SWC URGES MAJOR ISLAMIC ORGANIZATION TO PUSH UN TO DECLARE SUICIDE TERROR-CRIME AGAINST HUMANITY

December 14, 2009

WIESENTHAL CENTER URGES MAJOR ISLAMIC ORGANIZATION TO PUSH UN TO DECLARE SUICIDE TERROR-CRIME AGAINST HUMANITY

As Muslim-on-Muslim carnage mounts, 56-member OIC urged to “demand legal action against the food chain of terrorism”

Following a series of suicide bomb attacks that killed 127 and wounded 448 in Baghdad in a single day last week and as attacks surge elsewhere in Iraq as well as Pakistan, the Simon Wiesenthal Center is urging the Organization of the Islamic Conference (OIC) to take action at the United Nations to put an end to what it has called “the scourge of the 21st Century.”

“We didn't get very far back then when headlines involving suicide bombings were from Bali or Haifa,” wrote Rabbi Abraham Cooper, associate dean of the Wiesenthal Center, in a letter to Ambassador Abdul Wahad, the OIC’s representative in the UN. “But suicide terror primarily spawns Muslim on Muslim carnage-- from weddings in Amman to religious shrines and Mosques, from Saudi Arabia to Pakistan and beyond,” he continued.

In his letter, Rabbi Cooper cited an Associated Press story in which a survivor of last week’s bombing was quoted as saying, “What crime have we committed? Children and women were buried under debris.”

In 2005, the Wiesenthal Center launched a campaign to have all suicide bombings declared ‘crimes against humanity’- no matter what the cause or target. Should this declaration be ratified in the UN, survivors and families of victims would be given the power of international law to bring anyone-- including non-state players-- who plan, fund and promote suicide terror before the bar of justice. Rabbi Cooper noted in his letter that the Center has gained support in the worlds of international diplomacy and multifaith relations, from the late Pope John Paul II to the then-Turkish Foreign Minister Abdullah Gul, and he now urged the 56-member state OIC to “…take up this initiative at the United Nations in order to demand legal action against the food chain of terrorism before future suicide terrorists are able, G-d forbid, to activate WMDs at a football match or Eid celebration.”

Last month, Rabbi Cooper traveled to Mumbai, India to join a coalition of Muslim, Hindu and Christian leaders to commemorate the first anniversary of the horrific 26/11 attacks that killed over 170 people and wounded hundreds and to forge multifaith coalitions to publicly denounce acts by extremists who use religion to recruit young people into what Cooper calls “a culture of death.”

“I hope the OIC will take the lead in confronting and helping to thwart this scourge,” Cooper concluded.

The Simon Wiesenthal Center is one of the largest international Jewish human rights organizations with over 400,000 member families in the United States. It is an NGO at international agencies including the United Nations, UNESCO, the OSCE, the OAS, the Council of Europe and the Latin American Parliament (Parlatino).

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