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Email sent to the United Nations
This is the text of an email sent on April 4th, 2007
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To: Ms Asma Jahangir, Special Rapporteur on religious freedom or belief
On behalf of Derbyshire Secularists and Humanists I wish to protest most strongly about the UN Human Rights Council Resolution on Combating Defamation of Religions (A/HRC/4/L.12) of March, 2007.
www.ohchr.org/english/press/hrc/index.htm
Our concerns are:
- The resolution fails to differentiate between religious ideas and people who hold religious ideas.
Religions are a matter of intellectual choice - there is no gene for Christianity, Islam, Hinduism etc. All intellectual choices must be justified and may be open to challenge and sometimes ridicule.
- The resolution fails to deal with discrimination carried out in the name of religion.
People should not be discriminated against because of matters over which they have no control: colour, race, gender, sexuality, disability etc.
However, religions continue to discriminate on these matters, particularly gender and sexuality, and some of them advocate death for those who no not lead their lives according to the dictates of religion.
Those of us with no psychological or social need for gods or religions have been discriminated against, persecuted and killed for hundreds of years by those with religious ideas.
- The resolution fails to deal fairly with those whose belief systems do not require belief in a supernatural god.
The correct term should be "belief systems" and the UN has gone part way to this by sometimes talking about "religions and beliefs".
Those of us who have no need for gods or religions continue to be discriminated against throughout the world yet the UN fails to speak on our behalf.
- The resolution fails to deal with the issue of religious censorship.
Artists, authors, playwrights, film-makers and others, world-wide, live in fear of their lives because of the censorship imposed by religion.
Art has always criticised and ridiculed the status quo and strong, secure ideas have no fear of criticism but the resolution gives carte blanche to those who wish to describe any criticism as "defamation" (the resolution fails to define "defamation").
Not only can we not criticise and mock Islam, we find that our criticism of the government of Israel can now be construed as "anti-semitism" or "defamation" of Judaism - despite large number of Jewish people not being Judaists!
This is a disgrace and brings the United Nations into disrepute.
Your sincerely
....
Derbyshire Secularists and Humanists
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Response received
The Special Rapporteur responded within 24 hours on April 5th and offered an opportunity to meet during her visit to the UK in June. The response was very favourable and included two very interesting lines:
"the Human Rights Committee reiterated that article 18 of the ICCPR 'protects theistic, non-theistic and atheistic beliefs, as well as the right not to profess any religion or belief'"
and
"The right to freedom of religion or belief protects primarily the individual and, to some extent, the collective rights of the community concerned but it does not protect religions or beliefs per se."
Getting a positive response from the UN in Geneva seems to be easier and faster than getting it from our own government!
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