The United Nations Human Rights Council cut off a video statement from a human rights expert after the expert began criticizing UN officials for attempting to cover up the use of rape as a weapon of war by Hamas terrorists during and after the October 7 massacre.
The incident occurred last Friday, during a dialogue with UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Volker Türk on his latest report, while Touro Institute on Human Rights and the Holocaust Director Professor Anne Bayefsky was speaking.
Prof. Bayefsky told Arutz Sheva - Israel National News: "I was scheduled to deliver a statement at the UN Human Rights Council on February 27, 2026, by video - and prevented from doing so by its President. Free speech is non-existent at the UN so-called 'Human Rights' Council. Spewing antisemitism gets free rein."
"The context was a so-called 'interactive dialogue' with the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, Volker Türk, about his latest report on 'accountability.' In fact, Türk had produced a shocking attack on the state of Israel and its supporters that contained a litany of lies and blood libels," she said.
Prof. Bayefsky noted that she "was given a speaking slot as the Director of the Touro Institute on Human Rights and the Holocaust, an American UN-accredited NGO. I was the only American NGO scheduled to speak - and prevented from doing so. 45 seconds into my assigned 90-second speaking slot, I was interrupted, and the remainder of the video was not broadcast. The President of the Human Rights Council, Sidharto Reza Suryodipuro, Ambassador of Indonesia, with Türk by his side, stopped me. When UN authorities were challenged directly by name the UN 'dialogue' evaporated."
According to Bayefsky, while her remarks were deliberately cut off, antisemitic remarks were tolerated and allowed by the council president, including false accusations of genocide and starvation against the State of Israel, which had already been disproven. "The UN Human Rights Council President had the audacity to claim that my remarks were not 'within the appropriate framework, terminology and decorum of the UN and this Council.' That’s because the actual framework of the UN and the Council is the demonization of the Jewish state and incitement of Jew-hatred."
"The Council President said I was 'inflammatory' for simply itemizing the facts, when speech after speech casting Israeli Jews as demons, engaged in targeting children, and mirroring Nazi genocide, was never interrupted and allowed to proceed as apparently within the Council rules of 'tolerance and respect,'" she said.
She stated: "I was cut off after naming Francesca Albanese, Navi Pillay and Chris Sidoti for covering up Palestinian use of rape as a weapon of war and trafficking in blatant antisemitism. And after I named the Prosecutor of the International Criminal Court, Karim Khan, who is facing allegations of disgusting and repeated sexual assaults, and using the arrest warrants he demanded against Bibi Netanyahu and Yoav Gallant to divert attention from those accusations. Khan is still unaccountable almost two years after the claims first surfaced. Those are the people and the facts that the United Nations wants to protect and hide."
"After the Holocaust, the Nuremberg Tribunal said crimes are committed by men, not by abstract entities. That’s why I named names. The UN High Commissioner’s report was supposedly about 'accountability.' But there is no accountability without naming the perpetrators. This is a grotesque scandal. The truth is that Volker Türk and the United Nations human rights system are masters of unaccountability and human wrongs," she concluded.
Professor Bayefsky provided Arutz Sheva - Israel National News with a copy of the full video address that was censored by the United Nations Human Rights Council, the silencing by its President and the hate speech allowed, which can be viewed below.