A confrontation over freedom of expression is brewing in the UN Human Rights Council after Egypt began circulating a draft resolution that Western countries and human-rights groups fear could circumscribe free speech.
Egypt began passing a resolution Friday among delegations from the 47 countries currently serving on the UN Human Rights Council that reportedly calls for further "limitations" on speech that could be construed as defaming religions. Canada has for years sponsored UN resolutions upholding freedom of expression that have found ready support from other Western countries. These resolutions, while non-binding, help inform international human-rights law.
The draft resolution has not yet been made public, but according to reports Saturday in the Canadian press, Canadian Ambassador to the United Nations in Geneva Marius Grinius "complained forcefully" to his Egyptian counterpart after the Egyptian draft was distributed. Human-rights groups have repeatedly criticised Egypts record on free expression.
They now say they fear the new resolution could resemble previous Egyptian attempts to exempt speech that adherents to a religion find offensive from speech protected by human-rights treaties. "Be concerned, be very concerned, any time a government with Egypts sorry record on freedom of expression attempts to set the parameters for free speech for the rest of the world," Joe Stork, associate Middle East director at Human Rights Watch,said Saturday.
"We reject any depiction of the repeated affronts to religions and sanctities as a legitimate exercise of the freedom of expression," Egyptian Foreign Minister Ahmed Aboul-Gheit told the UN General Assembly in September. "There are many glaring slogans in the name of which crimes have been committed against thousands and millions of people through offending them and their beliefs and faiths."
A spokesman for the Egyptian Foreign Ministry could not be reached for comment on the resolution. Egypt was instrumental in adding amendments to the terms of reference for the UN Special Rapporteur on freedom of expression, which require the special rapporteur to "report on instances where the abuse of the right to freedom of expression constitutes an act of racial or religious discrimination," during the councils seventh session in March 2008.
The special rapporteurs terms of reference had previously required him to report only on instances where the right to freedom of expression had been abused, not on cases where the speech constituted an abuse. Such cases were previously handled by other UN bodies. Egyptian and international human-rights groups said they feared the change could leave human-rights law open to misinterpretation.
"Its ironic that Egypt is portraying itself as a protector of these principles of freedom of expression and religion when it imprisons people for their religious beliefs," Hassiba Hadj-Sahraoui, associate Middle East director at Amnesty International, told dpa on Saturday. Hadj-Sahraoui said the Human Rights Councils working group on freedom of expression found last week that Cairo had "arbitrarily detained" Egyptian blogger Abdel-Karim Nabil Suleiman for peacefully exercising his right to free expression.
That decision was in response to a 2007 complaint that Amnesty International submitted soon after a judge in Alexandria, Egypt, sentenced the blogger to four years in prison on charges of "insulting Islam" and "insulting the president" in a series of blog posts. "Only after President Hosni Mubarak frees the bloggers hes imprisoned and implements the press reforms he promised years ago would it be possible to take an initiative like this seriously," Human Rights Watchs Joe Stork said.
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