An Unlikely Threesome On The World Stage

dublin | rights, freedoms and repression | other press Friday May 18, 2007 10:07 by John O'Shea - GOAL

The lunatics truly have taken over the asylum.

Last Friday Zimbabwe was elected to chair the United Nations Commission on Sustainable Development. This week the presidency of the Council of Europe will pass to Serbia. And later this month, Belarus is expected to join the United Nations Human Rights Council.

Zimbabwe's travails are well documented at this point: inflation at over 2,200 per cent, crops this year forecast to come in at less than 50 per cent of requirements and major civil, political and human rights violations perpetrated in the name of a government worthy of the worst dictators Africa has known.

Serbia is harbouring Ratko Mladic, the general responsible for the Sarajevo massacre, and has consistently refused to co-operate with the war crimes tribunal in the Hague in tracking him down. Serbia is the only country ever to have been judged by the International Court of Justice to have violated the convention on genocide. Apart from its rampant persecution of gays, it is also known for the murder and torture of political opponents.

Belarus, which Vaclav Havel has called the "last undemocratic regime in Europe", was criticised, only this year, by the UN general assembly for a litany of offences including failure to hold free and fair elections, harassment and detention of journalists and the government's implication in the "enforced disappearance or summary execution of opposition politicians".

Zimbabwe, whose regime is trying its best to squander what was once among the most enviable of economies in Africa, is now the head of the UN organisation whose slogan is "development that meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs". Serbia takes the reins of the organisation founded in 1949 by Winston Churchill for "the pursuit of peace based upon justice" and as for Belarus on the Human Rights Council, well, the name speaks for itself.

These bodies are the official representation of the international community. They pertain to represent you and me in the world. They tell us they are our voice.

The UN has shown itself to be a farce. That it can choose such vile governments to speak for us on the most fundamental issues of peace, development and human rights is inconceivable. The lunatics truly have taken over the asylum.