UN Rights Expert Has Controversial Track Record By Patrick Goodenough April 26, 2006 CNSNews.com Original Source: http://www.cnsnews.com/ViewForeignBureaus.asp?Page=/ForeignBureaus/archive/200604/INT20060426b.html (CNSNews.com) - Among the many uncertainties hanging over the United Nation's new Human Rights Council is the inclusion of a human rights specialist who has defended dictators while consistently attacking U.S. and Israeli policies. Jean Ziegler, a Swiss academic and socialist politician, has since 2000 served the U.N. Commission on Human Rights (UNCHR) as a special rapporteur (investigator/reporter) on the right to food. His mandate, which ordinarily would have expired last month, was extended in 2003. But the UNCHR, plagued by problems, has been scrapped and is being replaced by the new Human Rights Council (HRC). The transition has thrown everything up in the air, Swiss foreign ministry representative Kamelia Kemileva said Wednesday. HRC members will be elected in two weeks' time and hold their first meeting in June. Several months ago, the Swiss government put forward Ziegler's name for another U.N. rights position -- as a member of a body called the Sub-Commission on the Promotion and Protection of Human Rights. Comprising 26 experts, the body operated as the UNCHR's main subsidiary body and think tank. Currently, it's not clear whether the Sub-Commission on the Promotion and Protection of Human Rights will survive the changeover from the UNCHR to the HRC, a U.N. spokesperson said from Geneva Wednesday. At the moment, however, there is no indication that the subsidiary body will be scrapped. Ziegler's nomination prompted U.N. Watch, a Geneva-based non-governmental organization, and 14 other NGOs to write to the Swiss government, urging it to reconsider the decision. They said that Ziegler's term as U.N. rapporteur embodied everything that was discredited about the old Commission on Human Rights: gross politicization, selectivity, lack of professionalism and lack of credibility. He had devoted his attention to polemics against the West, capitalism, the U.S. and Israel, they said. Kemileva of the Swiss foreign ministry said that because the future of the sub-commission was not certain, it could not discuss the Ziegler nomination. But Hillel Neuer of U.N. Watch said from Geneva that the NGOs want Switzerland to cancel the nomination completely. 'U.S. genocide' Ziegler has been criticized for expressing support for dictators including Libyan leader Muammar Gadaffi and Cuba's Fidel Castro. Among the 15 NGOs to protest his nomination were groups representing victims of the Libyan and Cuban regimes. Ziegler's admiration for Gadaffi was such that in 1989 he helped to establish an award called the Muammar Gadaffi Human Rights Prize. One of the subsequent winners (2002) was Roger Garaudy, a French communist-turned-Muslim who was convicted in 1998 on charges of denying the Holocaust. Ziegler himself also won the Libyan award. Last year, Ziegler was reprimanded by U.N. secretary-general Kofi Annan after he made comments, while visiting the Gaza Strip, comparing Israelis to concentration camp guards. Seventy U.S. lawmakers then wrote to Annan, urging him to ensure that the rapporteur was replaced. Ziegler also has outspoken views on U.S. policies. He has long criticized the U.S. embargo against Cuba, and called U.S.-backed U.N. sanctions against Saddam Hussein's Iraq indefensible. Following the war that ousted Saddam, he blamed the U.S. military for malnutrition among Iraqi children. A U.N. Watch study released last October found that during the first four years of his mandate as special rapporteur, Ziegler publicly criticized the U.S. on at least 34 occasions. By contrast, the NGO said, his criticism of countries where food emergencies were occurring was either non-existent or muted. The study quoted Ziegler as accusing the U.S. of committing genocide in Cuba, and describing the U.S. as an imperialist dictatorship using mercenaries to implement world domination. The vitriol of Mr. Ziegler's anti-American statements is striking, particularly when compared to his mild criticism of other countries, said U.N. Watch. In his private capacity, Mr. Ziegler is entitled to his own opinions. But Mr. Ziegler is not entitled to use his U.N. position as special rapporteur as a platform to express his personal, political views having nothing to do with the right to food, it said. The UNCHR appointed Ziegler in September 2000. When it decided to extend his mandate for another three years in 2003, Washington alone voted against the motion. The U.S. envoy said Ziegler should not be retained but be reprimanded for irresponsible statements and for abusing his mandate. But apart from Australia, which abstained, the UNCHR's 51 remaining members all backed the move, and Ziegler's mandate was extended. In a speech in Washington last October, Mark Lagon, the State Department's deputy assistant secretary for international organization affairs, said one area where the U.N. could improve its human rights work was in ensuring that special rapporteurs were more professional He said this would ensure more consistency and objectivity in their reports and it might help with those who twist their mandates to attack Israel, like the rapporteur on food, Jean Ziegler. Invited to respond to the allegations raised by U.N. Watch, Ziegler this week called them ridiculous and defamatory. He said ever since he published a report in 2004 on the humanitarian situation in the Palestinian territories, U.N. Watch has been engaged in a campaign of defamation against me that has sought to attack my personal integrity. Ziegler did not respond to the specific charges relating to support for the regimes in Cuba and Libya and disproportionate criticism of the U.S. and Israel.