Racism remains a global "scourge," South Africa's President Jacob Zuma told a UN meeting Thursday which went ahead despite a boycott by the United States and other western nations fearing a diatribe against Israel. Zuma spoke as UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon sat behind him, but with many rows of empty seats in the front.
He was addressing a summit to mark the 10th anniversary of the first UN conference on racism, held in the South African city of Durban, which ended in bitter acrimony. Opponents of the UN summit held their own conference and the United States, Britain, France, Germany, Australia, Canada and others stayed away from the UN event where Ban said the international community must "stand firmly" against anti-Semitism, Islamophobia and discrimination against Christians.
Zuma praised the UN General Assembly for holding the new summit, saying progress has been made, but added: "Racism and racial discrimination continues to pose a challenge to humanity today and we need a collective effort to rid the world of this scourge." Jamaica's Foreign Minister Kenneth Baugh condemned what he called daily attacks on migrant workers and the "proliferation of hate-speech" by the Internet. Despite the absence of any US delegation, Sarah White, of the Mississippi Workers Center for Human Rights, spoke about factories in the southern US state where blacks are "forced to work under conditions that look a lot like slavery." None of the keynote speakers at the opening mentioned Israel, though Iran's Foreign Minister Ali Akbar Salehi was to speak at a roundtable on the sidelines of the summit.
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