Tag: Hillary Clinton

  • Hillary Clinton’s Turkey visit: Iran, Syria top agenda

    Hillary Clinton’s Turkey visit: Iran, Syria top agenda

    US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton leaves next week on an eight-day trip to Scandinavia, the Caucasus and Turkey that will cover security issues such as Iran and Syria as well as the environment and health.

    HillaryClinton AP 24May1Clinton will begin her trip May 31 and ends it in Istanbul on June 7, speaking at a counterterrorism forum and holding talks with Turkish officials on Syria, where President Bashar Assad is seeking to crush an uprising against his rule, and Iran, whose nuclear program the United States suspects is designed to develop atomic weapons.

    Iran, which says its program is for civilian purposes, held a second round of talks with major powers in Baghdad this week and the two sides are due to meet again in Moscow on June 18-19.

    AP

    At least 50 people, including 13 children, were killed when Syrian forces attacked the town of Houla in Homs province on Friday, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights and activists said.

    Activists said clashes erupted in the town when Syrian forces opened fire on a protest against the rule of President Bashar Assad and killed one protester.

    “The soldiers are shelling Houla right now, the casualties are huge,” said activist Ahmad Kassem. He said opposition fighters fired back, inflicting casualties on the soldiers and destroying five tanks. Houla is a cluster of four villages and towns north of Homs.

    Also Friday, international peace mediator Kofi Annan announced he will visit Syria “soon” in what would be the former UN Secretary-General’s first visit since he presented his peace plan to Syria’s government in early March.

    Ahmad Fawzi, Annan’s spokesman, declined to give details or specify the date, citing security reasons. Fawzi has repeatedly said that Annan, whose six-week-old ceasefire plan has failed to stop the violence in Syria, would travel to the country when the time was right.

    UN envoys said on Thursday that Annan may travel to Syria before the end of the month.

    Annan’s six-point peace plan called for a truce, withdrawal of troops and heavy weapons from cities, deployment of the monitoring force, and dialogue between the government and opposition aimed at a Syrian-led “political transition.”

    “Clearly it’s an important part of this undertaking to have direct talks with the Syrian authorities and the Syrian opposition,” UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon’s spokesman Martin Nesirky told reporters in New York on Friday.

    “This is done in different ways at different times and it is coming to the time when it’s appropriate for the joint special envoy to engage directly and personally with the Syrian authorities and with the opposition in situ,” he said.

    The United Nations is nearing full deployment of a 300-member unarmed UN observer force in Syria that is charged with monitoring any cease-fire resulting from the plan. The force has had close calls with recent bomb attacks but has not lost any observers.

    The United Nations and Annan will report to the UN Security Council on Wednesday about the situation in Syria. The 90-day mandate for the UN observer force, known as UNSMIS, expires in July.

    Nesirky said there was a fear that a third force or element was “at play in Syria and that this undoubtedly complicates the task for the monitors and the international community in seeking to ensure that the six-point plan is fully implemented.”

    “There’s no hard evidence on specific groups,” he said. “It’s obvious that some of the attacks that have been seen are of the kind and nature that suggests that there is behind them a force or element with the organizational capacity and political intent to carry out violence on that scale.”

    Ban has said he believes al-Qaida was responsible for two suicide car bombs that killed at least 55 people in Syria this month and that the death toll in the country’s 14-month conflict was now at least 10,000.

    Syria has maintained all along that it is facing a “terrorist” conspiracy funded and directed from abroad, not least by resource-rich Gulf monarchies Saudi Arabia and Qatar, which have called for arming the fighters aiming to oust President Bashar Assad.

    Syria this month sent the United Nations the names of 26 foreign nationals it said had been arrested after coming to fight in Syria. It described 20 of those as members of al-Qaida who had entered the country from Turkey.

    Reuters

    via Hillary Clinton’s Turkey visit: Iran, Syria top agenda | Firstpost.

  • AFP: Clinton to attend Syria talks in Turkey

    AFP: Clinton to attend Syria talks in Turkey

    WASHINGTON — US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton will attend the next “Friends of Syria” talks in Turkey, an official said Thursday, amid efforts to end the Syrian regime’s bloody year-old crackdown.

    hillary clinton

    Clinton will join the April 1 talks in Istanbul after she took part in the first such meeting in Tunis last month that drew 60 countries, including Turkey, Arab states and western powers, spokeswoman Victoria Nuland said.

    Nuland told reporters the new meeting will build on efforts in Tunis to end the violence, enable the delivery of humanitarian aid and launch a political process aimed at replacing President Bashar al-Assad.

    The State Department spokeswoman noted that United Nations-Arab League envoy Kofi Annan’s own six-point plan support such an approach.

    “So we look forward to the agenda that the Turkish government will establish to deepen and broaden the consensus about the way forward, and we expect that the UN will also be represented in those meetings,” she said.

    The so-called “friends of Syria” will meet to discuss ways to help the Syrian opposition and stop the Assad’s regime’s violent crackdown, which has killed 9,000 people in a year of unrest, according to monitors.

    In Vienna, Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu of Turkey, a former ally of the Assad regime, said an international action plan is needed to stop the “human tragedy” in Syria, saying that repeating a common world message was not enough.

    On Wednesday, the UN Security Council demanded that Syria immediately implement Annan’s peace plan.

    It called for Assad to pull troops and heavy weapons out of protest cities, a daily two-hour humanitarian pause to hostilities, access to all areas affected by the fighting and a UN-supervised halt to all clashes.

    Turkey broke its longtime alliance with the Damascus regime in November by urging Assad to quit, and, in addition to taking in around 17,000 refugees, the country has become the main haven for opposition groups and rebel fighters.

    via AFP: Clinton to attend Syria talks in Turkey.

  • Clinton sidesteps dispute between Turkey and France over genocide legislation

    Clinton sidesteps dispute between Turkey and France over genocide legislation

    WASHINGTON — Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton on Thursday sidestepped a delicate dispute between two allies over the World War I-era killing of Armenians in Turkey.

    HilaryClinton1

    Clinton was asked why the United States has not matched a move by French lawmakers to criminalize denial that the killings were genocide. The French legislation has enraged Turkey, which has threatened sanctions if French President Nicolas Sarkozy signs the bill.

    The U.S. administration has avoided calling the killings genocide despite support for recognition by both Clinton and President Barack Obama when they were senators.

    Clinton said the administration was wary of compromising free speech. She said the issue was best left for scholars.

    “To try to use government power to resolve historical issues, I think, opens a door that is a very dangerous one to go through,” Clinton said at an event with U.S. State Department employees.

    via Clinton sidesteps dispute between Turkey and France over genocide legislation – The Washington Post.

  • Remarks at the Istanbul Process for Combating Intolerance and Discrimination Based on Religion or Belief

    Remarks at the Istanbul Process for Combating Intolerance and Discrimination Based on Religion or Belief

    Remarks

    Hillary Rodham Clinton
    Secretary of State
    Washington, DC
    December 14, 2011

    clintontip12142011a 600 1


    Well, good afternoon, everyone, and I want to thank you all for participating in this conference where we are working together to protect two fundamental freedoms – the right to practice one’s religion freely and the right to express one’s opinion without fear.I’m delighted to see so many members of the diplomatic corps. I welcome all of you here to the State Department. I especially wish to acknowledge Ambassador Suzan Johnson Cook, who has been leading our efforts, and also Ambassador Eileen Donahoe, the U.S. Ambassador to the Human Rights Council, who has also been tireless in pursuit of America’s fundamental and the world’s universal values.

    Now this year, the international community in the Human Rights Council made an important commitment. And it was really historic, because before then, we had seen the international community pit against one another freedom of religion and freedom of expression. And there were those in the international community who vigorously and passionately defended one but not the other. And our goal in the work that so many nations represented here have been doing, with the adoption of Resolution 1618 and then again last month in the General Assembly’s Third Committee, was to say we all can do better. And this resolution marks a step forward in creating a safe global environment for practicing and expressing one’s beliefs. In it, we pledge to protect the freedom of religion for all while also protecting freedom of expression. And we enshrined our commitment to tolerance and inclusivity by agreeing to certain concrete steps to combat violence and discrimination based on religion or belief. These steps, we hope, will help foster a climate that respects the human rights of all.

    Now, the United States is hosting this conference because religious freedom and freedom of expression are among our highest values. They are enshrined in our Constitution. For people everywhere, faith and religious practice is a central source of our identity. It provides our lives with meaning and context. It is fundamental to who we are. And as the Universal Declaration of Human Rights makes clear, each of us is born free to practice any religion, to change our religion, or to have none at all. No state may grant these freedoms as a privilege or take them away as a punishment if you believe, as I do and as our country does, that they are not rights bestowed by any government. They are rights endowed by our Creator within each of us. And therefore, we have a special obligation to protect these God-given rights.

    And if a government does try to deny them or take them away, it amounts to a rejection of that universal right. And it also amounts to a repudiation of that fundamental conviction that we are all created equal before God. Therefore, restricting the practice of anyone’s faith is a threat to the human rights of all individuals. Communities of faith are not confined by geopolitical borders. Wherever you are in the world, there will certainly be people whose religious beliefs differ from your own, maybe by just a little bit or maybe by a lot. And my ability to practice my religious faith freely does not, and indeed cannot, diminish yours.

    Religion can be such a powerful bond, but we also recognize that it can be misused to create conflict. There are those who, for reasons actually having little to do with religion, seek to instill fear or contempt for those of another creed. So we believe that it is the duty of every government to ensure that individuals are not subject to violence, discrimination, or intimidation because of their faith or their lack of faith. That is the commitment that the world made to religious freedom more than 60 years ago when we adopted the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

    At the same time, as we strive to protect individuals from violence and discrimination because of their religion or their beliefs, we must also express the freedom of expression. Now, in the United States, we take that especially seriously because many of those who came to our country came for religious reasons. They came because they were being discriminated against or their religion was being outlawed. They started coming in the 17th century, and they still come all the way through the 21st century.

    Well, how would one know that you were being discriminated against if you didn’t have the right to freedom of expression? Your neighbor knows, well, that person is different from me because he or she believes differently. So the freedom of religion and the freedom of expression are absolutely bound up together.

    Now, there are those who have always seen a tension between these two freedoms, especially when one person’s speech seems to question someone else’s religious beliefs, or maybe even offends that person’s beliefs. But the truth we have learned, through a lot of trial and error over more than 235 years in our country, is that we defend our beliefs best by defending free expression for everyone, and it lowers the temperature. It creates an environment in which you are free to exercise and to speak about your religion, whether your neighbor or someone across the town agrees with you or not. In fact, the appropriate answer to speech that offends is more speech.

    Now, in the United States, we continue to combat intolerance because it is – unfortunately, seems to be part of human nature. It is hurtful when bigotry pollutes the public sphere, but the state does not silence ideas, no matter how disagreeable they might be, because we believe that in the end, the best way to treat offensive speech is by people either ignoring it or combating it with good arguments and good speech that overwhelms it.

    So we do speak out and condemn hateful speech. In fact, we think it is our duty to do so, but we don’t ban it or criminalize it. And over the centuries, what we have found is that the rough edges get rubbed off, and people are free to believe and speak, even though they may hold diametrically opposing views.

    Now, with Resolution 1618, we have clarified these dual objectives. We embrace the role that free expression plays in bolstering religious tolerance. We have agreed to build a culture of understanding and acceptance through concrete measures to combat discrimination and violence, such as education and outreach, and we are working together to achieve those objectives.

    Now, I know that in the world today, intolerance is not confined to any part of the world or any group of people. We all continue to deal with different forms of religious intolerance. That’s true here, that’s true in Europe, that’s true among countries in the Organization of Islamic Cooperation, everywhere in the world. It’s true where people, if they are discriminating or intimidating, they’re doing it against Muslims or Jews or Christians or Buddhists or Baha’is or you name it. There has been discrimination of every kind against every religion known to man.

    And yet at the same time, it’s one thing if people are just disagreeing. That is fair game. That’s free speech. But if it results in sectarian clashes, if it results in the destruction or the defacement or the vandalization of religious sites, if it even results in imprisonment or death, then government must held those – hold those who are responsible accountable. Government must stand up for the freedom of religion and the freedom of expression. And it’s a situation which is troubling to us, because a recent study by the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life found that 70 percent of the world’s population lives in countries with a high number of restrictions on religious freedom.

    In America, we are proud of our long and distinctive record of championing both freedom of speech and freedom of religion, and we have worked to share our best practices. But I have to say we have one difficulty in understanding all of the problems that we see around the world, and that is that because religion is so personal and because it is something that we highly value in ourselves, it strikes us as troubling that people are not confident in their religious beliefs to the point where they do not fear speech that raises questions about religion.

    I mean, every one of us who is a religious person knows that there are some who may not support or approve of our religion. But is our religion so weak that statements of disapproval will cause us to lose our faiths? That would be most unfortunate. In fact, what we have found, in study after study, is that the United States is one of the most religious countries in the world. And yet anybody can believe anything and go anywhere. And so there is no contradiction between having strong religious beliefs and having the freedom to exercise them and to speak about them and to even have good debates with others.

    And so the United States has made a commitment to support the 1618 implementation efforts, but we also would hope that we can take practical steps to engage with members of religious minority groups. We know that antidiscrimination laws are no good if they’re not enforced, and if they’re not enforced equally, we know that governments which fear religion can be quite oppressive, but we know that societies which think there’s only one religion can be equally oppressive.

    Now, the fact is that no matter how strongly each of us believes, none of us has the benefit of knowing all the truth that God holds in his hands. And therefore, we are doing the best we can here on earth to reflect and to give honor to our creator in a way that is manifest in our religious values. Because truly, at the root of every major religion, is a connection with the divinity, is an acceptance, and is a recognition that we all are walking a path together.

    Now I know that some in my country and elsewhere have criticized this meeting and our work with all of you. But I want to make clear that I am proud of this work, and I am proud to be working with every one of you. And I believe that this work is an affirmation of America’s values, but equally important an affirmation of universal values. Because we nor – no country individually has a monopoly on the truth, and we will do better when we live in peace with each other, when we live with respect and humility, and listen to each other. And it is important that we recognize what we accomplished when this resolution ended 10 years of divisive debate where people were not listening to each other anymore.

    Now we are. We’re talking. We have to get past the idea that we can suppress religious minorities, that we can restrict speech, that we are smart enough that we can substitute our judgment for God’s and determine who is or is not blaspheming. And by bringing countries from around the world here, we are affirming our common humanity and our common commitment to defend and promote fundamental rights.

    Now these will not be easy conversations. When I was growing up, my parents said, “You should never talk about religion, because you will always spark a fight.” And that was even amongst people of the same faith. We have – there’s lots of funny stories about different kinds of Christians that won’t talk to other kinds of Christians, because another kind of Christian is not as good as the first kind of Christian. Well, we know that those kind of divisions exist in every major religion, where people claim that your particular version of religion is the only one that can be followed.

    But people of all faiths have so much to gain by working together. And I was so moved by the images that we saw coming out of Tahrir Square back in February – January and February, where you saw Coptic Egyptians joining hands to form a protective circle around their Muslim brothers and sisters so they could pray safely in the midst of these huge crowds. And then you saw Muslims doing the same for their Christian brothers and sisters. That is, to me, the highest expression of religious tolerance and free expression that one could possibly find. Those were defining moments in 2011 and those are images that inspire me as we move into 2012.

    So thank you. And I think interfaith dialogue, reaching out to those with whom you disagree, even agreeing to disagree, so to speak, is a part of the work we are struggling to do. And we can make progress where we have a new attitude in our world where we can believe strongly what we believe. We can think others are wrong, but we don’t feel so insecure and so fearful of their wrong views that we try to suppress them, imprison them, or even kill them. Instead, we trust that over time, if they are wrong, they will come to see the error of their ways. But we continue the conversation as fellow human beings and as people of faith.

    So I thank you very much for being with us, and I wish you well as you continue this absolutely important work. I think if we do our work right, in years to come, people will look back and say this was a great step forward on behalf of both freedom of religion, freedom of expression, and our common humanity. Thank you all very much. (Applause.)



    PRN: 2011/2144

  • Clinton hosts summit on religious intolerance

    Clinton hosts summit on religious intolerance

    By Josef Kuhn| Religion News Service, Published: December 15

    WASHINGTON — Secretary of State Hillary Clinton wrapped up a summit of international leaders this week to explore specific steps to combat intolerance, discrimination and violence on the basis of religion or belief.

    The closed-door meeting on Wednesday (Dec. 14) was the first of an ongoing series called “The Istanbul Process.” Representatives came from 30 countries and international organizations, including Egypt, Indonesia, Saudi Arabia and Pakistan.

    “We are working together to protect two fundamental freedoms — the right to practice one’s religion freely, and the right to express one’s opinion without fear,” Clinton said in her closing remarks.

    The goal of the Istanbul Process is to produce a list of best practices for preventing religious discrimination and violence. Ambassador Michael Kozak, a deputy assistant secretary of state, acknowledged that the list would be helpful primarily for countries that already have the political will to protect religious freedom but need practical guidance to do so.

    Nevertheless, Kozak said, it could also put pressure on repressive regimes to loosen up.

    “By itself, this isn’t going to change their minds. But … the more countries you get starting to do things in a good way, the more isolated the others become, and then movements develop in their own countries,” Kozak said.

    The Istanbul Process grew out of a resolution adopted by the United Nations Human Rights Council in March and then by the U.N. General Assembly in November.

    Resolutions in the previous 10 years had supported legal measures restricting the “defamation of religions.” The more recent Resolution 16/18, however, broke with that tradition by calling for concrete, positive measures to combat religious intolerance rather than legal measures that restrict speech.

    “It is important that we recognize what we accomplished when this resolution ended 10 years of divisive debate where people were not listening to each other anymore. Now we are. We’re talking,” said Clinton.

    The new resolution has faced criticism from conservatives who think it amounts to a concession to Islamic countries, and will result in the curtailing of any speech that is critical of Islam.

    After Clinton’s speech, Andrea Lafferty, president of the Traditional Values Coalition, said her organization has been denied entrance to conferences and hotels for fear of “incitement to violence,” a phrase used in Resolution 16/18.

    “We remain concerned about the use of that language,” Lafferty said.

    Kozak tried to dispel her fears.

    “That whole issue of incitement got debated a lot, and we were clear all along that what we meant by incitement was when … the speech is part of an act,” he said. “It’s a very narrow concept.”

    via Clinton hosts summit on religious intolerance – The Washington Post.

  • The State Dept., Islam, and Freedom of Religion

    The State Dept., Islam, and Freedom of Religion

    Written by James Heiser

    hillaryclintonstate tIn a few days, the Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) will meet in Washington with the express intention of building “muscles of respect and empathy and tolerance.” The invitation to meet in Washington was extended in July, when Secretary of State Hillary Clinton addressed the OIC during its meeting in Istanbul, Turkey. However, despite the trappings of talk about tolerance, implementation of the OIC’s agenda would restrict the free speech around the globe.According to its website the OIC perceives itself to be the voice of the Muslim world:

    The Organisation of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) (formerly Organization of the Islamic Conference) is the second largest inter-governmental organization after the United Nations which has membership of 57 states spread over four continents. The Organization is the collective voice of the Muslim world and ensuring to safeguard and protect the interests of the Muslim world in the spirit of promoting international peace and harmony among various people of the world.

    The OIC is also quick to link its own structure to the dreams of those who would see the whole of Islam — the Ummah — gathered as a political force, as it once was under the caliphate: “The Organization has the singular honor to galvanize the Ummah into a unified body and have actively represented the Muslims by espousing all causes close to the hearts of over 1.5 billion Muslims of the world.”

    When Clinton was speaking to the OIC “High-Level Meeting on Combating Religious Intolerance” last July, she reminisced about the days when her husband was president, and catered to the universalistic notion of the equivalence of all religions:

    In our conversation 15 years ago, I remember the secretary general talking about the imperative for us to move beyond these differences and how much the three great monotheistic religions have in common, especially our respective commandments to love our neighbors and to seek peace and understanding. Well, today, this wisdom that is ageless is as important as ever.

    And, lest anyone imagine that the liberties enjoyed in the West were more advanced than those enjoyed in the Islamic world, Clinton pandered to her audience, “And in established democracies, we are still working to protect fully our religious diversity, prevent discrimination, and protect freedom of expression.”

    But what does the OIC desire when it comes to preventing ‘discrimination’? The fundamental abridgment of the free speech guaranteed under the first amendment of the U.S. Constitution. As Nina Shea and Paul Marshall recently wrote for the Wall Street Journal:

    For more than 20 years, the OIC has pressed Western governments to restrict speech about Islam. Its charter commits it “to combat defamation of Islam,” and its current action plan calls for “deterrent punishments” by all states to counter purported Islamophobia.
    In 2009, the “International Islamic Fiqh [Jurisprudence] Academy,” an official OIC organ, issued fatwas calling for free speech bans, including “international legislation” aimed at protecting “the interests and values of [Islamic] society,” and for judicial punishment for public expression of apostasy from Islam. OIC Secretary General Ekmeleddin Ihsanoglu emphasizes that “no one has the right to insult another for their beliefs.”
    The OIC does not define what speech should be outlawed, but its leading member states’ practices are illustrative. Millions of Baha’is and Ahmadis, religious movements arising after Muhammad, are condemned as de facto “insulters” of Islam, frequently persecuted by OIC governments, and attacked by vigilantes. Those seeking to leave Islam face similar fates.

    The Obama administration has already undermined the constitutionally guaranteed right of freedom of religion by speaking of a far narrower, “freedom of worship”— while religion influences every area of life, a “freedom of worship” is much more narrow, and could be restricted to activities specifically designated as worship-related. According to Shea and Marshall, many nations of the European Union are already succumbing to OIC pressure to restrict the free exercise of speech regarding the terrors of Islam:

    OIC pressure on European countries to ban “negative stereotyping of Islam” has increased since the 2004 murder of Theo Van Gogh for his film “Submission” and the Danish Muhammad cartoon imbroglio of 2005. Many countries (such as France, Germany, Austria, the Netherlands, Finland, Italy and Sweden), hoping to ensure social peace, now prosecute people for “vilifying” Islam or insulting Muslims’ religious feelings.
    Encouraging a more civil discourse is commendable, and First Amendment freedoms mean the U.S. won’t veer down Europe’s path anytime soon. But if the Obama administration is committed to defending constitutional rights, why is it, as the OIC’s Mr. Ihsanoglu wrote in the Turkish Weekly after the Istanbul meeting, standing “united” on speech issues with an organization trying to undercut our freedoms? Mr. Ihsanoglu celebrates this partnership even while lamenting in his op-ed that America permits “Islamophobia” under “the banner of freedom of expression.”

    Despite such constitutional guarantees, any capitulation to the agenda of the OIC could have a chilling effect on the exercise of religious liberty. And the fondness which the Clinton State Department has shown for Islamist political parties only heightens the fundamental tension between catering to the OIC’s intention to empower the “Ummah” and the responsibilities of every element of the federal government to uphold the Constitution.

    As reported for The New American in early November, the Obama administration has alligned itself with Islamist parties in the aftermath of the “Arab Spring” which toppled several less-overtly religious dictatorships and replaced them with ideologues bent on imposing more stringent interpretations of sharia law on their subjects. Thus, for example, a November 8 article for the Associated Press noted that Secretary of State Hillary Clinton “welcomed the Islamist party Ennahda’s strong showing in ‘an open, competitive election’ in Tunisia.” The results of Egypt’s first round of parliamentary elections have left Clinton somewhat less impressed; a December 6 AP article quotes a more sober assessment of the state of affairs in Egypt: “Transitions require fair and inclusive elections, but they also demand the embrace of democratic norms and rules. We expect all democratic actors to uphold universal human rights, including women’s rights, to allow free religious practice.” In short, it appears that democracy is not quite so appealing when it fails to deliver the anticipated results. The results of democracy in the aftermath of the “Arab Spring” may be pleasing to the OIC, but for those who have to live under the rule of Islamist parties that would punish blasphemy and apostasy from Islam, democracy has most certainly not brought liberty.