Pushing Back Against ODIHR’s Attempt to Censor Anti-Sharia Speech

Center for Security Policy September 21, 2018

The Center and its allies are participating in the Organization for Security & Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) Office for Democratic Institutions and Human Rights (ODIHR) Human Dimension Implementation Meeting (HDIM) 2018 in Warsaw, Poland.

The conference is supposed to be dedicated to a focus on Democracy & Human Rights within all of the 56 member states – official reps of each government plus a slew of Civil Society NGO reps.

Last year at this meeting, the moderator first reminded and then required virtually every individual who spoke against Sharia’s threat to Fundamental Freedoms to practice tolerance and non-discrimination toward this most intolerant and discriminatory of all legal systems.

Going further, before a July meeting, ODIHR without consensus created a new power: The moderator could “interrupt any speech” that “attacks” anyone.

This time the U.S. delegation stepped up, saying that: you can’t simply insert new rules outside the consensus process, this rule violates guidelines about civil society participation, and civil society doesn’t have to follow Participating States’ commitments – because they’re not Participating States.

180917 Submitted OSCE ODIHR HDIM Intervention Working Session 10 Fundamental Freedoms I[1]