That's fucking stupid

Once again, we appear to be living by the standard that those who shout the loudest wield the most influence.

There is man employed by the UN to, in a nutshell, safeguard the freedom of speech of people all over the world. He monitors, investigates and recommends solutions to specific human rights problems. He’s called a Rapporteur.
60 years ago, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights was written, and emphasised that “a world in which human beings shall enjoy freedom of speech and belief is the highest aspiration of the common people”.

What this boils down to is that everyone has the fundamental right to speak freely about their beliefs. That everyone has the right to agree or disagree with someone else’s beliefs, and to call those beliefs into question when they clash with pesky little things like basic human rights.
This of course isn’t good enough for the shouty-shouty Islamists in Saudi Arabia, Pakistan and Egypt, who have somehow come to the conclusion that the Declaration is “disrespectful” of religion because it won’t let them torture, intimidate and kill the people they govern. Consequently, they have demanded that the Declaration be rewritten to account for the “unique sensitivities” of religion. Which effectively bans anyone from raising an issue that involves Islamist beliefs and laws.
I’m sorry, what?
We are talking about representatives of 3 states with the worst human rights abuses in the developed world. We are talking about the Egyptian representative refusing to discuss the stoning of women accused of being unfaithful, and refusing to discuss child marriage on the basis that he would not see Islam “crucified” by the council, stating that these sorts of things are within the boundaries of shariah law and consequently untouchable to the infidel West. Allah forbid we ask the followers of Islam to please stop torturing people. How disrespectful of us, eh?

We are also talking about anti-Musharraf judges, lawyers and human rights activists in Pakistan being rounded up wholesale and arrested for peacefully voicing their beliefs, and an authority that has banned the establishment of independent judiciaries.

We are talking about Saudi Arabia and its proclivity to issue Capital Punishment without undue process, which still amputates the hands or feet of those accused of robbery, which still practices beheading as a “humane” method of punishment and which routinely denies that human rights abuses take place at all.

And the worst part of all of this?

The UN complied with their demands to rewrite the Rapporteur’s job spec to include not only naming and shaming human rights abusers – such as Egypt, Pakistan and Saudi Arabia – but also to investigate and put a stop to the “defamation of religions and prophets”. And so he protects our rights and freedoms with one hand and takes them away with the other to appease an angry and abusive faction of religious hotheads who are terrified of their citizens thinking for themselves.

Every time the UN rolls over for these abusers is another chip away from the faith we ordinary mortals have placed in it. Every concession granted to these fanatics who play the religion card to get their own way is an erosion of the principals on which the UN was founded. Every time nobody stands up to these evil and heartless men, they get away with murder – literally. And every time we step on eggshells for fear of offending these poor, defenceless tyrants, we allow them to keep pushing us further and further away from the ideals that make the UN such a powerful force for good.
In addition, every day that countries like Britain and the USA support the governments of these and other notoriously tyrannical nations is another day they make a mockery of themselves, their politics and us. They are getting away with demanding that their laws – because they are an integral part of their religion – become unquestionable, infallible and untouchable.
If that’s the case, then they don’t belong in the UN, in any form of governmental agreement with Britain or in the civilised world.