US Presidential candidate preventing from speaking at human rights conference

Friday November 28, 2008 15:40 by Saed Bannoura - IMEMC News

U.S. Officials blocked former Green party Presidential candidate Cynthia McKinney from traveling to Syria for a conference on the Universal Declaration of Human Rights this week. McKinney was scheduled to give a speech at the conference, with the subject 'Human rights and the denial of the right of return for Palestinians'.

Cynthia McKinney

The conference was held on the 60th anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights in Damascus, Syria. 5,000 participants, mainly from the Arab world, converged on Damascus to affirm the rights outlined in the Declaration.

But the U.S. Government prevented 2008 Green presidential candidate and former six-term Congress member Cynthia McKinney from attending. Officials detained the former Congressmember at the Atlanta airport as she was about to fly to the conference.

In a statement to the media, McKinney stated, “I do believe that it was just a misunderstanding. But the insecurity experienced on a daily basis by innocent Palestinians is not. Innocent Palestinians are trapped in a violent, stateless twilight zone imposed on them by an international order that favors a country reported to have completed its nuclear triad as many as eight years ago, although Israel has remained ambiguous on the subject. President Jimmy Carter informed us that Israel had as many as 150 nuclear weapons, and Israel’s allies are among the most militarily sophisticated on the planet. Military engagement, then, is untenable. Therefore the exigency of diplomacy and international law.”

The text of the speech she was unable to give is published online, at the website linked below.

In the speech, McKinney states, “In the same year as Palestinians endured a series of massacres and expulsions, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights became international law. And while the United Nations is proud that the Declaration was flown into Outer Space just a few days ago on the Space Shuttle, if one were to read it and then land in the Middle East, I think it would be clear that Palestine is the place that the Universal Declaration forgot.”

She also makes reference to the pressure placed on US legislators to conform to the existing US policy of unquestioned support for Israel, stating that she “felt the sting of the special interests since my entry onto the national stage when, in my very first Congressional campaign, I refused to sign a pledge committing that I would vote to maintain the military superiority of Israel over its neighbors, and that Jerusalem should be its capital city. Other commitments were on that pledge as well, like continued financial assistance to Israel at agreed upon levels. As a result of my refusal to make such a commitment, and just like the old slave woman, Sojourner Truth, who bared her back and showed the scars from the lashes meted out to her by her slave master, I too, bear scars from the lashes of public humiliation meted out to me by the special interests in Washington, D.C. because of my refusal to tow the line on Israel policy.”

McKinney is not the only US legislator to assert that they were forced out of office for trying to assert the basic human rights of the Palestinian people. A number of Congressmembers and Senators have told of similar sagas of pressure from the anti-Palestine lobby in the U.S.

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