Posted on 06/16/2004 9:28:46 PM PDT by doug from upland
Israel Defense Forces could violate Palestinians' human rights, a United Nations human rights investigator has warned the U.S. heavy equipment maker.
Jean Ziegler, an expert on the right to food in the Geneva offices of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, wrote Caterpillar that Israel used the bulldozers to raze homes and destroy crops, preventing the Palestinians from obtaining adequate food supplies and aggravating their "already precarious living conditions."
Caterpillar's actions "might involve complicity or acceptance on the part of your company to actual and potential violations of human rights, including the right to food," Ziegler wrote Caterpillar Chief Executive James Owens. A copy of his May 28 letter was obtained by Reuters on Wednesday.
Ziegler accused Caterpillar of supplying the IDF with armored bulldozers, but Caterpillar, which is headquartered in Peoria, Illinois, said the bulldozers were standard-issue equipment that later may have been modified.
Israel used the bulldozers "to destroy agricultural farms, greenhouses, ancient olive groves and agricultural fields planted with crops, as well as numerous Palestinian homes and sometimes human lives, including that of the American peace activist, Rachel Corrie," Ziegler said.
Corrie, 23, a member of the pro-Palestinian International Solidarity Movement, died last year in the Rafah refugee camp in Gaza after being hit by a concrete slab that slid down a mound of earth.
The IDF said the bulldozer driver never saw her.
Caterpillar spokesman Ben Cordani said the company's sales to Israel comply with U.S. law and are conducted through Washington's Foreign Military Sales Program.
"These are standard-issue machines that we produce and deliver to countries around the world," he said. At an April 14 meeting, 96 percent of shareholders backed the company's position that it cannot enforce how its equipment is used.
While Ziegler's letter was written under the letterhead of the High Commissioner for Human Rights, a spokesman for that office said human rights investigators like Ziegler were "independent experts who act in their personal capacity."
CAT should tell the U.N. to take a long walk off a short pier.
So the UN is now in the extortion business? I'm shocked.
How about if about 40 D-8 Cats assemble front of the UN Assembly building in NYC and push it into the East River?
We should call PETA animal rights crowd and tell them the UN is discriminating against CATS.
bttt
Of course a change meant to put some responsibility on terrorist organizations will be used to attack the big bad capitalistic corporations!
Wonder why Americans are arrogant and hate most of the rest of the world? Need our help, come calling - all the while attacking us from every angle.
DKK
Works for me!
And at the risk of repeating myself:
They're going to declare them 'assault dozers' - What a Kafkaesque organization!
hey, UN
idiots . . .
STUFF IT UP YOUR CORRUPTION!!!
The fact that No Muslim country can even light up their streets at night or run a factory is a Zionist plot. In fact, the reason why Muslim countries cannot create jobs and wealth is directly related to their being discriminated against by the entire world, even countries that don't get along.
It must be someone else's fault.
The world will be just fine when it caves into this ideology of wife-beating, unemployment and blaming everyone else for not following their god closely enough. Sheesh!
These Bozos didn't even want the Land of Israel, a desert wasteland, until the Jews came in and turned it into a garden with their ingenuity. Far be it from them to do the same in their own desert wastelands; that would be too much work! Much better to rip every one else a new one in the name of their god and shift the blame.
The right to food?
in the Geneva offices of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, wrote Caterpillar that Israel used the bulldozers to raze homes and destroy crops, preventing the Palestinians from obtaining adequate food supplies and aggravating their "already precarious living conditions."
What's the UN organization position on firms selling weapons to the Palestinians?
I love that image. Keep on repeating it.
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