"Australia has decided not to participate in the Durban Review Conference. The 2001 Declaration singled out Israel and the Middle East. Australia expressed strong concerns about this at the time. Regrettably, we cannot be confident that the Review Conference will not again be used as a platform to air offensive views, including anti-Semitic views." (Stephen Smith, Australian Foreign Minister)"(...) The US, Italy, Canada and Israel will also boycott the meeting, to protest language in the final document that they say could single out Israel for criticism and restrict free speech. (...)
Hours after the US said it would boycott the UN conference over objectionable language in the meeting's final document that could single out Israel for criticism, Australia and Holland followed suit on Sunday morning, saying they were concerned the conference would be derailed by some countries to issues other than human rights.
"Australia has decided not to participate in the Durban Review Conference," Australian Foreign Minister Stephen Smith said in a statement. "The 2001 Declaration singled out Israel and the Middle East. Australia expressed strong concerns about this at the time."
"Regrettably, we cannot be confident that the Review Conference will not again be used as a platform to air offensive views, including anti-Semitic views," he continued.
Dutch Foreign Minister Maxime Verhagen later issued a statement saying his country was boycotting the conference because some nations were using it as a platform to attack the West. Verhagen said these countries were planning to use the summit to put religion above human rights and rein in freedom of speech. He called the proposed closing declaration "unacceptable."
On Saturday night, the State Department said that the Obama administration would "with regret" boycott the conference. It followed weeks of furious internal debate and fierce lobbying by Israel and Jewish groups against US participation.
A final draft of the statements, released late Friday, made changes to sections that had referred to a "hierarchy" among forms of racism, but left intact sections that the US had said would cause it to boycott the meetings.
The conference's planning has been dominated by efforts by Arab nations to prioritize concerns about Islamophobia and "anti-Arabism" - widely interpreted as a thinly veiled code for the treatment of Palestinians.
Some revisions - including the removal of specific critical references to Israel and problematic passages about the defamation of religion - were negotiated, for which State Department spokesman Robert Wood said the administration was "deeply grateful."
But he said the text retains troubling elements that suggest support for restrictions on free speech and an affirmation of the "findings" of the first World Conference Against Racism, held in Durban, South Africa, in 2001 that the US cannot endorse. (...)
Israel, Canada and Italy had already said they would not attend the conference under any circumstances because of the tenor of the debate surrounding the planning, and due to the politicized nature of the event itself.
"The text is not the only or even the main thing to consider," Israel's ambassador to the UN in Geneva, Aharon Leshno-Yaar, said Saturday. "The general mood is a very negative one and everybody is ignoring the main question, which is, 'Does this do good or bad to the fight against racism?'"
Leshno-Yaar said the conference would be "only about politics," adding that there would be "nothing about the fight against racism."
American officials had already said in February that they would not accept a final document that reaffirmed the text endorsed during the first World Conference Against Racism in 2001. The US and Israel walked out of that conference over a draft resolution that singled out Israel for criticism and likened Zionism to racism.
The US had joined Israel in objecting to any further such references, as well as to language declaring that "incitement to racial discrimination" is illegal, something US officials fear would limit free speech.
The changes released on Friday retained language reaffirming the program of action adopted at the original conference.
The American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) welcomed the Obama Administration's decision to boycott the meeting.
"President Obama's decision not to send US representation to the event is the right thing to do and underscores America's unstinting commitment to combating intolerance and racism in all its forms and in all settings," AIPAC said in a statement. (...)"
Source: article by Allison Hoffman and Hilary Leila Krieger in TJP
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