Amid rise of populism and demagoguery in politics, the United Nations has warned against fallout of exclusivism and urged efforts to safeguard human rights laws.
Secretary General Ban Ki-moon called for collective efforts toward peaceful coexistence and a life of dignity for all.
He described religious intolerance as one of the greatest global threats, a UN statement said.
“Violence against people because of their religious identity or beliefs is an assault on the core values of the UN,” underlined Mr. Ban in a video message to an event titled ‘High-level Forum on Anti-Semitism,’ held today at the UN Headquarters in New York.
“Time and again, history has shown that those who attack one minority today, will target another tomorrow. Discrimination does not discriminate,” he said.
In his message to the event – organized by the governments of Canada, Israel, the United States and the Delegation of the European Union – the Secretary-General also noted that anti-Semitism is one of the world’s oldest, most pervasive and deadliest forms of hatred.
“Let us reject bigotry, uphold human rights, and build bridges across communities,” he urged.
The remarks come amid rising anti-Semitism, Islamophobia and xenophobic attitude toward immigration and refugees.
Meanwhile, the top UN official for Human Rights, condemned populism in politics.
“Populists use half-truths and oversimplification – the two scalpels of the arch propagandist, and here the internet and social media are a perfect rail for them, by reducing thought into the smallest packages: sound-bites; tweets,”.
“Paint half a picture in the mind of an anxious individual, exposed as they may be to economic hardship and through the media to the horrors of terrorism. Prop this picture up by some half-truth here and there and allow the natural prejudice of people to fill in the rest. Add drama, emphasizing it’s all the fault of a clear-cut group, so the speakers lobbing this verbal artillery, and their followers, can feel somehow blameless,” the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, Zeid Ra’ad Al Hussein, said.
He was speaking at a gala of the Peace, Justice and Security Foundation in The Hague.
“We hear of accelerating discrimination in workplaces. Children are being shamed and shunned for their ethnic and religious origins – whatever their passports, they are told they are not ‘really’ European, not ‘really’ French, or British, or Hungarian.
“The formula is therefore simple: make people, already nervous, feel terrible, and then emphasize it’s all because of a group, lying within, foreign and menacing,” he added. “Then make your target audience feel good by offering up what is a fantasy to them, but a horrendous injustice to others. Inflame and quench, repeat many times over, until anxiety has been hardened into hatred.”
In his remarks, the High Commissioner said he was particularly addressing Dutch politician Geert Wilders and others like him. According to media reports, ahead of the Netherlands’ parliamentary elections next year, Mr. Wilders has issued a set of proposals which include banning migrants from Islamic counties and closing mosques, Islamic schools and asylum centers, among other steps.
“Geert Wilders released his grotesque eleven-point manifesto only days ago, and a month ago he spoke along similar lines in Cleveland, in the United States,” the UN official said. “And yet what Mr. Wilders shares in common with Mr. Trump, Mr. Orban, Mr. Zeman, Mr. Hofer, Mr. Fico, Madame Le Pen, Mr. Farage, he also shares with Da’esh [ISIL].
“All seek in varying degrees to recover a past, halcyon and so pure in form, where sunlit fields are settled by peoples united by ethnicity or religion – living peacefully in isolation, pilots of their fate, free of crime, foreign influence and war. A past that most certainly, in reality, did not exist anywhere, ever. Europe’s past, as we all know, was for centuries anything but that. The proposition of recovering a supposedly perfect past is fiction; its merchants are cheats.”
