This is a guest post by UJS Students in Geneva
What an hour at the usually quiet and respectful United Nations in Geneva.
The tensions have been rising all morning and as we got closer to the speech by the President of Iran. We felt it in the NGO room (a huge conference room where we watch the proceedings live) rising.
As the President was escorted onto the platform and was about to start speaking two delegates with clown wigs heckled and shouted at him. They were swiftly removed by police. However, in our side room they recieved a standing ovation.
The President began to speak anyway but with no translation from Farsi. This led to another explosion of anger in the room when out of no-where Professor Alan Dershowitz stood up and shouted that this was a disgrace because we were being denied the right to engage in the conference. Some people in the room started blaming the lack of translation on the Jews (obviously) and heated arguments were breaking out. This is real antisemitism at the heart of the conference and it’s time that the UN took proper action.
The students in the room began a pre-planned walk out and that quickly became a march towards the main room where the plenary was taking place. When we arrived a large group walked straight into the plenary room – where they were not challenged by security – but a few of us were locked just outside.
As the security told us the doors were now locked the same big double doors were opened from the other side and people started leaving – within seconds we realised that it was a mass walk-out of delegates.
It was great to see the UK, which apparently led the delegate walk out,take firm action. In the ensuing mess one of us got pushed around by security – who clearly weren’t too bothered about human rights – and have been threatened with being banned from the conference.
We’ve now seen the text and the point when it got too much was the Holocaust Denial and the labelling of Israel as a racist state. The UK mission, of whom we’ve been critical for not leaving, acted in a decisive way and we were all proud of them for taking the action they did!
The only question now is whether or not the walk-out has been permanent or temporary…more later.
