The weekly pointed out that it was a stance taken ‘in line with an initiative of the United States and Israel, dissonant with commitment to human rights the Uruguayan State usually shoulders over international forums.’

Such a stance was made public following President Luis Lacalle Pou told it personally to the authority of Jewish Organization ¨B’nai B’rith, Dan Mariaschin¨, in New York.

The World Conference against Racism, Racial Discrimination, Xenophobia and Forms of Intolerance was held in Durban, South Africa, in 2001.

Leaders and members of the Afro-Uruguayan Movement expressed their ‘firm and forceful rejection’ of the government decision on ‘a process that provided Afro decent worlwide with visibility, recognition and preponderance, a key link in the all-important achievements of the 20st century.’

Leticia Rodríguez wrote on El País newspaper that ‘it is not a gesture of solidarity that the president does not participate in such an important event for the 300,000 Afro decent who live in Uruguay, it is an offense, a symbolic violence.’

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