Warning Against Race Conflict

Press, Volume CVIII, Issue 31661, 23 April 1968, Page 15

Warning Against Race Conflict

(N.Z. P. A. -Reuter—Copyright)

TEHERAN, April 22.

The United Nations SecretaryGeneral, U Thant, said today that racial conflict was becoming a “destructive monster” which would make past and present disputes seem like small family quarrels.

In a major address at the international conference on human rights in Teheran, U Thant also gave a warning against the encroachment of modem technology on “the status and self-respect of the individual”.

remarks he made in an address to the Algerian House of Assembly four years ago: “There is the clear prospect that racial conflict, if we cannot curb and finally eliminate it, will grow into a destructive monster compared to which the religious or ideological conflicts of the past and present will seem like small family quarrels. “Such a conflict will eat away the possibilities of good of all that mankind has hitherto achieved and reduce men to the lowest and most bestial levels of intolerance and hatred. “This, for the sake of all our children, whatever their race and colour, must not be permitted to happen.” U Thant touched briefly on the need for access to birthcontrol information as a fundamental human right. He said parents and children “must benefit from measures designed to allow them to live their full life.”

He struck at the increasing emphasis on violence in television, films and popular literature.

U Thant called apartheid, the system of racial separation practised in parts of southern Africa, “one of the most flagrant abuses of human rights and fundamental freedoms.”

He said it was essential that colonialism, racial discrimination and all violations of human rights be eliminated “not at seme future time but in our generation". The Secretary-General's address commemorated the twentieth anniversary of the adoption of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. He recalled and repeated