The United Nations Human Rights Commission taken to task

I know that I have raged against the ridiculous levels of anti-Israel bias at the UNHRC and no doubt I will again. But in the meantime here's a great article from The Australian that is well worth a read. Here's a few extracts:

'The election of Libya -- one of the world's worst human rights violators -- to the UN Human Rights Council as it commences its new session is an affront to the case and cause of human rights. Libya's Gaddafi regime is notorious for its systematic and widespread violations of human rights, including its patterns of arbitrary arrest and detention, torture and persecution of minorities, let alone the 1988 bombing of Pan-Am flight 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland.

...

First, the council has turned a blind eye to the world's most serious human rights violators, failing to adopt any resolution or investigative mandate for such human rights violator countries as China, Cuba, Libya, North Korea, Russia or Iran, to name but a few -- all being listed on Freedom House's list of the 20 worst human rights abusers. While the UN General Assembly calls for countries to be elected to the council based on their human rights records, 24 out of 47 present members (51 per cent) fail to meet fundamental standards of democracy and human rights.

Second, according to the recent 2010 UN Watch Report and Scorecard, 18 out of the 30 key council resolutions that were adopted were prejudicial and counterproductive. These included resolutions praising Sudan for its "progress"; defining any discussion of terrorism committed in the name of Islam as a form of "defamation" and "racism"; commending Sri Lanka after it killed an estimated 20,000 civilians; and refusing to hold Hamas terrorism accountable.

Third, since its 2006 creation, 80 per cent of the council's resolutions have singled out one member state -- Israel -- for differential and discriminatory treatment, thereby breaching the UN charter's foundational principle of "equality for all nations, large and small". Moreover, while the council has selectively singled out one member state, it continues to grant the major violators exculpatory immunity.

Fourth, in an appalling breach of its own principles and procedures, the UN Human Rights Council has institutionalised a permanent agenda item indicting one member state -- agenda item No 7, which speaks of "Israeli human rights violations in the occupied Palestinian territories" -- while agenda item No 8 speaks of "human rights violations in the rest of the world". Here is an Alice in Wonderland situation where the conviction is secured before the hearing begins.'

Nothing much that I could disagree with there.

Here are some pieces that I have posted before that throw the work of the UNHRC into sharp focus:

'Frida Ghitis in The Miami Herald has a look at the UN Human Rights Council and doesn't like what she sees.

'Let's look at the Council's Advisory Committee: The group is chaired by Halima Warzazi of Morocco, whose history-making contribution to human rights came when Saddam Hussein used poison gas against Iraq's Kurds in 1988. Warzazi proudly blocked the U.N.'s move to condemn the massacre. The vice-chair of the Committee is the always impressive Swiss diplomat Jean Ziegler, who helped Libya's despot Moammar Qaddafi create the charmingly named ``al-Qaddafi International Prize for Human Rights,'' and became its first winner.

Ziegler who, like the rest of the Council, is obsessed with Israel's sins to the exclusion of any other problem on Earth, has shared the Qaddafi prize honor with Fidel Castro, Louis Farrakhan, Hugo Chávez and other luminaries of freedom. The latest ``expert adviser'' is Nicaragua's Miguel D'Escoto Brockman, admirer of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and defender of Omar al-Bashir, the Sudanese president indicted by the International Criminal Court for crimes against humanity.

...

Packed with representatives of dictatorships, the UNHRC, says (Hillel) Neuer, is little more than a ``mutual praise society.'' It has stopped monitoring abuses in places like the Congo and Cuba. And, while Iran hangs people in the street, Libya imprisons and tortures dissidents and massacres continue unpunished in other corners of the world, the UNHRC spends almost all of its time condemning Israel.''

'BBC Radio 4's Today programme have been reporting all morning that a UN Human Rights Council investigation has found that Israel's military broke international laws during a raid on a Gaza-bound aid flotilla and that the action by commandos, which left nine dead, was "disproportionate" and "betrayed an unacceptable level of brutality".
The BBC radio news do report that Israel rejected the report as "biased" and "one-sided." but not why.

So when I read the BBC's web news report I do find an interesting line hidden away in the middle of the report:

'The panel had interviewed more than 100 witnesses in Britain, Jordan, Switzerland Turkey, but not in Israel.'

So the UNHRC investigation whose findings the BBC are reporting with great glee did not interview any Israelis. Might that explain why before the report was released, Israel dismissed the Human Rights Council as being biased, politicised and extremist.'