Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has accused Israel of being the ‘most cruel and racist regime’, sparking a walkout by angry Western diplomats at the UN Durban II conference on racism.
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The Economist has run a strong editorial on the UN Human Rights Council’s ‘religious defamation resolution‘, and the idea of ideologies demanding ‘protection’:
[T]here is an insidious blurring of categories here, which becomes plain when you compare this resolution with the more rigorous language of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, adopted in 1948 in a spirit of revulsion over the evils of fascism. This asserts the right of human beings in ways that are now entrenched in the theory and (most of the time) the practice of liberal democracy. It upholds the right of people to live in freedom from persecution and arbitrary arrest; to hold any faith or none; to change religion; and to enjoy freedom of expression, which by any fair definition includes freedom to agree or disagree with the tenets of any religion.
In other words, it protects individuals — not religions, or any other set of beliefs. And this is a vital distinction. For it is not possible systematically to protect religions or their followers from offence without infringing the right of individuals.
As part of the Libel Bind series, a collaboration between Index on Censorship, English PEN and the Guardian‘s Liberty Central, Robert Sharp of English PEN is wondering what the alternative to laws on religious defamation might be. He suggests bloggers might have the answer.
‘Despite the robust nature of much of the debate online, I do perceive a sort of online Omerta, a Way of the Blogs. This states that if you have been offended or disrespected online, you can always fight your corner by setting up a counter-blog somewhere else. The idea is that you do not attempt to suppress the offensive material, legally or otherwise, but instead use the same medium to counter and debunk it.’
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