Bill Carmichael: Libyan rights and wrongs

THE United Nations general assembly voted earlier this week to suspend Libya from the Geneva-based UN Human Rights Council.

Hurrah! Break out the bunting; crack open the Champagne! But hold on a minute. Doesn’t this development, welcome though it is, prompt a very important question – what the hell was Libya doing on the UNHRC in the first place?

Even Muammar Gaddafi’s staunchest supporters in the West – and up until very recently there were a lot of them – couldn’t possibly mention Libya and human rights in the same sentence without blushing for shame. The Lockerbie bombing, the murder of WPC Yvonne Fletcher, the sponsorship of vile terror organisations such as the IRA and the PLO – Libya has done more than most countries to destroy human rights around the globe.

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So how did it find itself promoted to the UN’s top human rights body?

The short answer is that it was voted on. Last May, 155 out of 192 countries eligible to vote cast their ballot in favour of Libya’s blood-soaked dictator, and followed that up with nauseating praise for Gaddafi’s commitment to liberty and democracy.

Of course, with Gaddafi now in the midst of a civil war, all his former friends and allies have abandoned him and are scrambling to reposition themselves on the right side of history. The vote to suspend Libya this week was unanimous. If it wasn’t so pathetic, it would be funny.

Just out of interest, I visited the UNHRC’s website this week to see what other paragons of democratic virtue have been voted on as members. Pakistan, Bangladesh, Russia, China, Cuba, Jordan, Kyrgyzstan, Nigeria, Qatar and Saudi Arabia have all been given the nod. None of these countries would recognise a human right if it hit them on the head. Is it any wonder that both the UN and the UNHRC have precisely zero credibility in world affairs.

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I’ve put the Champagne back on ice, but I’m ready to pop the cork when these useless, corrupt and deeply racist organisations finally get what they deserve – abolition.

Another Euro-lie

When the Lisbon Treaty was signed in 2009, we were assured that there was no reason to have the referendum we’d been promised by the Labour government because this was a simply a “tidying up” exercise that wouldn’t make any difference to people’s lives. We now know that this was yet another big, fat Euro-lie.

This week unelected, unaccountable judges at the European Court of Justice used a clause in the Lisbon Treaty to ban insurance companies from assessing risk on the basis of gender. The result of this is that young women drivers face huge increases in the cost of insurance and older retired men will see big drops in pension payments. The total cost to the UK is estimated at almost £1bn. So much for it having no impact on people’s lives!

It should be for insurance companies, operating in highly competitive markets, to assess the risk and set the premiums based on hard statistical evidence. If consumers don’t like the price on offer they can always shop elsewhere. It is not for judges, governments or the EU to dictate the prices that a private company charges for its goods or services.

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But there is a wider issue at play here. We already seen the UK’s power on important issues such as controlling terror suspects and giving votes to prisoners given up to judges at the entirely separate European Court of Human Rights.

Now EU judges are getting in on the act and telling us what to do, without even consulting our elected representatives.

Isn’t about time that our national Parliament actually did its job and reasserted our commitment to democracy?

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