Statement by Dr. Shimon Samuels to the Human Rights Council Preparatory Commission for the Durban Review Conference

Geneva, 17 October 2008

This address was intended:

- to arrest the abuse of the terms "Apartheid", "Holocaust" and "antisemitism" by their egregious application, since Durban 2001, respectively to "Israeli policy", "Palestinian 'Naqba' self-styled 'catastrophe'" and "prejudice against Muslims as 'other semites'";

- to support the appeal of associations of Egyptian Jews in the United States, United Kingdom and France. Their requests to access and photocopy their community archives and records in Cairo and Alexandria have been constantly rebuffed by the Egyptian Minister of Culture.

"The Simon Wiesenthal Centre has appreciated the important debate in this chamber on slave-trafficking as a crime which principally targeted Africans and African descendants. Indeed, they are entitled to universal recognition of their own victimology under slavery and Apartheid, just as the Jewish people are the unfortunate objects of antisemitism and the Holocaust.

Such terms were distorted and banalized during the Durban World Conference Against Racism in 2001 as, by a deliberate identity theft, they were arrogated to the narratives of other peoples and faiths.

Fortunately, the United Nations system has an existing mechanism to ensure the pristine specificity of every targeted group's identity - the World Heritage Committee of UNESCO, whose current Director-General, Mr. Koichiro Matsuura, has created the category of "intangible heritage" for literature, music, traditions, archives - the very instruments of identity.

Under the draft Durban Review document Section 4 (dedicated to good practices), paragraphs 40 and 41 on culture and education, and under Section 5 (dedicated to further concrete measures and initiatives), paragraphs 20 on cultural rights of victims and 87 on human rights education, the Simon Wiesenthal Centre proposes an additional paragraph that Calls upon States to endorse the right of every victim to have free access to all archives and documents relating to his/her narrative, especially those held in his/her country of origin.

Our Centre feels that this measure would assist in victim groups' collective pride in survival, commemoration, rehabilitation, psychological closure and in combating ongoing racism.

Indeed, once digitized, these archives would form an evolving compendium of world patrimony to serve as an educational instrument to combat all forms of intolerance.

Thank you."

For further information please contact Shimon Samuels at +33 6 09770158