The slow death of freedom of expression

The United Nations Human Rights Council today passed a resolution aimed at restricting criticism of religion, or ‘religious defamation’. Roy W Brown examines why the UN is putting protection of ideas above freedom of expression.

Slowly but inexorably the shutters are coming down on what history will surely recall as one of the high-points of human civilisation: the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. The first shot was fired by Ayatollah Khomeini shortly after he came to power in the Iranian Revolution of 1979, when he said: ‘When we want to know about human rights we do not go to the UN, we go to the Holy Quran.’

Since then, Islamic states and their allies have been slowly whittling away at the Universal Declaration and its counterpart in international law, the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR). [Index on Censorship] Read more