SIMON WIESENTHAL CENTRE - EUROPE
66 rue Laugier - 75017 Paris
Tel. +33-147237637 - Fax: +33-147208401
e-mail: csweurope@gmail.com

Wiesenthal Centre to Geneva City Mayor: "Deny Funding for Durban Hatefest Repetition in Your City"

In a letter to Geneva Mayor, Manuel Tornare, the Simon Wiesenthal Centre's Director for International Relations, Dr Shimon Samuels, noted that the Centre "has just learned that the Green Party ('Les Verts') has presented a motion to the Geneva City Council to fund an NGO Forum for the Durban Review Conference, to take place in April 2009 at the United Nations in your city."

The letter continued, "As the only Jew elected to that NGO Forum of the Durban United Nations World Conference against Racism (WCAR) in 2001, I was gagged, taunted as the 'World Jew' and finally physically expelled. The documents proposed by that NGO Forum were rejected by then UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, Mary Robinson, due to their antisemitic and racist content."

Samuels explained that last month, he "participated in a planning meeting at the Palais des Nations, for the 2009 repeat NGO Forum. The Chair announced that only NGOs that were at Durban and that accepted its documents in their entirety, could participate in next year's Coordinating Committee. When [Samuels] deigned to ask if the Chair was referring to the NGO Forum documents or those of the WCAR, his response was ambiguous. In the presence of many witnesses and recorded on the Magenta website (see www.icare.to/livereport and scroll down to "editorial October 16"), [Samuels] was then unambiguously threatened."

The Centre urged the Mayor "to refuse any Motion for funding or granting hospitality to a group that may well include political agitators bent on holding a replica of the Durban hatefest."

"To do otherwise would make the City of Geneva indirectly complicit in any consequent incitement to hatred and provocation to violence. At the same time, we draw your attention to the overriding need to provide all Jewish institutions in Geneva with adequate protection during the period of any NGO Forum and of the inter-governmental Durban Review Conference," concluded Samuels.

For further information, please contact Shimon Samuels at +33.609.77.01.58.