A/HRC/15/53 I. Introduction 1. The present report is submitted pursuant to Human Rights Council resolution 13/16 of 25 March 2010 entitled “Combating defamation of religions”, in which the Council requested the Special Rapporteur on contemporary forms of racism, racial discrimination, xenophobia and related intolerance to “report on all manifestations of defamation of religions, and in particular on the ongoing serious implications of Islamophobia, for the enjoyment of all rights by their followers, to the Council at its fifteenth session”. 2. The Special Rapporteur submitted a first report on the topic at the twelfth session of the Human Rights Council (A/HRC/12/38) and the present report should be read in conjunction with that report. Following his previous report, which focused on the legal and conceptual questions concerning the debate on “defamation of religions” and incitement to racial or religious hatred, the Special Rapporteur would like in the present report to refer to related cases brought to his attention. In this context, cases received relating to issues pertaining to Human Rights Council resolution 13/16 and the related observations of the Special Rapporteur are the subject of the second chapter of the present report. Conclusions and recommendations are then presented in the third chapter. II. Issues pertaining to Human Rights Council resolution 13/16 3. Since submitting his previous report, the Special Rapporteur has continued to receive regularly cases on issues pertaining to Human Rights Council resolution 13/16. The cases brought to the attention of the Special Rapporteur cover a wide range of issues and appear to fall under the following five broad and non-exhaustive categories. The themes covered include: (a) acts of violence or discrimination, or incitement thereto, against individuals on the basis of their religion or belief; (b) attacks on religious sites; (c) religious and ethnic profiling; (d) religious symbols; and (e) negative stereotyping of religions, their followers and sacred persons. 4. The Special Rapporteur would like to underline that the above-mentioned issues sometimes overlap and therefore cases which have been put in one category could also have been classified in another one. The categories chosen are therefore not always mutually exclusive. Moreover, the Special Rapporteur would like to stress that cases reported below are summarized in a brief manner, without referring to all actions taken thereupon by the concerned Governments or other relevant stakeholders and without taking a position thereon. 5. The Special Rapporteur would like to thank the Organization of the Islamic Conference for the media reports1 compiled by its Islamophobia Observatory and conveyed through its Permanent Observer Mission in Geneva. In addition, the Special Rapporteur also received from other various sources, including civil society and other United Nations human rights mechanisms, reports on cases pertaining to issues raised in Human Rights Council resolution 13/16. Due to the word limit of the present report, the Special Rapporteur may only refer to a number of cases. He would like to emphasize that the cases below were selected because they exemplify issues and behaviours addressed by Human Rights Council resolution 13/16. 1 GE.10-14999 The monthly bulletins and annual reports of the Islamophobia Observatory of the Organization of the Islamic Conference are available from http://www.oic-oci.org/page_detail.asp?p_id=182. They cover an array of issues mostly relating to European and other Western countries. 3