UN's Top Racial Agitator Hits Philippines

Remember Rodolfo Stavenhagen? He was the UN "Special Rapporteur on Indigenous Peoples" who last year issued a critical report on NZ's treatment of the our Maori population, that even Helen Clark called "unbalanced".


Mr Stavenhagen is a Marxist Mexican sociology professor, with a long history of subversive activity to his credit.

His current job seems to consist of visiting racial trouble spots, criticising the host government and propagandising on behalf of local indigenous and/or communist groups. Here are a few examples. Is there a pattern here, or am I being a little unfair?


According to African Security Review Vol 11 No 2 2002;

The UN special rapporteur on indigenous people, Rodolfo Stavenhagen, has now gone on record “condemning the Botswana government’s actions unreservedly”, after holding talks with the communities affected by this government’s policy.

According to News on Guatemala and Indigenous Peoples

The U.N. representative for Indian peoples concluded an 11-day Guatemalan tour Wednesday, saying 60 percent of the country's Mayans have been marginalized by "political and structural" discrimination and violence. Rodolfo Stavenhagen said institutional discrimination "wasn't in Guatemala's laws but in its practices."

According to Canadian website Alerts

Natives are suffering through a form of apartheid in Canada, says a UN official who toured three Manitoba reserves Sunday and yesterday.

Rodolfo Stavenhagen, a human rights leader and Mexico-based anthropologist, is in the midst of a cross-country fact-finding mission for alleged human rights violations.

"Generally speaking, for all indigenous peoples around the world, there is a sort of apartheid," Stavenhagen told The Sun yesterday. "It's a very subtle kind of discrimination. And sometimes it's not so subtle."

According to Mapuche Information in English, May 2005

SANTIAGO, May 6 (IPS) - One year after a report critical of Chile by the United Nations special rapporteur for indigenous rights, Rodolfo Stavenhagen, there is little evidence of progress towards a solution to the Mapuche land conflict.

So where is Mr Stavenhagen agitating now?

Rodolfo Stavenhagen has stepped into the very dirty war between the Philippines military and the the resurgent Communist Party of the Philippines/New Peoples Army.

From leftist Philippines news site Bulatlat

The United Nations Special Rapporteur on Indigenous Peoples last week warned that the Arroyo government’s inability to stop extra-judicial killings in the Philippines is undermining its international standing.

The UN representative, Prof. Rodolfo Stavenhagen, the UN Special Rapporteur on Indigenous Peoples, said that the pattern of human rights violations victimizing human rights defenders, social activists, community leaders and other innocent civilians alike, “is seriously undermining the international standing of the Philippine government."

Stavenhagen was in Manila last week for a national consultation with the Indigenous Peoples. He was in the Philippines in 2002.

The Indigenous Peoples Human Rights Watch, a network of IP and non-government organizations monitoring human rights, has documented 123 killings of indigenous persons under the Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo administration, from February 2001 to Jan. 11, 2007.

The report said that 84 of these alone took place beginning January 2003, barely a month after the Special Rapporteur's official visit to the Philippines in December 2002. The highest incidence of extra-judicial killings of indigenous peoples was in 2006, with 42 victims.

"Even if they (rights violations) have been denounced internationally, they continue to happen," the UN Special Rapporteur said. “There is relatively little progress to stop this violence, insufficient investigation of these… (and the perpetrators) have not been prosecuted and brought to justice."

Stavenhagen said he has raised all these issues to the UN Human Rights Council and the Philippine government in 2002. However, he said, stories and testimonies of indigenous leaders in the consultation show that nothing has been done by the Philippine government to abate the increasing violence, land-grabbing, deforestation, displacement and other forms of human rights violations against the indigenous peoples.

"The continuing violations, and continuing impunity of the perpetrators exhibit the lack of political will, and political competence of those responsible for the protection of human rights," said Stavenhagen.

Clearly Rodolfo Stavenhagen is a sophisticated racial agitator. Every country he visits is suffering from some kind of Marxist inspired racial discord. His job is to make it worse, in order to discredit the local government and render it more susceptible to international (UN) pressure.