The elevation of Saudi Arabia (in what appears now a secret deal with England) in 2013 to the United Nations Human Rights Council was to say the least controversial. After all, the Kingdom denies basic rights to women, bars basic religious freedom for non-Muslim (including the construction of any church in the Kingdom), engages in torture, and applies a medieval Sharia law that imposes grotesque and draconian punishments. It is widely viewed as the appropriate target (not a member) of the Council. Saudi Arabia has not wasted time in obstructing human rights measures. This week for example the Kingdom blocked plans for an international inquiry into human rights violations by all parties in the war in Yemen despite massive death counts among civilians in the last six months. It also announced at a meeting of the UN Human Rights Council in Geneva that it will opposed any and all protections for gay people as anti-Islamic.
The Netherlands were forced to withdraw the draft of a resolution instructing the United Nations high commissioner for human rights to send experts to Yemen to investigate the conduct of the war. This was done despite the recommendations by the commissioner, Zeid Ra’ad al-Hussein, who detailed in a report this month the heavy civilian casualties. The Saudis are involved in the war, attacking Houthi rebels. The Dutch resolution also called for the warring parties to allow access to humanitarian groups seeking to deliver aid and to the commercial import of goods like fuel that are needed to keep hospitals running.
Instead, a new resolution supports a decree, issued by the exiled Yemeni government of President Abdu Rabbu Mansour Hadi, appointing a national commission of inquiry. It asks the United Nations human rights office only “to provide technical assistance and to work with the government of Yemen, as required, in the field of capacity building.” Hadi is supported by Saudi Arabia.
In the meantime, Saudi appeared before the Council to demand respect for the criminalization of homosexuality under Islamic Sharia law, which also bans smoking, drinking, and sex outside marriage. In July 2014, one gay man was sentenced to three years in jail for “promoting the vice and practice of homosexuality.”
If England did carry out a secret deal to get the Saudi’s on the council, it would rank as truly one of the most cynical (if not Faustian) bargains in history.
For the Saudis, Islam is an excuse. The would be autocratic regardless.
Move the UN to Havana. So much for diplomatic immunity.
Max-1
It’s nice to have general and specific freedoms in America, huh?
Like the right to private property wherein the collectivist liberal radical extremists nullify that right and dictate whom we hire in our free businesses, whom we matriculate in our private universities and to whom we rent and sell our properties to through unconstitutional affirmative action and ostensible “Fair Housing” laws which are clearly biased and fair only to minorities and unequivocally unfair to private property owners.
Where’s the objective and unbiased, constitution-supporting Supreme Court when you need it? In the communist re-education camp, that’s where.
Davidm
Sounds like a platform for a religious fanatic to impose their will on others.
Theocracies, something we should aspire to avoid, like the plague they are on humanity.
That sounds like a Theocratic Religious Republican’s wet dream of a State to live in.
The last time I checked, Saudi Arabia was a sovereign nation. The U.S. is a sovereign nation. Inherent in calls for “human rights” is implementation of the global dominion of a world governing body. Also inherent in the post is the presumption that nations are adverse to humanity. That would simultaneously be treason in every sovereign nation on earth.
I am certain that Saudi Arabians are capable of appropriate governance.
Americans aren’t even capable of accurately implementing and supporting their own founding documents. That must be good governance. Freedoms are persistently nullified.
The agenda in this article couldn’t be more clear.
Collectivists celebrate it.
Human rights violators gaining access to the UN Human Rights Council, and then promptly interfering with its mission or going after political adversaries, has been a problem for a long time.]
This is why the UN has a bad reputation as ineffective and hypocritical.
Human Rights is in the eye of the beholder. What needs to be talked about is what defines human rights. For some, it is the equality meme. For others, it is natural law theory. For yet others, it is theistic or religious based. Until people agree upon the right way to think about human rights, there will never be a meeting of the minds about the subject.
In another thread, some consider a woman mentally ill for wanting to blind herself, but others would argue that it is her basic human right to choose what to do with her own body. In regards to abortion, some consider it a human right for the mother to have ultimate authority to terminate her baby, while others argue that the human rights of the unborn are violated. For the most part, people do not think philosophically about it. They just react emotionally, and because everybody has different experiences in life, people have different emotions about it.
80% isaac?
“Do you support or oppose stricter gun control laws in the United States?” 48 percent of all voters responded by opposing gun control while 45 percent responded by favoring more.” Quinnipiac 9/17/15
So congressmen are voting EXACTLY like their constituents want them to. (Also, there’s the little issue of Constitutional rights.)
I’m with dog, move them out and quit paying most of the dues
Curiouser and curiouser, World Cup Soccer in the desert, hosted by a bunch of neanderthals who don’t even know how to play soccer and must import players to their countries to make up a team. Why? Money? No different than how the US government works. 80% of the people want stricter gun controls but their ‘elected representatives’ vote against that. Why? Money. The NRA goes on record saying that they will spend as much as it takes to smear any ‘elected representative’ that votes the way 80% of their constituents demand.
Are we that different?
We talk the talk and sometimes walk the walk. They take an accused out to a parking lot and lop off the head, to show their world the results of those crimes. We build a stadium of sorts with bleachers, a proscenium, actors and supporting cast. Then we create a ritual worthy of Wagner over the course of fifteen to twenty years with an ending worthy of any passion play.
We arm idiots on the pretext that they will keep us safe. Instead they slaughter students, elementary students, high school students, college students, and sometimes you don’t even have to be a student, you could simply be in a group, like at church.
Religious fanatics come in all sorts, flavors, and sizes.
It is time to move the UN out of the US. Maybe Paris. The UN ambassadors could eat rite and not be dregs on America.
The BarkinDog Doctrine is that there are levels of territories in the world and some are not civilized nation states. The lowest level is Pirate Territory such as Yemen. Next up is Saudi Arabia which is tyrant territory with pretext of government. They have no right to be in the UN and absolutely not right to be in some human rights counsel.
Saudia Arabia: fly over and flush twice. Make sure you poop before you flush.
UN = multinational theatrical troop (farce seems to be a specialty)
“Forget it Jake, it’s the UN.”
“U.S. Senators Hem and Haw on Saudi Arabia’s Human Rights Abuses” @
https://theintercept.com/2015/10/01/u-s-senators-hem-and-haw-on-saudi-arabias-human-rights-abuses/
Sausage making. One wonders what would happen if someone did not bow to one of these idiots.
A counseling technique that is sometimes useful is to ask the client how he would advise others to solve the problem the client has. Sometimes it is a useful technique. The case of Saudi A. however seems hopeless.
David Cameron has shown himself to be the steryotypical perfidious Albion. The UN has now clearly become useless.