People should be able to say what they think. Worship as they please. Elect those who govern them. For these reasons, the protection of civil and political rights should be the central work of this Commission. These rights should be uniformly applied without prejudice to ethnicity, political affiliation, or race.
Freedom of expression is the enabling civil and political right.
Most days at the Palais the distinguished delegates do a pretty good job of exercising that right, even though that right is not always protected in their own countries. Tolerance for the opinions of others is the price we pay for a free society. It means that we must make room for dissent, whether voiced on the Internet, in the press, or in the public square - on the Mall in Washington, D.C., the Place des Nations in Geneva, Red Square in Moscow, or Tiananmen Square in Beijing. It means that the Special Rapporteur on Freedom of Expression should not be prevented from visiting those countries from which he has requested invitations, but from which he has not yet received an answer. It means that beliefs and opinions, no matter how offensive, need to be heard, debated, and tested in what Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes called the marketplace of ideas.