Archbishop Ivan Jurkovič
By AsiaNews
June 20 2020
Speaking at the 43rd session of the Human Rights Council, Vatican representative Ivan Jurkovič urged all states to “recognise, defend and promote” each person’s basic human rights.
VATICAN CITY – In a statement, the Permanent Observer of the Holy See to the United Nations and Other International Organizations in Geneva, Archbishop Ivan Jurkovič said that racial discrimination is absolutely intolerable in all its forms.
The Vatican diplomat made the point at the 43rd session of the Human Rights Council, during a debate on “the current racially-inspired human rights violations, systemic racism, police brutality against people of African descent and violence against peaceful demonstrations.”
Archbishop Jurkovič urged all states to “recognise, defend and promote” each person’s basic human rights since we are “all members of the human family, made in the image and likeness of God.” All humans, he stressed, “are equal in their inherent dignity, regardless of his or her race, nation, sex, origin, culture or religion.”
“We cannot,” he said citing Pope Francis, “tolerate or turn a blind eye to racism and exclusion in any form and yet claim to defend the sacredness of every human life.” Indeed, “The time has come to put an end to age-old prejudices, preconceptions and mutual mistrust that are often at the base of discrimination, racism and xenophobia.”
Jurkovič went on to say that “No one must feel isolated, and no one is authorised to trample on the dignity and rights of others;” in fact, to trample on someone else’s “inviolable dignity” is akin to “treading on our own”.
Echoing what the Holy Father said during the general audience of 3 June, the prelate warned that “violence is self-destructive and self-defeating. Nothing is gained by violence and so much is lost.”
