations that Hindu gods are being defamed,
while there are also cases against artists in India for depicting
Hindu gods in modernist way."


(c) Canwest News Service 2008