Take Action: Urge Swiss to Cancel UN Nomination of Jean Ziegler

Another human rights fraud is about to be elected to the UN Human Rights Council. Via UN Watch:

Stop Jean Ziegler Before March 26, 2008

Who is Jean Ziegler?

This supporter of dictators is assured election to the UN Human Rights Council -- unless Switzerland is persuaded to withdraw his nomination.

First, watch this compelling video.

UN Watch has learned that on next Wednesday, March 26, 2008, the United Nations is expected to elect Jean Ziegler—founder of the "Muammar Khaddafi Human Rights Prize"—as one of only three Western advisory experts on the Human Rights Council. As the darling of the council's ruling Arab and Third World blocs, Ziegler's election is virtually assured.

Unless his sponsor changes course.

Ziegler enjoys close ties with Foreign Minister Micheline Calmy-Rey, and according to a report this week from the Human Rights Tribune, Swiss diplomats are engaged in an intense lobbying and vote-trading campaign to elect Ziegler, whom they nominated in November. Only the Swiss withdrawal of their nomination will prevent Ziegler from being elected.

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New video documents how Jean Ziegler served as an apologist for repressive rulers like Colonel Khaddafi and Fidel Castro.

Analysis:

Astonishing to believe — but at the UN, too often, not too astonishing for it not to happen. Jean Ziegler has a long history of supporting unsavory rulers and regimes, including some of the world's worst human rights violators. As UN hunger expert for the past 7 years, he ignored regions with the most severe food crises, and instead devoted his time to anti-Western polemics.

• Apologist for some of the worst human rights criminals of our time.
• After Fidel Castro imprisoned 70 journalists, Ziegler proclaimed "total support for the Cuban revolution." During an official visit to the Communist island in October, Ziegler hailed the virtues of Castro regime even while he refused to meet Cuban dissidents.
• "...Ziegler went to Hanoi during the '80s, where he heaped praise upon General Vo Nguyen Giap and Ho Chi Minh. Indeed, it would be hard to find an intellectual more stained by collaboration with evil regimes in the 20th century than Mr. Ziegler ." (Jan Marejko, "Che Guevara Lives at the UN," August 2002.)
• Served Ethiopian dictator Mengistu — who used famine as a weapon to kill thousands — by helping draft one-party constitution.
• Abused UN food mandate. As UN special rapporteur on the right to food for the past seven years, Mr. Ziegler ignored many of the world’s most starving populations, instead focusing attention on his personal political agenda. As documented in the UN Watch report “Blind to Burundi,” during 2000 to 2004, Mr. Ziegler systematically failed to speak out for numerous food emergencies, in Burundi, the Central African Republic, Sierra Leone and elsewhere.
• In 2002 he praised the Zimbabwean dictator, saying, “Mugabe has history and morality with him.” He paid visits to Saddam Hussein in Iraq and Kim Il-Sung in North Korea.
• In 2006, during an interview in Lebanon, Mr. Ziegler said, “I refuse to describe Hezbollah as a terrorist organization. It is a national resistance movement. I can understand Hezbollah when they kidnap soldiers...”

In 1989, four months after Libyan bombing of Pan Am Flight 103, Jean Ziegler establishes "Khaddafi Human Rights Prize," in collaboration with Libyan dictator.

In 2002, prize is awarded to French Holocaust denier Roger Garaudy—and to Jean Ziegler himself. Ziegler goes to Libya to attend ceremony, but claims he went for "unspecified UN business."

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