Date : 23/02/2011
Council on Libya
GENEVA, Feb 23 (KUNA) - - The NGO UN Watch, which spearheaded this week's
successful appeal by 70 human rights groups for an urgent UN Human Rights
Council session on Libya, expressed disappointment with a draft resolution
circulated on Wednesday by the EU in advance of Friday's meeting.
"We appreciate that the EU incorporated our requests for an international
investigation and for keeping the issue on the council's agenda in the
upcoming March and June sessions," said Hillel Neuer, executive director of UN
Watch, a Geneva-based human rights group.
"Yet the draft unacceptably falls short of condemning Moammar Qaddafi, and
fails to call for Libya's removal from the council," he noted.
"We urge EU foreign minister Catherine Ashton, as well as the leaders of
France, Germany and the UK, to exercise moral leadership and remedy these
glaring omissions.", he added in a press release.
"First, the moral outrage of Libya's membership on the world's top human
rights body must end immediately. World public opinion will no longer tolerate
this.
"Even the Arab League ejected Libya. The council must take action under
Article 8 of its founding charter and issue a finding that Libya is committing
gross and systematic violations of human rights, and call for the regime to be
suspended by the General Assembly," said Neuer.
"With bodies piling up on the streets of Libya, the EU and the
international community must not stay silent on this pernicious moral
hypocrisy," he pointed out.
"Second, the EU must explain why its draft -- breaking with council
practice on condemnatory resolutions --studiously avoids naming the Libyan
government or its leader as the perpetrators of the ongoing atrocities.
"Make no mistake: this resolution makes no condemnation of Moammar Qaddafi.
Instead, the EU offers deliberately vague condemnations of violations
committed 'in Libya', or calls for Libyan authorities to stop 'any violations,
' falsely implying that someone other than Qaddafi's regime may be responsible
for the atrocities.
"Yet, the helicopter gunships, soldiers and mercenaries firing on civilians
are all under the command of the Qaddafi regime. Now is the time for moral
clarity, not diplomatic obfuscation," Neuer added. (end)
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