UNESCO Buckles To Speech Thugs

Just another day at the U.N., as in line with its general and agency-by-agency buckling under to the demands of its allied blocs of thug states, UNESCO pulled its sponsorship of Reporters Without Borders’ Online Free Expression Day.

Reuters reports:

UNESCO responded by saying it supported freedom of expression on the Internet but withdrew its sponsorship because of what it said was misleading use of its logo to indicate support for RSF's views.

"In its communications on the day, RSF published material concerning a number of UNESCO's member states, which UNESCO had not been informed of and could not endorse," it said in a statement.
The countries listed by RSF were: Belarus, Burma, China, Cuba, Egypt, Ethiopia, Iran, North Korea, Saudi Arabia, Syria, Tunisia, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, Vietnam and Zimbabwe.

Reporters Without Borders replies:

“We are not fooled,” Reporters Without Borders said. “Several governments on today’s updated list of 15 ‘Internet Enemies’ put direct pressure on the office of the UNESCO director general, and deputy director general Marcio Barbosa caved in. UNESCO’s reputation has not been enhanced by this episode. It has behaved with great cowardice at a time when the governments that got it to stage a U-turn continue to imprison dozens of Internet users.”

The press freedom organisation added: “Unfortunately, it seems we have gone back 20 years, to the time when authoritarian regimes called the shots at UNESCO headquarters in Paris. UNESCO’s grovelling shows the importance of Online Free Expression Day and the need to protest against governments that censor.”

For UNESCO to claim unawareness of the repressions visited upon any not state lackies in the 15 listed countries is increasingly common, however, for the United Nations, increasingly united in repression.

For a handy summary of the wider agenda of repression, led by Islamic states, see this from Britain’s National Secularist Society, opposed to what it sees as the intrusion of any religion into politics, “Muslim plan to stifle free speech moves up a gear”:

The International Humanist and Ethical Union – of which the NSS is an affiliate – has warned that Islamic governments are trying to use the United Nations to shut down free speech. The warning comes as a bloc of Islamic states held a summit to discuss how supposed widespread “Islamophobia” can be legally challenged in Western countries.

The Organization of the Islamic Conference (OIC) began the meeting in Senegal last week by raising the spectre of the Danish cartoons and the forthcoming film criticising the Koran from Dutch MP Geert Wilders….

The recommendations include monitoring meetings and conferences where criticism of Islam might take place and showing a more positive image of Islam as a peaceful and tolerant religion. But the report reveals its true purpose – the legal suppression of criticism of Islam….

Last year, the OIC succeeded in getting the U.N. General Assembly to pass for the first time ever a resolution on the “defamation of religions.” Islam was the only religion mentioned by name in the text. The OIC has 56 votes at the 192-member General Assembly, but it managed to win sufficient support from non-Muslim nations, mostly in the developing world, to see the resolution pass by 108 votes to 51, with 25 abstentions.

No wonder there’s been nothing heard from the UN condemning the Chinese suppression of Tibetan protests against cultural euthanasia, or of the expulsion of foreign journalists and blocking of Internet communications. As Reporters Without Borders says,

Reporters Without Borders is outraged by the methods being used by the Chinese authorities to obstruct foreign journalists trying to cover the situation in the Tibetan regions, and calls for the immediate and unconditional return of the foreign press to Tibet and to nearby provinces with a sizable Tibetan population.

At the same time, the jamming of international radio stations has been stepped up in Tibet and Internet café owners are being forced to increase the surveillance of clients, while government propaganda continues to rage at the "Dalai Lama’s clique" and foreign news media.

"The Chinese authorities are in the process of dealing with the problem of Tibetan demonstrations by means of force and silence," Reporters Without Borders said. "After ridding Tibet and the neighbouring regions of undesirable observers - foreign journalists and tourists - the security forces are crushing the protests without the international community being able to watch."

The press freedom organisation added: "For the repression in Tibet to end, the United Nations must demand the return of foreign journalists and the dispatch of independent observers."

A commenter (I forget where I saw the term) says the approaching China-sited summer Olympics might be renamed the SchizOlympics, as China seeks to raise its prestige abroad and at home and businesses seek broadcast and endorsement profits, but the foreign press is put on guard about reporting outside of scheduled events. It’s indicative of the SchizoWorld Body UN, as well, as its majority of thug states similarly repress freedom, with the aid of international profiteers and lookaway politicians.