Belgian lawyer, Loch Wallin, who filed a case on behalf of Sabra and Shatilla massacres' victims, will hold a press conference in Cairo Center for Human Rights Studies on Friday. A number of officials in Arab and international human rights organizations will attend the press conference.
He will take part in an Arab regional preparatory conference for combating racial discrimination, to be held by Cairo Arab and international Human Rights organizations.
The regional Arab anti-apartheid conference comes in preparation for an international event on the same topic scheduled for South Africa in August.
Walin will participate in the conference along with Egyptian lawyer Naser Hamed, who left his native land a few years ago when Islamic fundamentalist lawyers filed a suit accusing him of apostasy.
The Cairo conference will be held under the slogan “Together to Annihilate the Last Apartheid Regime.”
Israel is accused of transplanting to the Middle East the 1980s strategies of South African’s white supremacist regime, by colonizing the Palestinians’ homeland using military force, subjecting them to humiliating and racially discriminatory laws, and forcing them onto small patches of land similar to the poverty-stricken Bantustans.
The Cairo event will deal with a number of issues including the rights of minorities and women, as well as Israeli racism.
Walin will preside over the session dealing with Israeli “ethnic cleansing.” Hamed will participate with a study entitled Islamophobia: Reality and Ideology.
The conference, in which more than 70 Arab and international human rights organizations will participate, is being organized by the Cairo Center for Human Rights Studies.
The center has issued a press release saying that the conference “will set priorities of the human rights organizations for the international conference and form an international coalition to support these organizations and alleviate the concerns of the non-governmental organizations in the south.”
The conference will conclude by issuing the Cairo Charter for Liquidating Apartheid Regimes, which will include the main recommendations of the conference – Albawaba.com
© 2001 Al Bawaba (www.albawaba.com)
