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 Dr. Pieter Mulder, leader of the Freedom Front Plus, accompanied by Mr. André Fourie, FF Plus councillor in Cape Town, will depart for Geneva Switzerland this week to attend the bi-annual Conference of UNPO (Unrepresented Nations and Peoples Organizations). Dr. Mulder was elected as an executive management member of the organisation at the previous conference.
 
The FF Plus will at the same time be attending the United Nations Forum for Minority Affairs, which takes place before the conference. The Forum was established by the United Nations Council for Human Rights to give particular attention to ethnic, religious and language minorities’ problems in the world.
 
This years’ meeting of the Forum has as subject the practical implementation of the UN’s Declaration on the Rights of Persons who belong to a minority (Declaration of the Rights of Persons Belonging to National or Ethnic, religious and Linguistic Minorities – attached.)
It is expected that the Forum will be giving more specific attention to minorities in Africa as the president of the UN’s Human Rights Council has appointed Ms. Soyata Maiga as chairperson of this years’ Forum. Ms. Maiga is a member of the Africa Commission for Human Rights.
The Forum will be taking place on Tuesday and Wednesday (27 and 28 November) at the United Nations’ head office (Palace of Nations) in Geneva Switzerland.
 
“The Freedom Front Plus believes that every opportunity to discuss the position of minorities in South Africa internationally, should be used,” Dr. Pieter Mulder, the FF Plus leader said. That is why the Freedom Front Plus supports the attempt of Flip Buys, Michael le Cordeur, Henry Jeffreys and Koos Malan to represent the Afrikaans language question at the Inter Parliamentary Commission of the Language Union in The Hague.
 
The Freedom Front Plus had held successful talks at the European Parliament in Strasbourg with a variety of minority parties. The talks dealt with minority rights such as language and culture as well as about affirmative action and farm murders in South Africa. The FF Plus plans to bring these issues to the attention of the international community.
 
“Internationally recognised concepts such as self-determination, group, community and minority rights are modern political concepts about which normal debates take place in especially Europe and the UN councils. In South Africa it is unfortunately still dismissed by larger political parties as politically not-correct and associated with apartheid,” according to Mulder.