Kuala Lumpur - South Africa said yesterday an outburst of anti-Muslim, anti-Arab feelings after the September 11th attacks on the United States showed the relevance of an anti-racism conference Washington walked out of last month.
"The events of September 11th have clearly shown that the conference, and whatever came out of it, have a greater significance now than ever before," Foreign Minister Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma said during a visit to Malaysia.
She said there were now stark lessons to be drawn from the reaction to the attacks which killed thousands in the US just three days after the conference ended. "We have seen how easy it is to stigmatise, to discriminate against a particular group of people or religion and that conference was precisely addressing issues around Islamic phobia and anti-Arabism, anti-Semitism," she said.