Was Louise Arbour, using her position as High Commissioner of Human Rights in Geneva, Switzerland, to hold in abeyance complaints made to her in respect of the province of Quebec's Human Rights violations?
Complaint after complaint was sent to her office in Geneva, but no one ever received a reply from Louise Arbour. Perhaps all the complaints made to Louise Arbour were destined for the shredder, for the simple reason that she would not permit action to taken against Quebec, as she was a quebecoise. But that also meant that Louise Arbour was in a conflict of interest position, which automatically ruled her unfit for the position of U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights. Thus she should have resigned rather than accept the said appointment.
Louise Arbour was quick to accuse Israel and the U.S. of all sorts of violations, but at no time did she ever point to the on-going violations taking place in Quebec against English-speaking citizens by the ‘Office quebecoise de la langue française.' The Tongue Troopers (Language Police) a branch of the OLF, was very active in suppressing rights accorded to English-speaking people in Quebec by the United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights of December 10, 1948. Here was a Quebec government acting like that of Nazi Germany believing itself to be above International Law and Covenants signed by Canada. But of course, it was direct collusion by the Federal government of Canada that not only permitted, but encouraged Quebec governments, by allowing them to abrogate sections of the U.N. Human Rights Charter that they did not agree with in principle.
It is now up to us, and those of the intelligentsia that need to take-up the issue of Quebec's Human Rights violations with the new High Commissioner of Human Rights, Mme Nevanethem Pillay, a former judge an anti-apartheid activist in the old South Africa of apartheid days. We should expect that she will bring about changes to her new office, unlike Louise Arbour the out-going U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights in Geneva, Switzerland.
In this respect, everyone who has laid a complaint before send the new High Commissioner a letter welcoming her to her job. That will in some way make her realize that things were not as they should have been, during the tenure of Mme Louise Arbour.
Kenneth T. Tellis
