Africana Plus
No46 September 2001.4
South Africa
World Conference against racism,
racial discrimination, xenophobia and intolerance
"On 16 May the Algerian
National Assembly approved additions to the penal code which
increased the penalties for defamation in the press and condemned
subversive sermons preached in the mosques by imams. The vote was
taken amid uproar, and the press gave wide coverage to what it
called the suppression of freedom."
This is just one piece of news
from Africa reflecting intolerance and discrimination as daily
realities. Here is another item from Europe. Speaking in the name
of the European Community, the Swedish Prime Minister, Mr Persson,.
recognized the growth of racism and intolerance in Europe, and
uttered a word of warning: "We must be ready to deal with
despair, for if we are not other forces will take over."
And then something nearer home:
"Quebec society behaves
like a community under siege," says Jesus Jimenez Orte,
president of the executive committee of the League for the Rights
and Liberties of Quebec. "It sees itself as a minority
community and wants to justify itself. It does not reject other
cultural communities, but it are not ready for their part to make
a corresponding sacrifice. Quebec society, we may say, is quite
tolerant, but this does not prevent it from making strong
statements about what is and what is not tolerable."
Intolerance is everywhere in the
world. No doubt there are different degrees of intensity and
violence, but the ban on all discrimination based on race is a
basic principle of the United Nations. Several juridical
documents, notably the 1948 Declaration on Human Rights, speak
explicitly about racial discrimination. Yet in spite of all these
international efforts, the phenomenon remains. In 1997 the
General Assembly of the United Nations decided to convoke, in
2001 at the latest, a World Conference against racism, racial
discrimination, and xenophobia, and the intolerance associated
with these things. This decision reflects a growing uneasiness in
the international community concerning the growth of these
dangerous attitudes, and a consciousness of what is at stake as
the human family seeks to counteract them.
The Conference is being
organized by the UN High Commission for Human Rights, based in
Geneva, and it is due to take place in Durban, South Africa, from
31 August to 7 September 2001. Mary Robinson, High Commissioner
of the United Nations, has been appointed Secretary General of
the Conference. The preparatory committee, which has been given
the task of formulating a provisional declaration and programme
for the Conference, has chosen as its motto: "United against
racism: Equality, Justice, Dignity". Five major themes for
reflection and action have been identified by this preparatory
committee:
- The origins, causes, forms and
contemporary manifestations of racism, racial discrimination,
xenophobia and associated intolerance;
- The victims of racism and
racial discrimination;
- Preventive measures, including
education and protection, aimed at eradicating racism at national,
regional and international levels;
- Remedies and resources
available for combating racism at the national, regional and
international levels;
- Strategies which will lead to
effective and complete equality, including international co-operation
and the improvement of international mechanisms, among them the
United Nations, for combatting racism.
In December 1999 Mrs Robinson
chose seven internationally-respected personalities as "prime
ambassadors of good will" to the Conference, drawn from
literature, music and the defence of human rights. Among them are
the Nobel prizewinners for literature, Seamus Heaney from Ireland
and Wole Soyinka from Nigeria; the Panamanian musician and actor,
Ruben Blades; the Moroccan writer, Tahar Ben Jelloun; the Indian
musician Ravi Shankar; the former President of Iceland, Vigdis
Finnbogadottir; and Marian Wright Edeleman, from the United
States, defender of children's rights. Mrs Robinson considers
that the commitment of these eminent persons to mutual tolerance
between persons and communities is what the international
community needs as it prepares to confront one of humanity's most
insidious and persistent evils, racism, xenophobia and all other
forms of intolerance.
The first duty of the United
Nations is to promote and maintain peace in the world. It was the
essential aim of the founders of the Organization and it remains
no less essential today.
Its second task is to promote
development. Up till today, a substantial portion of the human
race lives in conditions of misery which are an affront to human
dignity. Poverty is at the root of many evils, including war, the
degradation of the environment and natural catastrophes like
epidemics. Africa is the principal victim of most of these
miseries, and the consequent needs of that continent deserve
special attention.
Kupelesa Ilunga, a Congolese
Jesuit from Kinshasa, said this about the events in Central
Africa: "Intolerance has let loose a vicious spirit of
aggression which finds expression in the barbaric acts of a
culture of death. Among us aggression hides behind what it calls
rebellion against a policy of exclusion and turns into a kind of
puppet theatre. It is hard to understand the logic of a policy
which maintains that to preserve your frontiers you have to
attack your neighbours. None of our countries seeks to defend
itself in the first place by negotiation. We allow peace, justice,
tolerance and prosperity to collapse, and promote everything
which leads to intolerance, trouble, desolation."
The third duty of the United
Nations is to promote human rights, and this too is evidently a
continuing struggle.. We have only to think in the first place of
the right to life, so often endangered.
The fourth task of the
Organization is to guarantee the equality of all its members.
Those individuals who practise discrimination violate the
fundamental equality of all human persons, based on this common
dignity.
The first article of the 1948
Universal Declaration on Human Rights states:"All men are
born free and equal in rights and dignity. They enjoy reason and
conscience, and must act towards each other in a spirit of
fraternity." The Second Vatican Council declared in its
Constitution on The Church in the Modern World: "All men are
endowed with a rational soul and are created in God's image; they
have the same nature and origin and, being redeemed by Christ,
they enjoy the same divine calling and destiny; there is here a
basic equality between all men and it must be given ever greater
recognition." (No 29)
Pope John Paul II has expressed
his support for the forthcoming World Conference in South Africa.
He wishes to encourage all initiatives to prevent the
dissemination of racism and intolerance.
As mentioned above, intolerance
and discrimination are on the increase. They affect the whole
spectrum of the fundamental rights of persons and communities,
but they harm especially the weak, whether this weakness is
physical, social, cultural, political, ethnic, religious.
All these forms of
discrimination have clearly a common root, a prejudice in favour
of one's own superiority. It is this prejudice which underlies
and strengthens a whole host of motivations and interests which
may often be regarded as good and honest. It is here that we see
both the necessity and the difficulty of education to tolerance
and respect, to be imparted by family, school and state.
Sometimes the word "tolerance"
has negative overtones of a condescending paternalism. The one
who tolerates has then a privileged position over those whom he
or she tolerates. This understanding of the nature of tolerance
is in fact destructive of genuine tolerance, which has nothing to
do with condescension but is concerned wholly with the
fundamental rights mentioned above. Whatever offends these rights
is felt as intolerable to the dignity of the human person,
whatever be the cultural pretext.
To be tolerant, finally, means
to respect the other. It is the knowledge and acceptance of the
other in his difference which give us the wisdom which is
tolerance.
We may compare human beings to
flowers. These would soon lose their charm if they all had the
same colour and the same smell. Yet the diversity which enchants
us when we are considering flowers irritates us when we are
dealing with human beings. Anyone who thinks differently from me
is displeasing to me. You think blue, I think red, and so we are
enemies. You are for authority and I am for freedom, and that is
enough for us to stop respecting each other. I am a sinner
because I am not the same as you. So we separate, we become
enemies.
Hence arises intolerance, the
conviction that one has the monopoly of truth and rationality.
Pride and stupidity are twins, and they are the true progenitors
of the wars of intolerance which have disfigured the whole of
human history. And yet all the fighting and the struggle has not
liberated us from those diseases of the soul. We can be cured
only when we accept that we are not self-sufficient.
Jesus told us to love our
enemies and to pray for those who persecute us. Only then will we
become children of our Heavenly Father who makes his sun to rise
equally on the virtuous and the wicked, and causes the rain to
fall on good and bad alike. (Matt. 5, 44-45)
So you can be the rose and I
shall be the lily. Let us both blossom in the lavish flower-bed
where the same Gardener has planted us and where he gives us day
after day our portion of water and light.
Michel Fortin, M. Afr.
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