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Anti-Racism Conference to Discuss Mideast, Slavery Issues
The 11-month cycle of violence in the Middle East and reparations for slavery will feature strongly during deliberations at the World Conference Against Racism to be held in Durban, the South African Non- Governmental Coalition said on Tuesday.
Coalition president Mercia Andrews, in her opening speech at the Non-Governmental Organization (NGO) Forum which preceded the conference, said in Durban that these issues would be discussed despite the United States' threats to boycott the conference if the subjects were not removed from the agenda.
"We will speak about Palestine, and we will speak about blockade in Cuba, about poverty, about globalization ...and we will also speak about reparations," Andrews said.
She said, for Africans and people of the world, reparations were not about focusing in the past but tackling underdevelopment in Africa and determine our own future".
The NGO Forum, she said, should come up with a declaration that does not only name the victim but also the perpetrator and "must develop a program of action which will help us deal with our problems appropriately."
About 7,000 delegates attending the NGO Forum will discuss a draft document which includes the "foreign occupation of Palestine " and equating racism with Zionism.
Also on Tuesday, the forum said in a document it recognized that the Palestine people were currently enduring a "colonialist, discriminatory military occupation that violates their fundamental right of self-determination".
The document further declared that Palestinians, under international law, had the right to resist such occupation by any means until they were set free.
"The basic root cause of the continued conflict in the Middle East is Israel's ongoing refusal to allow the Palestinian refugees to exercise their right as guaranteed by international law to return to their homes of origin," the document said.
However, the demand for putting the Palestine issue on the agenda of the anti-racism conference has led to threats from the United States government that it would not send Secretary of State Colin Powell to the conference scheduled to open on August 31.
The U.S. might shun the conference completely if it fails to soften anti-Israel language in the conference document.
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