AdHoc Cmte: Pakistani Submission
Outline for the Ad Hoc Committee on Complementary Standards Consultations
An additional mechanism, the Ad Hoc Committee on Complementary Standards was created by the Human Rights Council in 2006 to fill gaps in CERD, and to provide new normative standards aimed at combating all forms of contemporary aspects of racism.
The committee's mission is to write new international legislation to criminalize criticism of Islam. They solicited suggestions from the member nations to get the process started.
Pakistan's submission to the committee begins on page 39 and ends on page 41. Since Pakistan acts as the representative of the Organization of the Islamic Conference, there is an emphasis on protecting Islam from criticism. It refers to Human Rights Council decision 3/103, which created the committee, and to ICERD.
The submission lists several "Action Points", the following items are from that list. [Emphasis added.]
- further defining the existence of link between an act of incitement and the likelihood of a violation, or the threshold required for reaching such a determinant consistent and uniform application and maximize protection for actual or potential victims.
- development of new internationally binding normative standards in the area of racism, racial discrimination, xenophobia and related intolerance while incorporating the following contemporary issues;
- defamation of religions, religious personalities, holy books, scriptures and symbols,
- provocative portrayals of objects of religious veneration as a malicious ` violation of the spirit of tolerance,
- prohibition of publication of material with the aim of protecting the rights of others and against seriously or gratuitously offensive attacks on matters regarded as sacred by the followers of any religion,
- racio-religious profiling,intolerance and discrimination,
- incitement to religious hatred, discrimination and violence,
- abuse of the right to freedom of expression in the context of racio-religious profiling, negative or insulting stereotyping, incitement to
hatred and violence, - Islamophobia, xenophobia, and ideological racism,
- new instrument should provide for;
- mandatory prohibition by law to- eliminate racio-religious profiling or profiling based on any grounds of discrimination recognized under
international human rights law with provisions for legal action against perpetrators, as well as legal guarantees to remedy and reparation for victims, - legal restrictions on the dissemination or distribution or production, in public or otherwise, of all ideas in any farm based upon racial and religious superiority or hatred and incitement to hatred, and violence,including by use of modern information and communication technologies,
- legal prohibition of publication of material that negatively stereotypes, insults, or uses offensive language cm matters regarded by followers of any religion or belief as sacred or inherent to their dignity as human beings, with the aim or protecting their fundamental human rights,
- legal restriction to public insults and defamation, public incitement to violence, threat against a person or a grouping of persons
on me grounds of their race, color, language, religion, nationality, or national or ethnic origin,
They imply that the Danish Cartoons, which portray Muhammad as a terrorist, which, by his own admission he was, constitutes defamation of religion. They imply that Fitna, which juxtaposes Allah's Jihad imperatives in the Qur'an with Islamic violence, constitutes defamation of religion. They demand that all such expressions be criminalized.
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