Simone Somekh

Navi Pillay’s record should raise far more than serious questions about the Nobel Committee’s judgment. It should disqualify her as a recipient of the peace prize. 🔴 When a car bomb struck Denmark’s embassy in Pakistan after Danish newspapers republished the Muhammad cartoons, former Danish foreign minister Per Stig Møller says Pillay’s advice was not to defend freedom of expression, but to introduce censorship. 🔴 Her response to Charlie Hebdo was no better. She called the magazine “doubly irresponsible” for publishing Muhammad cartoons, described them as “malicious and deliberately provocative,” and said she “fully understands why people wish to protest strongly.” In other words, when Islamists answer speech with threats and murder, Pillay’s instinct is to rebuke those exercising free speech rather than the extremists. 🔴 In 2022, Pillay defended fellow UN commissioner Miloon Kothari after he invoked the antisemitic trope of a “Jewish lobby” controlling social media and questioned Israel’s UN membership. Kothari later apologised. A planned event honouring Pillay at Berlin City Hall was cancelled after the mayor withdrew support. 🔴 In 2010, she declined to attend the Nobel ceremony for the imprisoned Chinese democracy campaigner Liu Xiaobo, citing a low-level scheduling conflict in Geneva, as Beijing pressured foreign officials to boycott the event. 🔴 At the antisemitic Durban II conference in 2009, Pillay remained seated while Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad delivered his tirade against Israel and Western delegations walked out. She condemned the speech afterwards—but later admitted that she had been “naive” about Ahmadinejad. 🔴 And a review of her first two years as UN human-rights chief found no public statements by Pillay on human rights abuses in dictatorships as Cuba, North Korea, Eritrea, Saudi Arabia, Sudan or Belarus. This is the track record on which the Nobel Committee—and a chorus of commentators around the world—now celebrate this activist as a champion of human rights, freedom and peace. Despicable.