Canada will not take part in a UN event next year to commemorate the 10th anniversary of the Durban conference on racism that saw the United States walk out in protest over texts branding Israel as a racist and apartheid state, Jason Kenney says.
“Canada will not participate in this charade,” the Immigration Minister told a news conference Thursday. “We will not lend our good name to this Durban hate-fest.”
Canada was the first country to announce it would not attend a similar event in 2009, expressing fears that it would descend into an international anti-Semitic tirade dominated by the views of countries like Iran and Libya.
The United Nations General Assembly adopted a resolution this week to hold a one-day global anti-racism meeting, which will be called Durban III, in September of 2011. But Canada will not be there, the Immigration Minister said.
Canada voted against the resolution along with other Western countries because “we believe that the proposed meeting will only perpetuate the kind of objectionable, divisive rhetoric that led Canada to boycott this process in the past,” Mr. Kenney explained.
Ottawa’s decision to stay away from the 2009 event was vindicated when Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad used the Durban II as a vehicle for Holocaust denial, racism, xenophobia and the promotion of hatred, Mr. Kenney added.
The initial conference in 2001 included distribution of the Chronicles of the Elders of Zion, a fake text purporting to be a Jewish plan for global domination, portraits of Adolph Hitler, and expressions of hatred for Jews.
Members of the Canadian delegation to the first conference stayed to the end despite protests from Jewish groups but said they did so only to decry the attempts to de-legitimize the state of Israel. They issued a statement dissociating Canada from the final agreement.
“Despite the fact that the Durban declaration and its follow-up have served, frankly, to fuel bigotry, the General Assembly has chosen to repeat and even augment the mistakes of the past,” Mr. Kenney said.
The decision not to attend the conference, while not unexpected, marks another point of contention between Canada and the international organization it helped to found. Last month it lost a bid for a seat on the prestigious UN Security Council, a defeat that Prime Minister Harper has attributed to his government’s unwavering support for Israel.