Insulting religious beliefs: Free speech has limits, says Pak envoy to UN

Ambassador stresses that right of free speech under UN Conventions is subject to limitations

KARACHI:

Pakistan upbraided western media outlets for defending the right to reprint blasphemous cartoons, reminding them that freedom of expression does not provide a licence to insult the religious beliefs of others.

Ambassador Zamir Akram, Pakistan’s permanent representative to the European office of the United Nations in Geneva, was speaking in his capacity as the coordinator of the OIC on human rights issues during a meeting with the High Commissioner for Human Rights, Zeid Ra’ad Al Hussein, at the UN’s Geneva office. He made these remarks in response to the recent Western media assault on Islam and the Holy Prophet (PBUH).

Ambassador Akram stressed that the right of free speech under the UN Conventions was subject to limitations, specifically to prevent any incitement to violence – which had clearly happened in the case of the provocative publications of the French magazine Charlie Hebdo.

Ambassador Akram also said that certain Western countries pursued double standards since their own laws criminalised any anti-Semitism or anti-Jewish statements or denial of the holocaust on the grounds that this constituted “hate speech”. But expression of lslamophobia and insults to Islam and Muslims was being defended as expression of “free speech”.

Published in The Express Tribune, January 18^th, 2015.