16 Dec - Europe:

A Sikh rights group asked a U.N. human rights committee on Monday to declare that France violated a student's rights by expelling him for wearing a turban and to recommend repealing the law that led to it.

France passed a law in 2004 banning children in state primary and secondary schools from wearing conspicuous religious symbols, including Muslim headscarves, Jewish yarmulkes, large Christian crosses and Sikh turbans.

Bikramjit Singh was 18 when he was expelled from school in France in 2004 for refusing to remove his turban, according to a group called United Sikhs, which held a civil rights Conference in New York near the United Nations on Monday.

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The United States, in the dock at a U.N. forum accused of racial discrimination, said on Thursday it was combating hate crimes such as displays of hangman's nooses as well as police brutality against minorities.

A U.S. delegation defended Washington's record at the start of a two-day debate at the U.N. Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination.

The committee's 18 independent experts grilled U.S. officials on issues including racial profiling in the wake of the September 11 attacks, police brutality against minorities, and the high proportion of African-Americans on death row....

Some 47 states have laws against hate crimes, which they actively enforce, according to the U.S. delegation on Thursday.

U.S. officials had investigated more than 800 racially-motivated incidents against people perceived to be Arab, Muslim, Sikh or South Asian since the September 11 attacks.

Despite a drop in the number and seriousness of such crimes, identifying and prosecuting them remained a priority. [Link]

The UN General Assembly has passed a resolution against "defamation of religion," expressing concern about laws that have led to religions discrimination and profiling since Sept. 11. The resolution urges all:

States to provide, within their respective legal and constitutional systems, adequate protection against acts of hatred, discrimination, intimidation and coercion resulting from defamation of religions, to take all possible measures to promote tolerance and respect for all religions and their value systems and to complement legal systems with intellectual and moral strategies to combat religious hatred and intolerance.

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A United Nations expert on racism on Friday branded the defamation of religions - in particular, critical portrayals of Islam in the West - a threat to world peace.

"Islamophobia today is the most serious form of religious defamation," Doudou Diene told the U.N. Human Rights Council, which is holding a three-week session in Geneva.

Diene cited a caricature of the Muslim prophet Mohammed in a Swedish newspaper, a protest by far-right groups in Belgium on Tuesday against the "Islamization of Europe" and campaigns against the construction of mosques in Germany and Switzerland as evidence of an "ever increasing trend" of anti-Islamic actions in Europe.

"We see the initiatives and activities of many groups and organizations which are working hard to bring about a war of civilizations," he said, adding that right-wing groups are trying to equate Islam with violence and terrorism. [Link]

The UN Human Rights Council (UNHRC) passed a resolution on "Combating defamation of religions" by a vote of 24 to 14, with 9 abstentions Friday, expressing a "deep concern at attempts to identify Islam with terrorism, violence and human rights violations... and the ethnic and religious profiling of Muslim minorities... in the aftermath of the tragic events of 11 September 2001." The statement, endorsed by the Organization of the Islamic Conference, was opposed by members of the European Union, and other non-Muslim states like Canada, South Korea, and Japan partly because of its specific emphasis on Islam and concerns that the statement contradicted freedom of expression rights. It follows calls by Muslim leaders and lawmakers in several countries for legal limits on anti-Islamic speech more in line with Western laws on hate speech against Jews and Christians. [Link]

Representatives of nearly 25 Sikh organizations from around the world gave a memorandum to the UN on various international Sikh issues in Geneva on Tuesday.

Nearly 200 members of the various Sikh organizations from 15 countries assembled at Langenthal to highlight the problem of religious freedom. The conference coincided with the 50th anniversary of the Treaty of Rome.

Talking to ANI from Switzerland, Harminder Singh, senior member of Sikh Foundation, said that though most of the Sikh affairs in India were taken care by the Shiromani Gurdwara Parbhandhak Committee (SGPC), but as far as international Sikh issues were concerned, the SGPC had failed to take them up at international platform.

The representatives said that their demands include a request that the UN endorses International Code of Practice on Sikh articles of faith.

They said that Sikhs across the world were facing increasing difficulties regarding religious freedoms and their visible identity due to a lack of knowledge and ignorance.

The memorandum said that there was a need to properly protect the Sikh identity and articles of faith at work, in business and in public places.

Harminder Singh said that identity crises were one of the major issues for the Sikh living outside India. He lamented that SGPC also failed to resolve turban issue with the Government of France.

This was the first time that representatives of various Sikh organizations from different countries assembled on an international platform to not only discuss the Sikh issues, but also put forward their best efforts for resolving these issues, he added. [Link]