GENEVA, — Amid intense pressure and a flurry of letters sent from Arab and Islamic states, the South Korean president of the UN Human Rights Council, Choi Kyonglim, today cancelled his decision to postpone the appointment of a new monitor charged with investigating “Israel’s violations of the principles and bases of international law.”
Instead, the president today nominated Canadian academic Michael Lynk — despite global objections over Lynk’s leadership role in Palestinian campaign groups and his record of partisan and inflammatory statements on Israel — and declared that the labor lawyer from London, Ontario, was both impartial and objective.
The 47-nation plenary is slated to vote on the president’s proposal tomorrow. A UN Watch report two weeks ago documented the bias of the Arab states’ favored candidates, prompting outrage from the Palestinian ambassador in the plenary and in letters sent to the president.
“The UN’s selection of a manifestly partisan candidate — someone who three days after 9/11 blamed the West for provoking the attacks on the World Trade Center — constitutes a travesty of justice and a breach of the world body’s own rules,” said Hillel Neuer, executive director of UN Watch, a watchdog organization in Geneva whose work has been praised by top UN officials including former Secretary-General Kofi Annan.
“Someone who accuses Israel of ‘Apartheid’ and openly seeks to dismantle the Jewish state is neither impartial nor objective. We call on Germany, the UK, the Netherlands and all other Council members to uphold the Council's own basic principles and oppose Lynk’s nomination in tomorrow’s vote,” said Neuer.
On September 14, 2001, Lynk issued a statement blaming the attacks on “global inequalities” and “disregard by Western nations for the international rule of law.”
"One day after Islamists murdered and maimed hundreds in the heart of Europe, the UN's appointment of someone who instinctively blames such attacks on the alleged crimes of Western nations sends absolutely the worst message, at the worst time."
However, UN Watch welcomed the rejection of the radical left-wing UK professor Penny Green, the candidate who was ranked first by the Egyptian-led vetting committee, and who is closely associated with anti-Western ideologues Noam Chomsky and Richard Falk. "Green was even more inflammatory than Lynk, and her letter to the president seeking to refute UN Watch's report was a complete failure," said Neuer.
