Canada skipping UN racism ‘hatefest’ again, Ottawa says
November 25, 2010
THE STAR
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OTTAWA—Canada will not attend a United Nations conference on racism next year, Immigration Minister Jason Kenney said Thursday.
“Our government has lost faith in the Durban process,” Kenney told a news conference. “Canada will not participate in this charade. We will not lend our good name to this Durban hatefest.
“Canada is clearly committed to the fight against racism, but the Durban process commemorates an agenda that actually promotes racism rather than combats it.”
The New York conference next September, dubbed “Durban III,” is intended to mark the 10th anniversary of the 2001 meeting in South Africa aimed at defeating racism.
Canada and other countries walked out of that conference after Iran and several countries began ganging up on Israel.
The conference, which ended days before the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks on the United States, produced the Durban Declaration and Programme of Action.
The 62-page document raises 122 “general issues,” among them “concern about the plight of the Palestinian people under foreign occupation.” It “recognizes the inalienable right of the Palestinian people to self-determination and the right to an independent state.”
But most offensive to Canada and several other countries were speeches laced with anti-Israeli rhetoric. Canada led a boycott of Durban II in Geneva last year, where Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad railed against the Jewish state.
This week, a UN committee adopted a resolution calling for the commemorative meeting next Sept. 21 to “reaffirm that the (original Durban declaration) provides the most comprehensive UN framework for combating racism.”
“We voted against this because we believe that the proposed meeting will only perpetuate the kind of ... divisive rhetoric that led Canada to boycott this process in the past,” said Kenney.
“The original Durban conference and its declaration, as well as the non-governmental activities associated with it, proved to be a dangerous platform for racism, including anti-Semitism.”
“The General Assembly has now chosen to repeat and even augment the mistakes of the past.”
Canada led a host of countries that boycotted the World Conference Against Racism in Geneva that ran April 20-25, 2009, known as Durban II