Hindustan times: UN’s comedy of errors

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The UN has more important issues to tackle. For instance, its High Commissioner for Human Rights, Navi Pillay, is fuming at human rights violations in the Canadian province of Quebec, where the government imposed a mild order to prevent disruptive assembly by student protestors. Pillay was possibly perturbed that Quebec wasn’t dealing with protestors in the manner sanctioned by Syria, or Iran.

It’s somewhat surprising that the UN’s human rights apparatus is actually going beyond its focus on castigating Israel, to countries like Canada, the US, or even India.

Though it doesn’t quite extend to matters like gay rights, as that offends many member nations of the HRC. When the Council’s president attempted to introduce that matter, a swift rebuke came from Zamir Akram, Pakistan’s Permanent Representative in Geneva: “We are even more disturbed at the attempt to focus on certain persons on the grounds of their abnormal sexual behaviour.”

Meanwhile, the world busybody is causing other problems for countries that actually recognise the normal meaning of human rights. Another human rights champion, Cuba, sponsored a resolution to “right to peace”, which winks at terrorists’ activities against “foreign occupation”. India abstained at the vote, possibly because of the implications for Kashmir. Co-sponsors of that declaration included well-known human rights stalwarts like China, Iran, North Korea, Venezuela, Sudan and Syria.
Of course, as far as these UN luminaries can see, there are no terrorists. In fact, despite decades of effort, they still can’t define a terrorist. It’s probably a task that’s deemed more difficult than the positive identification of the Higgs boson particle.

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