Source: – HYPERLINK http://webcast.un.org/ramgen/conferences/hrc2006/five/hrc070613am-eng.rm?start=01:17:55&end=01:23:00 http://webcast.un.org/ramgen/conferences/hrc2006/five/hrc070613am-eng.rm?start=01:17:55&end=01:23:00 
Date: June 13, 2007

Statement of Algeria on the Report of the Fact-finding mission on Beit Hanoun

Mr. President.  South Africa that has known the worst forms of oppression has, after it achieved liberation from Apartheid, been a voice that has always spoken up for freedom and justice because it has known the price of the denial of these values.  And I am therefore not surprised that it has been Mr. John Dugard who spoke in the name of the oppressed in Palestine and I am no less surprised that it was Monsignor Desmond Tutu who, together with Mrs. Chinkin, it was Monsignor who today spoke again in the name of freedom and justice.  Like my colleague, the distinguished ambassador from South Africa, we deeply regret that he was not given access to Beit Hanoun and was not given the opportunity to carry out his noble mission.  His elevated views of freedom and justice are what we need today to rise above politics and to look at the value of human right which are supposed to be the guiding values of this council, irrespective of political orientation.  We tend to forget this, but your presence here today with us here today sir is a reminder that this is the objective of the council, this is its rational, this is its rason d’etre.  The situation in Palestine and the Occupied Arab Territories is one where it has been particularly difficult for some major powers to demonstrate consistency in their concern for Human Rights that they express in other parts of the world.  In the case of the occupied territories these powers tend to set any violation of human rights by the occupying power against the violence that the people of the occupied territory resort to legitimately to liberate themselves.  Human rights are human rights, they are not arithmetics.  You can not set violations of human rights by a military occupant against the violence of the resistance to this occupation.  Reference was just made by one of my colleagues to the situation in Darfur. And indeed I remember the article that you wrote, Monsignor Tutu, in the newspaper sometime back where you said that problems encountered by your mission to Beit Hanoun should not serve as a pretext for not moving forward in Darfur.  Today, Monsignor, I have the pleasure to tell you that we have moved forward in Darfur, both in the field where the Joint Forces have been accepted – the UN/African Union forces -  and also very modestly at the level of this council, and we will review this issue when we come to the issue of Darfur.  I just pray and hope now, sir, that the progress that we are making in Darfur, in engaging in a dialogue with the country concerned be also achieved by your mission back in Beit Hanoun by engaging a dialogue with the country concerned. When you invoke this linkage one way I’m sure that you will be the first to invoke it the other way, today. God bless you sir.  Thank