Human rights are supposed to be universal. That’s kind of the point of the “Universal Declaration of Human Rights”. They’re also supposed to be indivisible. Yet, in practice we see that Human Rights Commissions are awfully choosy about human rights. Australia’s Human Rights Commission was very keen on witch-hunting artists who drew edgy cartoons and students who protested anti-white discrimination, but they were awfully silent about, say, imams preaching violent homophobia. New Zealand’s own Golriz Ghahraman, a human rights lawyer, has declared that no human right is absolute, in direct contravention of the UN Declaration.
New Zealand’s HRC is no better, as it turns out. Despite mouthing the requisite platitudes about “calling out” “casual racism in all its forms”, the NZ Human Rights Chief is remarkably adept at giving a free pass where it suits his political prejudices. Quote:
Professor Paul Hunt, the new NZ Human Rights Chief Commissioner, was interviewed on Radio New Zealand’s Saturday Morning show with Kim Hill. Hunt was on to peddle potential new hate speech laws. End of quote.
The hypocrisy of a supposed champion of human rights advocating the restriction of one of the most fundamental human rights is just the beginning.
quote.
According to Hunt, the Christchurch tragedy had put the organisation’s proposed restrictions to speech “back on the table”. Hill quickly reminded us why she’s the nation’s best interviewer by catching Hunt off-guard with a disarmingly simple challenge to the idea that speech laws would have prevented the atrocity. He had to concede that “I’m not saying [“hate speech” legislation] would have prevented Christchurch” before attempting to justify his want for more state control of speech with a long-winded and empty answer about “national shock” and “long-standing positions of the HRC” that really betrayed the commission’s ghoulish opportunism. End of quote.
It got worse when Hunt was challenged to tackle the growing anti-Semitism of British Labor, especially its leader, Jeremy Corbyn. Hunt ran for UK Labor’s National Policy Forum – its primary policy-making body – as a pro-Corbyn socialist, just before becoming the Chief Human Rights Commissioner in New Zealand. Quote:
Hill raised the issue with Hunt, focusing on Corbyn’s defense of a “Protocols of the Elders of Zion”-inspired public mural and asked Hunt if he would censure Corbyn’s “casual racism”…A slightly modified transcript of the relevant part of the RNZ interview is below:
Prof Paul Hunt – I think that casual racism in all its forms needs to be called out.
Kim Hill – Is [UK Labour leader, Jeremy Corbyn] guilty of that?
– I think that he made a serious mistake in not condemning that mural sooner than he did. It took him far longer than it should have.
– But he didn’t not only condemn it. He said “whoa, what’s your problem”
– Yeah, it was a real problem
– But is that not casual discrimination, casual racism?
– It might well have been.
– Was it or wasn’t it?
– It might well have been… End of quote.
Hunt kept fudging and equivocating. Quote:
Hunt wouldn’t condemn Corbyn nor declare him antisemitic, which was perhaps an easy side-step given the question related only to a single incident. But the mural is but one of literally hundreds (673 in 10 months reported earlier this year alone) of allegations of racism against Corbyn and his party, party members and supporters, as Hunt would’ve been well aware – and if he was unaware, then there are even more serious questions to be asked about the professor’s competence. End of quote.
Corbyn’s record is as undeniable as it is odious: association with and support for terrorists from the IRA to Hamas, palling around with Holocaust deniers and paid appearances on Iranian state tv.
Anti-Semitism is eating away at UK Labor like a cancer. Jewish Labor politicians trying to tackle the problem have had to be protected by bodyguards from other Labor members. Quote:
Hunt would have known it all but was still comfortable seeking advancement in Corbyn’s party. And now, rather than definitively break from his past and take the opportunity to outright condemn Corbyn with Hill, he presented as obtuse and snakily avoided accounting for his association with one of the most overtly racist parties and leaders certainly in the Western world. And this subterfuge is happening during an interview in which he condemned “everyday racism” as a contributing factor to endangering minorities and promoted both himself and the organisation he represents as being fit to help determine what average New Zealanders can and can’t say. End of quote.
shalom.kiwi