Louise Arbour, Champion of The Blighted
Just when we thought we'd heard enough from Madam Arbour, UN high commissioner for human rights, here she is again popping up here and there and never where one might imagine she should. Now she warns Iraq against passing another death sentence because the process of trial and appeal procedures as practised within Iraq does not meet international standards. We hear you, Louise Arbour.Iraq's highest court of justice is not to mete out its version of justice to Taha Yassin Ramadan, convicted of murder, forced deportation and torture. His sentence was in response - not quite retaliation - for the murder of 148 Shiites in 1982. His initial sentence of life imprisonment has been challenged and may be altered to a penalty of death.
Madam Arbour's concern revolves around the concept that the trial of Mr. Ramadan "failed to meet the standards of due process", and capital punishment would amount to "cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment," prohibited under international law. Needless to say, universal abhorrence of mass murder and lack of delicacy of feeling toward unrepentant murderers garners her case little sympathy abroad.
Iraqi authorities have heard from Madam Arbour previously when she appealed on behalf of Saddam Hussein, his former intelligence chief and other high-ranking officials in his government. Their response was to ignore her pleas and proceed with their hanging. But she has a job to do, and so she proceeds irrespective of outcome.
One does recall Madam Arbour, UN high commissioner for human rights demurring in the case of millions of displaced Darfurians, and the wholesale slaughter of tens of thousands more. I don't recall that ever making headlines, or the commission waging a moral battle on behalf of Darfurians. Their desperate plight remains unaltered. And why would this be? Where is the moral compass of the UN on this horrible issue of the trampling of human rights?
I do recall Madam Arbour visiting Gaza and Israel in her prodigious efforts to find root causes and effects and making no secret of her condemnation of the State of Israel in the unfortunate and anything-but-deliberate deaths of Palestinians in a defensive bombing. I do recall her aside that it isn't polite of Palestinian terrorists to lob Kassam rockets over the border into Israel.
I don't ever remember Madam Arbour chiding the Palestinian Authority for its ongoing mission to indoctrinate Palestinian children into a doctrine of hate and revenge. I do remember recently seeing in the news that a leading contender for the Democratic presidency of the United States has condemned the PA for publishing and distributing textbooks for Palestinian schools which instruct that the divisions between the PA and Israel are part of a holy war.
These same textbooks impinge directly on the human rights of an entire country whose population is labelled in the most humanly noxious terms as villainously untrustworthy, slanderers of Islam, insects. The children they instruct are cautioned to commit their lives to the glory of Allah, even to consider the glory of personal martyrdom in His name.
Here is a double assault against human rights; those of the Palestinian children to lead normal lives of trust and hope for the future, those of the Israelis whose hopes for the future are being shredded by the certainty that this pernicious destruction of their reputation and the indoctrination of new waves of insurgents and suicidists will never result in peace and mutual security.
Perhaps it's the UN authorities and their minions who need to re-examine their views of human rights their priorities and their moral authority.
Labels: Heroes and Villains
posted by Pieface @ Saturday, February 10, 2007
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