John R. Houk
© May 19, 2013
This article is a little difficult to read in my opinion; nonetheless the message is clear. A German got himself in hot water over going public that the non-German immigrants of the Turkish and Arab persuasion are increasing via the birthrate exponentially enough to overtake the homegrown European Germanic culture. And as that immigration population grows they are the ones that tend to live on the German government welfare.
That German is Thilo Sarrazin who has been a prominent German politician and now an important Executive Board Member of the German Bundesbank which is the central bank of the Federal Republic of Germany and as such part of the European System of Central Banks (ESCB).
Evidently Sarrazin is both controversial and popular in Germany because of this book he wrote in 2010 which in English is rendered “Germany Abolishes Itself: How We Are Risking Our Country”. (I noticed Wikipedia has a different translation of this title: “Germany Is Doing Away With Itself”.)
This article is entitled “UN Pressures Germany to Bow to 'Hate Speech' Hysteria”. Evidently an agency of the United Nations the Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination (CERD) is the anti-Free Speech agenda to squash opinions such as those presented by Thilo Sarrazin. Here is an excerpt of the CERD mission from its website:
The Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination (CERD) is the body of independent experts that monitors implementation of the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination by its State parties.
All States parties are obliged to submit regular reports to the Committee on how the rights are being implemented. States must report initially one year after acceding to the Convention and then every two years. The Committee examines each report and addresses its concerns and recommendations to the State party in the form of “concluding observations”.
In addition to the reporting procedure, the Convention establishes three other mechanisms through which the Committee performs its monitoring functions: the early-warning procedure, the examination of inter-state complaints and the examination of individual complaints.
The Committee meets in Geneva and normally holds two sessions per year consisting of three weeks each.
The Committee also publishes its interpretation of the content of human rights provisions, known as general recommendations (or general comments), on thematic issues and organizes thematic discussions.
For more information about the work of the Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination, click here.
The CERD decision placing pressure on the German government is 19 pages. You can read the entire pdf English translation document; however I think you can get the gist of how the U.N. is imposing Free Speech suppression according to how Americans view Free Speech from this small excerpt:
3.3 The petitioner argues that since Mr. Sarrazin is the former Finance Senator of the Berlin Senate and member of the Board of Directors of the German Central Bank, his authority leads to the perception that his statements are based on proven facts and, therefore, “the truth”. It adds that the effects of Mr. Sarrazin’s statements enhance prejudices of the majority towards the Turkish population and individuals of Turkish heritage, including their children. The petitioner submits that such racially discriminatory statements are not covered by the right to freedom of expression because the concerned group has a right to live without prejudices and general intolerance, and the freedom to exercise their rights should be respected. The statements made by Mr. Sarrazin should be assessed in the framework of the special social context of Germany, adding to the general pattern of incitement to racial hatred against the Turkish population, which in the circumstances can be even more dangerous than openly flaunted racism, which is easier to combat. With the termination of the investigation against Mr. Sarrazin, the petitioner claims that it was arbitrarily denied protection against racially discriminatory statements directed against it as a group of individuals of Turkish heritage and as the representative of this group and the propagation thereof represents a violation of articles 2 (1 (d), 4, (a) and 6.
So here’s the thing. The U.N.’s CERD is forcing Germany to comply with the Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) to prohibit all forms of criticism of Islam which is responsible for most of the world’s global terrorism.
Oops! I just violated U.N.’s campaign to protect Islam. Oh well, I’ll get over it.
JRH 5/19/13
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UN Pressures Germany to Bow to 'Hate Speech' Hysteria
By Andrew Harrod and Sam Nunberg
May 16, 2013
Originally - Frontpage Mag
A recent decision by the United Nation's (UN) Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination (CERD) foreshadows an ominous future for free societies should Muslim entities like the Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) achieve their goal of having "Islamophobia" defined internationally as a form of prejudice.
Former German central bank board member Thilo Sarrazin has got himself in trouble with the UN, as the Turkish Union in Berlin-Brandenburg (Türkischer Bund in Berlin-Brandenburg or TBB) stated with satisfaction in an April 18, 2013, German-language press release. The spokesman of this German-Turkish interest group, Hilmi Kaya Turan, praised a February 26, 2013, "historic decision" by the CERD condemning Germany for not having prosecuted Sarrazin's criticism of Arab and Turkish immigrants.
Sarrazin, a member of the Social Democratic Party of Germany (Sozialdemokratische Partei Deutschlands or SPD), produced a storm of controversy with his August 2010 book Deutschland Schafft Sich Ab: Wie Wir Unser Land aufs Spiel Setzen ("Germany Abolishes Itself: How We Are Risking Our Country"). In the context of this controversy, CERD's detailed 19-page decision extensively excerpted in English translation a fall 2009 interview with Sarrazin. In the interview, the Berlin magazine Lettre International discussed some of the upcoming book's themes.
CERD complained that "[i]n this interview, Mr. Sarrazin expressed himself in a derogatory and discriminatory way about social 'lower classes', which are not productive' and would have to 'disappear over time' in order to create a city of the 'elite'." Sarrazin specified that about 20% of Berlin's population depended on welfare payments, which he wanted to cut, "above all to the lower class."
Berlin's indigent included within the immigrant population a "large number of Arabs and Turks in this city, whose numbers have grown through erroneous policies, have no productive function, except for the fruit and vegetable trade." Compounding the problem for Sarrazin was a birthrate among Arabs and Turks about three times their percentage of the population. Sarrazin thereby saw "Turks…conquering Germany just like the Kosovars conquered Kosovo: through a higher birth rate." Sarrazin "wouldn't mind if" these immigrants "were East European Jews with about a 15% higher IQ than the one of Germans." Central to Sarrazin's thesis was the assumption that "human ability is to some extent socially contingent and to some extent hereditary." Sarrazin's "solution to this problem" was "to generally prohibit influx, except for highly qualified individuals and not provide social welfare for immigrants anymore."
As noted by CERD, Sarrazin's interview comments prompted on October 23, 2009, a criminal complaint by the TBB under the German Criminal Code's Article 130 against "Incitement to Hatred" (Volksverhetzung). Yet upon review, German prosecutors suspended their investigations on November 23, 2009, deciding that Sarrazin's views fell under the protection of free speech contained within Article 5 of Germany's Basic Law (Grundgesetz). Prosecutors quoted by CERD had judged Sarrazin's statements as a "contribution to the intellectual debate in a question…very significant for the public."
Following this domestic defeat, the TBB turned in 2010 to Article 14 of CERD's governing convention (Article 14), the International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination. Article 14 provides that the CERD may "consider communications from individuals or groups of individuals within" a consenting State Party's "jurisdiction claiming to be victims of a violation by that State Party of any of the rights set forth in this Convention." In response, CERD agreed with TBB that Sarrazin had made discriminatory comments and that the German "State party failed to provide protection against such discrimination." CERD thus wanted the "State party" to "review its policy and procedures…to give wide publicity to the Committee's Opinion," and to deliver "within 90 days, information from the State party about the measures taken."
CERD's decision did not involve Islam directly, for Sarrazin had referenced the ethnicity of Arabs and Turks, not their majority-Muslim faith. Yet CERD's decision noted various party submissions according to which in Germany the "labels 'Turks' or 'Arabs' are applied as synonyms for Muslims." Citing various evidence examples, CERD agreed with one submission that "Mr. Sarrazin's statements led to public vilification and debasement of Turks and Muslims in general."
Any such foreign judgment of a country raises sensitive questions of national sovereignty, particularly when involving limitations of free speech. Sarrazin's case was no exception, especially in light of CERD members mocked by the German conservative website Politically Incorrect as "torches of democracy and human rights." Analyzing this roster, Germans might well wonder what they could learn in equality under the law from members hailing from Algeria, Burkina Faso, China, Niger, Pakistan, Russia, Togo, and Turkey, among other countries.
The Sarrazin case exemplifies how international law and its institutional developments can impact domestic matters. Observers of the OIC, an international organization of 57 majority-Muslim nation-states (including "Palestine"), would be well advised to keep Sarrazin in mind when considering the OIC's longstanding campaign against "Islamophobia." This campaign would only too willingly extrapolate from Sarrazin's comments about Arab and Turk immigrants, however controversial, to a condemnation of criticizing Islamic ideas as well.
Defenders of free speech should beware. The transnationalist, multiculturalists and OIC have a new mechanism to override domestic legal hate speech decisions. Precedent is slowly but surely being set.
This article was sponsored by the Legal Project, an activity of the Middle East Forum.
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Multiculturalism Harasses Thilo Sarrazin
John R. Houk
© May 19, 2013
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UN Pressures Germany to Bow to 'Hate Speech' Hysteria
© 2013 The Middle East Forum.
About the Legal Project
The Middle East Forum has established the Legal Project to protect researchers and analysts who work on the topics of terrorism, terrorist funding, and radical Islam from lawsuits designed to silence their exercise of free speech.
Background
Researchers and analysts have been repeatedly targeted in legal actions, including… Read the Rest
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