Geert Wilders needs to be supported more than ever now. Please go here to sign the petition in support of Wilders!
Dawn
GENEVA
Arab and Muslim countries defended on Tuesday a resolution they pushed through at the United Nations to have the body’s expert on free speech to report on individuals and news media for negative comments on Islam.
An amendment passed by the UN Human Rights Council on Friday directed the body’s expert on freedom of expression to report on people who abuse their free speech rights by espousing racial and religious discrimination.
Ambeyi Ligabo, a legal expert from Kenya, currently holds the post.
The measure, proposed by Egypt and Pakistan, was passed 32-0 with the support of Islamic, Arab and African nations on Friday. European nations and some other countries abstained.The United States, Canada and European countries criticised the role reversal for Kenyan legal expert Ambeyi Ligabo, who has reported to the global body on measures by dictatorships and repressive governments to restrict free speech.
The US and other Western nations claimed that the Muslim-backed resolution at the UN Human Rights Council could curtail freedom of expression and help dictatorial regimes block dissenting views.
“The resolution adopted attempts to legitimise the criminalization of expression,” said Warren W. Tichenor, the US ambassador to the UN in Geneva.
“The resolution seeks to impose restrictions on individuals rather than to emphasize the duty and responsibility of governments to guarantee, uphold, promote and protect human rights,” Tichenor told the 47-nation body.
The article about YouTube from CNS News
The government of the world's most populous Islamic state says YouTube has two days to take down a Dutch lawmaker's provocative film on the Koran or it will block access to the popular video-sharing Web site.
The warning by Indonesia came as the U.N.'s primary human rights watchdog ended a month-long session amid allegations by Western member-states and non-governmental organizations that Islamic nations are working to curtail free speech.
Geert Wilder's 16-minute film linking Islam's revered text with terrorism has sparked protests in a number of countries. It also drew criticism from the Arab League, the Organization of the Islamic Conference (OIC) and the European Union.
In Indonesia, a former Dutch colony, Information Minister Mohammad Nuh told a press briefing in Jakarta Tuesday he had sent a letter to YouTube demanding the film, "Fitna," be removed. If it did not comply, he said, the government in cooperation with Internet service providers would block the site.
As of early Wednesday afternoon Indonesian time, attempts to view at least one earlier-available upload of the movie on YouTube brought up a message saying, "This video has been removed due to terms of use violation."
But the film has been uploaded on YouTube by multiple users and can still be found with a simple search in both its English and Dutch versions.
In response to queries, a YouTube spokesperson said the site allows people "to express themselves and to communicate with a global audience."
"The diversity of the world in which we live -- spanning the vast dimensions of ethnicity, religion, nationality, language, political opinion, gender, and sexual orientation, to name a few -- means that some of the beliefs and views of some individuals may offend others," she said.
h/t Chlora in comments here
Hmmm, does YouTube banning Sout al Kaffar have anything to do with this?
Crossposted here
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