Racist states walk out of Geneva meeting

By John Catalinotto

Apr 23, 2009

There have been two "walkouts" from the World Conference Against Racism, Racial Discrimination, Xenophobia and Related Intolerance in Geneva. It is instructive to observe which countries walked out.

The first walkout, led by the United States, was of those countries boycotting the entire conference. These included the U.S., Canada, Israel, New Zealand and Australia—the major settler states that through genocide displaced Indigenous populations from their territory. The Netherlands, the plunderer of Indonesia, and Germany and Italy, which waged murderous wars against barely armed African populations, joined them, as did Poland, now itself a semi-colony.

A few of the largest historical despoilers and plunderers of the colonized world held back from this first walkout. France and Britain, for example, which had divided up most of Africa, the Middle East and large parts of south and east Asia, opted to participate in the conference. This gave them the opportunity to disrupt from inside—which they did a few days into the meetings.

On April 21, when President Ahmadinejad of Iran spoke denouncing the racist actions of the Israeli state against Palestinians, most of the U.N. delegates applauded the speech. It had been only three months since the 22-day-long Israeli slaughter of Palestinian civilians in Gaza.

However, Britain, France and the rest of the European Union countries present walked out, accusing Ahmadinejad of racism.

Their actions spoke louder than any words of phony concern. There has to be a vigorous struggle against racism precisely because the imperialist powers and their settler states—which for historical reasons are mostly white—have promoted racism against peoples of color and all Indigenous peoples throughout the world in order to better exploit them. The ones who wound up walking out of the conference on racism are exactly those most guilty of racism. And everyone who remained knows it.