New Zealand and Cyprus will not take part in this month’s event marking 20 years of the World Conference against Racism in Durban, which was marked with anti-Semitic and anti-Israel statements.
A spokesman for the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade in Wellington said on Thursday: “New Zealand is strongly committed to combating racism, racial discrimination, xenophobia and related intolerance. In line with our long-standing position, New Zealand on 22 September Will not attend the 20th anniversary of the Durban Declaration Conference in New York on 2021.
Cyprus has also decided not to attend the conference, American Jewish Committee CEO David Harris said on Monday, citing talks with Cypriot Foreign Minister Nikos Christodoulides.
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Durban IV will be held in New York this month on the sidelines of the United Nations General Assembly.
Australia, Austria, Bulgaria, Canada, the Czech Republic, France, Germany, Hungary, Israel, the Netherlands, the UK and the US also plan to boycott the event. The number of countries boycotting this year’s conference is 16, more than the number of the Durban Review Conference in 2011, when 14 dropped out, and 10 in 2009.
The Declaration passed by the countries attending the convention in Durban in 2001 mentions only one country as perpetrators of racism: Israel. An earlier draft stated that Zionism is racism; Thus other national-political movements were not isolated.
The parallel NGO Forum was a hotbed of anti-Semitism, with participants spreading the infamous anti-Semitic canard The Protocols of the Elders of Zion, and travelers saying that if Hitler had won World War II, the world would be a better place. . It is considered the beginning of the anti-Israel Boycott, Partition and Sanctions (BDS) movement and the place where the “apartheid Israel” charge became popular.
In Durban II in 2009, then-President of Iran Mahmoud Ahmadinejad called the Holocaust a “vague and questionable question” and an “excuse” for the Israeli persecution of Palestinians. He was invited back in 2011 to speak at Durban III.
The Touro College Institute on Human Rights and the Holocaust and the pro-Israeli organization CAMERA plan to host a counter-conference in New York the day before Durban IV, which will include Ambassador to the US and the United Nations, Gilad Arden, and former US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo included. Presence.
Countries that have received the letter and have not yet declared their status include Belgium, Finland, Greece, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Moldova, North Macedonia, Romania, Serbia, Slovakia, Slovenia, Spain, Sweden and Switzerland, All of whom have adopted it. Working definition of International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance Antisemitism.
Pro-Palestinian supporters demonstrate outside the 2001 World Conference against Racism in Durban, South Africa. (credit: Reuters)