“Human rights are attached to individuals, not to states or organized groups or ideas,” said International PEN President John Ralston Saul, who chaired the two-hour session entitled Faith and Free Speech: Defamation of Religions and Freedom of Expression. “When governments attempt to limit the rights of citizens, they are not seeking to protect faith or belief. They are seeking increased power over the citizenry.”
It worries me that the Irish Government sought to restrict free expression by introducing a blasphemy criminalisation into the Irish Statute on the 1st of January 2010 under the aegis of the 2006-2009 Defamation Bill and more so that this will not be reversed through Referendum until at least 2011. For information on the Blasphemy legislation in Ireland which sites Blasphemy in the ability to ‘Outrage’ please see the second attached link at the end of this piece.
Oh and of course Poethead has a search engine , into which Blasphemy can be entered , therein some links to the Irish situation and the wonderful Blasphemer’s Banquet , by Tony Harrison.
Chris Murray 
One response to “Writers Urge U.N. to Abandon Efforts to Prohibit Defamation of Religions, Concentrate Instead on Respect-Building Initiatives”
“The program, hosted by International PEN and co-sponsored by the Norwegian and American PEN Centers and Index on Censorship, the International Publishers Association, and Article 19, presented the views of writers from a wide range of countries and religious traditions. Saul was joined on the panel by Agnes Callamard, Director of Article 19, Swiss-born and Oxford-based Islamic scholar Tariq Ramadan, and Budhy Rahman from the Asia Foundation in Indonesia. Four internationally acclaimed writers-Nobel Prize laureate Wole Soyinka, Ariel Dorfman, Azar Nafisi, and Kwame Anthony Appiah-made statements by videotape. All of the participants echoed Saul’s message that individuals have an absolute right to practice their religion freely and without discrimination or threat of violence, and that prohibitions on religious defamation are not an effective means to reduce bigotry or religious hatred. “
LikeLike