EU draft refuses to condemn Qaddafi

EU draft refuses to condemn Qaddafi
or eject regime from UN rights council

GENEVA, February 23, 2010 - UN Watch, which spearheaded this week’s successful appeal by 70 human rights groups for an urgent UN Human Rights Council session on Libya, expressed disappointment with a draft resolution circulated today by the EU (see draft text below) in advance of Friday’s meeting.

“We appreciate that the EU incorporated our requests for an international investigation and for keeping the issue on the council’s agenda in the upcoming March and June sessions. Yet the draft unacceptably falls short of condemning Moammar Qaddafi, and fails to call for Libya’s removal from the council,” said Hillel Neuer, executive director of UN Watch, a Geneva-based human rights group.
"We urge EU foreign minister Catherine Ashton, as well as the leaders of France, Germany and the UK, to exercise moral leadership and remedy these glaring omissions.”

“First, the moral outrage of Libya’s membership on the world’s top human rights body must end immediately. World public opinion will no longer tolerate this. Even the Arab League ejected Libya. The council must take action under Article 8 of its founding charter and issue a finding that Libya is committing gross and systematic violations of human rights, and call for the regime to be suspended by the General Assembly,” said Neuer. “With bodies piling up on the streets of Libya, the EU and the international community must not stay silent on this pernicious moral hypocrisy.”

“Second, the EU must explain why its draft -- breaking with council practice on condemnatory resolutions --studiously avoids naming the Libyan government or its leader as the perpetrators of the ongoing atrocities. Make no mistake: this resolution makes no condemnation of Moammar Qaddafi. Instead, the EU offers deliberately vague condemations of violations committed ‘in Libya’, or calls for Libyan authorities to stop 'any violations,' falsely implying that someone other than Qaddafi's regime may be responsible for the atrocities. Yet the helicopter gunships, soldiers and mercenaries firing on civilians are all under the command of the Qaddafi regime. Now is the time for moral clarity, not diplomatic obfuscation.”

ENDS

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