[kirklancaster]

Zeid Ra'ad Al Hussein is one of the few political statesmen who I truly revere. He is honest, sincere and genuinely impartial and equitable. Here is an excerpt from his opening statement in Geneva. READ IT:

Opening Statement by Zeid Ra'ad Al Hussein United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights at the Human Rights Council 27th Session

Geneva, 8 September, 2014

"Here I would like to make a simple point: courage is the first human virtue, revered the world over, the very virtue we value the most as human beings. The courageous individual is not he or she who wields great political power or points a gun at those who do not – that is not courage. The courageous individual is he or she who has nothing to wield but common sense, reason and the law, and is prepared to forfeit future, family, friends and even life in defence of others, or to end injustice. In its most magnificent form, the courageous individual undertakes this exertion, without ever threatening or taking the life of someone else, and certainly not someone defenceless.

As the Viennese thinker Stefan Zweig wrote, after having lived through one world war and fled another, "Our greatest debt of gratitude is to those who in these inhuman times confirm the human in us." Human rights defenders are such courageous people, and we must do everything we can to protect them, and celebrate them. The UN is often slow to recognise this. Captain Mbaye Diagne of Senegal was probably the most courageous man who ever served with the UN, but until recently was never recognized by the UN headquarters for his sacrifice. He saved possibly a thousand people in Rwanda in the spring of 1994, and lost his life doing so, and never hurt anybody.

By contrast, the Takfiris who recently murdered James Foley and hundreds of other defenceless victims in Iraq and Syria – do they believe they are acting courageously? Barbarically slaughtering captives? What virtue are they demonstrating exactly? They reveal only what a Takfiri state would look like, should this movement actually try to govern in the future. It would be a harsh, mean-spirited, house of blood, where no shade would be offered, nor shelter given, to any non-Takfiri in their midst. In the Takfiri world, unless your view is identical to theirs – and theirs is extremely narrow and unyielding - you forfeit your right to life. In the Takfiri mind, as we have seen in Nigeria, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Yemen, Kenya, Somalia, Mali, Libya, Syria and Iraq, and throughout the world where they have attacked innocent people, including on 9/11, there is no love of neighbour -- only annihilation to those Muslims, Christians, Jews and others (altogether the rest of humanity) who believe differently to them."