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GENEVA – The United States, Canada and some European countries said Tuesday that Islamic nations were trying to limit freedom of speech at the UN by trying to make an independent rights expert scrutinize individuals instead of dictatorial regimes.
The amendment passed by the UN Human Rights Council in its rush to adjourn Friday told its expert on freedom of expression to report on people who abuse their free speech rights to espouse racial and religious discrimination.
It’s no wonder that those who want to deny free-speech are all coming from Islamic countries…translation…Islam=Anti-Freedom=incompatible with democracy
The 47-nation council is dominated by Arab and other Muslim countries.
Pakistani Ambassador Masood Khan, who was speaking on behalf of the Organization of the Islamic Conference, denied that the resolution would limit free speech.
Islamic groups have been demanding limits on free speech since a Danish magazine published caricatures of Muhammad, provoking riots across the Islamic world in 2006.
Ligabo told the Associated Press in an interview last month that he was against any groups of individuals inciting hatred based on religious belief.
And then, some sanity…
Paris-based group Reporters Without Borders condemned the amendment.
“It turns someone who is supposed to defend freedom of opinion into a prosecutor whose job is to go after those who abuse this freedom,” it said.
New York-based Human Rights Watch said the resolution turns the expert’s mandate into a policing function over individual freedom of expression and questioned the very basis of media freedom and independence.
hattip: ZIP
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