The AHRC’s Disgrace: Part II

Yesterday’s article discussed the urgent need to abolish the Human Rights Commission, given its puerile response to Australia’s horrific upsurge of anti-Semitism. It described how the Commission’s pro-Hamas faction has intimidated the leadership and how the Jewish community, academics and students have zero confidence in the Commission. Today I’ll analyse its fealty to the Hamas and Hezbollah-friendly United Nations apparatus.

The AHRC from April 2022 to late October 2023 was audited by the Global Alliance of National Human Rights Institutions (GANHRI), a UN sister group of human rights bodies from 120 countries.

The auditors were deciding whether to let the Commission keep its “A-grade” status or downgrade it to “B”. The criteria are the so-called “Paris Principles”, mainly independence and effectiveness. The Commission squeaked through, its precarious A-status surviving scrutiny.

What followed if GANHRI had demoted us to B? Sadly our human-rights reps could then no longer vote or help run GANHRI. They would also lose their right to speak at Human Rights Council meetings. That Council today includes China with its huge concern for human rights, Cuba (ditto), Kyrgystan, Kazakhstan, Qatar and Somalia.

Instead we’d be milling on the sidelines with other rejectniks including Niger (suspended), Myanmar (suspended), Russia (about to be kicked out), Venezuela, Chad and drug-runners’ haven Nicaragua, along with the urbane Swedes and Belgians who, for some technical reason have fallen into the “B” dumpster. No cocktails and posh dinners for this lot at Geneva’s Palais des Nations. As for the US, it has no human rights body and is not in GANHRI at all.

Slave-owning Mauritania[1] enjoys, with Australia, its “A-status” at GANHRI. Other A-class holders include what Trump called the Africa’s “shit-hole countries”such as Benin, Burundi (under review), Cameroon, Togo and Mali.

Getting to the point, GANHRI’s final audit decision on Australia was made just days after Hamas invaded Israel and massacred 1200 men women kids and babies. And the four-member GANHRI audit committee was chaired by none other than Palestine’s so-called human rights body, in cahoots with Hamas-friendly South Africa. (The other two auditors, based on geographic blocs, were Greece and Honduras)[2]. In the event, the war stopped the Palestine rep getting to the final audit meeting but his presence and influence remained strong.

The audit decision on Australia was also influenced by a so-called Asia-Pacific Forum including Myanmar, Iraq, and a bloc of antisemitic Arab states led by the Palestine entity.

The Commission’s then President Rosalind Croucher maintained a mysterious five-day silence on the October 7 massacre, the greatest pogrom since Hitler’s Holocaust. Nor did Croucher have anything to say about the Muslim mob at the Sydney Opera House chanting “Where’s the Jews?” (official version) or more likely, “Gas the Jews!” (bystanders’ evidence).

Finally, on October 13, Croucher issued a statement about “the devastating conflict in Israel and Gaza”. She feebly paired antisemitism with Islamophobia and made not a mention of the Hamas invasion, sexual torture and rapes, murders and baby-burning. She padded her twaddle with platitudes like “racist statements from anyone are unacceptable” and evinced her deep concern that authorities might infringe on the Muslim mobs’ freedom of speech. Indeed her release was headed “Commission President calls for human rights in Australia to be upheld in wake of Middle East conflict.”

Was her wretched response designed to safeguard her Commission’s A-status in Geneva? Who knows, but the Executive Council of Australian Jewry (ECAJ) suspects so. Its Senate submission was by Daniel Aghion KC, President; Peter Wertheim AM, Co-CEO; and Simone Abel, Head of Legal. They noted that Israel’s counter-incursion into Gaza started on the same day as Croucher’s statement and probably after she released it. So the only “devastation” at that point was in Israel, not Gaza.They said the prolonged Palestine-led audit must have helped the Commission’s culture-creep against Israel. And they deplored what they called the Commission’s surprising silence:

The AHRC was at least disingenuous in portraying the issue as one of general racism, and in completely ignoring the terror and suffering unleashed in Israel and the implications for the Australian Jewish community. It is entirely conceivable that the AHRC did not wish to alienate either the [human rights commissions of] Palestine or South Africa by making a statement that acknowledged the brutality of the massacre and the domestic repercussions for Jews. The same can be said regarding the AHRC’s need to keep the APF [Australia Pacific Forum] on side, especially given the prolific and skewed anti-Israel social media postings of some of its core staff.

GANHRI first put AHRC on official warning back in 2016 because the Abbott government, acting lawfully, catapulted Tim Wilson into the Human Rights Commissioner slot (2014-16). The Morrison government did the same with Lorraine Finlay (2021-present). Both were stalwarts of the conservative Institute of Public Affairs and Finlay was a former Liberal Senate candidate. They were both eminently qualified. GANHRI in 2022, annoyed, put Australia on its watch list instead of renewing our A-status. The audit followed.

The Coalitions’ Captain’s Picks reversed the monopoly at the Commission of compassion-industry wokesters and anti-conservatives. The princess of that clique was President Gillian Triggs, famed for her heartbroken quote of 2017, “Sadly you can say what you like around the breakfast table at home.” Lorraine Finlay was therefore as welcome at the Commission as a tiger snake in a henhouse.

The leftist hysteria included a protest letter from 80 academics and NGOs ranging from Jacob Varghese, CEO of Labor-friendly law firm Maurice Blackburn, to freelance journo Andrew P Street, self-described as “music obsessive, coffee enthusiast, failed indie rock star and bon vivant”.

Also signing: AHRC President Croucher’s July successor Hugh de Kretser, at the time executive director of the Human Rights Law Centre, a defender of boat people’s rights and enthusiast for a long unwanted Human Rights Act. He dusted off and re-used against Finlay his decade-old complaint against Tim Wilson’s non-advertised appointment.

But open and independent public service selection processes hardly guarantee good appointees, as Canada’s Trudeau government discovered in August after appointing top candidate Birju Dattani to head its Human Rights Commission. Attorney General Arif Virani announced in May,

He brings extensive practical and academic experience to the role of Chief Commissioner, having established himself as an expert in human rights law and as a champion for equity, diversity and inclusion. This Governor in Council appointment is the result of a rigorous, open, transparent, and merit-based selection process.

Jewish groups checked and found Dattani was actually an antisemite who’d shared a platform with Hizb ut-Tahrir extremists, spoken at an “Israel Apartheid Week” urging boycotts and sanctions, and joined a London crowd chanting “Zionism is terrorism!” and “From the river to the sea!” outside the Israeli embassy. He’d been making social-media posts under a pseudonym and even fudged his CV. He quit a day before taking office, while the Opposition’s Pierre Poilievre called the appointment “grotesque”.

Back home, Commissioner Finlay, settled in at the AHRC, was no shrinking violet. In an opinion piece in The Australian in March last year she urged a “No” anti-racist vote in the Voice Referendum, pulling the rug from under the Commission’s officially racist and failed Yes campaign. Five predecessor commissioners published their horror at this heresy:

My message is simple. You can believe passionately in human rights, equality and the importance of reconciliation and decide – based on your belief in the importance of those principles – to vote No.

President Croucher’s successor, Hugh de Kretser, arrived in July with his anti-Finlay baggage, as if there wasn’t already enough mayhem there. His application to the AHRC $490,000 slot in July (plus $27,000 allowance) certainly was contestable and transparent, in line with Labor’s 2022 legislative amendment abolishing Captain’s Picks. They even advertised the job in Mandarin![3]

He’ll enjoy this essay because, according to his job description, AHRC Presidents need to “ have a strong presence and be comfortable with significant media and public attention.” One of four sons of Victorian Governor David de Kretser (2006-11), young Hugh dreamed of becoming a reporter. That noble profession was a bridge too far and he wound up doing law jobs at Mallesons.

To look after battlers who couldn’t afford Mallesons billing pressure, he commendably took a post at half the pay and twice the work running a community legal centre at Melbourne’s hard-scrabble Brimbank, my next door suburb in Melbourne’s north-west.[4] Last year he took the job of CEO at Victoria’s “truth-telling” Yoorrook Justice Commission, part of unlamented Premier Dan Andrew’s “Treaty” machinations.

At the AHRC, De Kretser’s leftist credentials were soon on display. A month after arrival, he was welcoming the lightly or totally unvetted Gazans (whom their Arab neighbours won’t have a bar of). He bagged Opposition Leader Dutton for wanting to halt them, common sense but which de Kretser viewed as “concerning and dangerous … Recognising our common humanity is vital to promoting the fair and inclusive society we should aim to be, ” he said, oblivious to the non-integration of Muslim fanatics, last month’s Hezbollah flag-wavers and the Jew-haters who rioted outside a Caulfield synagogue.

Let’s revert now to our Commission’s membership of that GANHRI global alliance of rights bodies. Being captured by leftists is bad enough, but the Commission’s willing submission to the UN’s Afro-Arab dominance is worse.

Starting at the top, GANHRI’s chair, Maryam Al Attiyah, is from Qatar, which shelters the top Hamas team in its five-star hotels. Her human rights push in Qatar is not gaining much ground. As Freedom House puts it,

Qatar’s hereditary emir holds all executive and legislative authority, and ultimately controls the judiciary as well. Political parties are not permitted.

The 16-member governing Bureau includes Zimbabwe, Morocco, Ghana, Albania and, according to the website, our own Professor Rosalind Croucher for the Asia-Pacific zone. I assume de Kretser has taken her seat since July.[5]

Last November, a month after Hamas invaded Israel to torture and slaughter 1200 men women children and babies, the Bureau published its “solidarity” with its Palestine human rights delegate Ammar Al Dwaik and his “highly valued” institution . The Bureau joined his call for a Hamas-convenient ceasefire and a focus on the purported “root causes of the conflict”, i.e. Israeli bastardry. GANHRI’s chair Ms Al Attiyah said the Bureau spoke on this not just for itself but “GANHRI member national human rights institutions across the globe.”[6] I wonder, did Rosalind Croucher vote for it?

The 120 member countries of GANHRI are a tale in itself. As well as slave-running Mauritania, A-list paragons of human rights are Zimbabwe, Haiti, Togo and not least, Palestine. A-lister Britain, I kid you not, seems about to get a downgrade for disrespect to men transing to women and storming female toilets, showers and the victory dais in women’s boxing.[7]

Here’s some detail:

Palestine: The Ramallah-based Human Rights Institute was set up in 1993 by Yasser Arafat, the billionaire PLO chairman and President of the supposed State of Palestine. Its mission was to “meet the requirements for safeguarding human rights”.

Its 19-member “highly credible” board[8] includes (or included) five commissioners and 17 staff in Gaza itself. I don’t recall the Gaza team complaining to the world about Hamas executions, hostages and human shields. Nor is the team interested in Hamas throwing gays off tall buildings or stowing munitions in kindergartens and surgeries. Similarly, in regard to the Palestine Authority, the human rights body doesn’t object to ‘pay for slay’ bonuses to families of terrorists who murder Israelis.

A peculiarity of the Palestine body, even by GANHRI standards, is that it has no legislative standing since there’s been no elections since 2006. As the body says, its “statutes hence will only be passed once reconciliation [with Hamas] is achieved, new PLC [Council] elections undertaken, and the PLC convenes.”

Meanwhile GANHRI gives the Palestine body A-status “underscoring [its] full independency” in Palestine for “creating a democratic and tolerant society”. Bravo, GANHRI!

 

Hungary – It defied the EC’s welcome to Muslim boat hordes from Africa, whose “human rights” were supposed to be paramount. Other purported rights crimes were forcing foreign funded NGOs like Greenpeace and Amnesty to have their output labelled “foreign funded”, and mean treatment of would-be LGBTQIA+ blood donors and transgender complainants. Hungary’s human rights body also declined to listen respectfully to leftist “civil society” NGOs, another offence against GANHRI principles. Eventually Hungary ignored the auditors’ bleating and got downgraded accordingly.

Uganda: The auditors had concerns about the country’s 2023 legislation imposing the death penalty for “aggravated homosexuality” involving minors. The Ugandan rights body agreed the penalty was too extreme but said that as the Act was under challenge, it could only monitor the sub judice situation. (The death penalty passed review this year). The Ugandan body denied indignantly that the government pushed it around but the auditors were sceptical and put Uganda’s A-class status under an 18-month review. 

Burundi– Its A-status is at risk. GANHRI was a bit perplexed that the Burundi government had appointed an executive secretary to the rights body who scored one vote, beating another candidate with 96 votes. In any case, the body wasn’t doing any critiques of the regime’s “misappropriation of funds [and] enforced disappearances and arbitrary arrests and torture by National Intelligence Service agents against political opponents, media professionals or members of civil society organizations.”

GANHRI, with our Commission’s endorsement, is pushing for multi-trillion-dollar spending on weather-dependent wind and solar electricity. Members signed on to this in 2020, pledging to pump up their propaganda in schools and society. Just last July GANHRI ran a glitzy conference in Geneva’s Palais des Nations on the supposed “human rights impacts” of global warming (properly measured, maybe 1degC in the past century). Co-sponsored by Australia’s Permanent Mission to the UN at Geneva, the confab was moderated by Australia’s Ambassador to the Human Rights Council, Amanda Gorely. Instead of using Zoom to save CO2, attendees arrived “in person”. Opening speaker (irony alert) was from Qatar, the world’s third-largest gas exporter.[9]

All these Geneva and New York UN outfits see their mission as enforcing such leftist nirvanas on their home states. Typical spearpoints are the 17 SDGs (Sustainable Development Goals), DEI (Diversity, Equity & Inclusion), and at least half a dozen treaties Australia has idiotically signed onto.

These two essays, yesterday’s and today’s — illustrate what strange scurryings can be seen when anyone lifts the rock comprising the Human Rights Commission. This country’s best hope is that the Commission, pending abolition, will remain too riven with internal brawls to do any more real damage.

Tony Thomas’s latest book from Connor Court is Anthem of the Unwoke – Yep! The other lot’s gone bonkers. $34.95 from Connor Court here

[1] 2% of Mauritania’s population are slaves.

[2] NZ has replaced Palestine as chair.

[3] Commissioners get $398,000.

[4] de Kretser asked his 5yo son about his job.

Son: Yes, you’re a lawyer.

Do you know what lawyers do?

Yes – You work for rich people.

Asking later, after moving to the Brimbank job:

Yes dad – you used to work for rich people.

[5] I emailed the AHRC about it but got no reply

[6] Her statement left open the possibility that Israel’s terrorist prisoners are also “hostages”

[7] At issue is Britain’s equal-opportunity body recommending altering Britain’s laws back to “biological sex” instead of gender-by-choice.

[8] At least two commissioners are journalists pumping out anti-Israel propaganda to Reuters and other Western outlets.

[9] The reality of course is that CO2 and warming have generated record abundance of food and greened the planet to the size of two and a half Australias. The real threat to human rights is the anti-fossil-fuel zealotry starving Africa’s poor of life-changing cheap energy.