The U.N. and Double Standards

by Joseph Klein

The United Nations Human Rights Council heard an update on September 15th from the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, Navi Pillay, on what she regarded as the salient human rights issues of the day. Mentioned were the recent “marred” election in Afghanistan and her claim – shared by the United Nations General Assembly, Secretary General Ban Ki-moon and the Obama Administration – that “constitutional order had been subverted and democratic space undermined” in Honduras. But somehow the fraudulent presidential election in Iran, and the murder and rape of political dissidents that followed, escaped the Human Rights Commissioner’s attention.

Shortly before Pillay addressed the Human Rights Council, the Council’s president upheld the barring of the Permanent Representative of Honduras in Geneva from participating in the Human Rights Council sessions, as is the right of every UN member state, because he was not the “accredited representative of President Zelaya’s Government”. The fact that Manuel Zelaya had been replaced by the current interim president pursuant to Honduras’ constitutional processes and with the full support of its elected legislative body and its civilian high court, was completely ignored. The United States has sided with the opponents of Honduras’ constitutional processes and in support of Zelaya, who had tried to pull a trick out of Venezuelan strongman Hugo Chavez’s playbook and end-run the Honduras constitution in order to give himself another term in office.

Meanwhile, Iran’s illegitimate government was not challenged...

Read the whole article.