A/59/329 discrimination: the non-citizen, the immigrant, the refugee and the “strange stranger”, owing to his ethnic, cultural or religious traits. In this context, the Special Rapporteur expresses his deep concern about the ethnic dimension of the massacre committed in Burundi in a refugee camp near the border with the Democratic Republic of the Congo and stresses the urgent need not only to punish those responsible but also for the international community to take measures to protect the minorities living in those countries. 27. People have reacted to this new ideological landscape by turning in on themselves, which has had perverse effects such as cultural conflicts and especially new discriminatory practices that target communities, ethnic groups, religions and spiritual traditions. An alarming feature of this new ideological landscape is the decline in the political and ethical determination to combat racism and discrimination. The front against discrimination has been broken by isolationism and a tendency among victims to turn in on themselves to ponder their own tragedies. The effectiveness of the fight against discrimination has been weakened in its universal dimension of solidarity by this phenomenon of retreat and even competing claims of victimization. In France, an anti-Semitic attack in the public transport system supposedly committed by young Arabs and Africans, who were said to have drawn swastikas on the body of a young woman, later turned out to be a story made up by the victim. Without verifying the facts, the media and senior politicians wasted no time in referring to those young people, publicly and repeatedly, as typical and natural guilty parties in the “crime”. The so-called RER C train incident — an unfortunate illustration of the exploitation of the fight against racism, discrimination and xenophobia by politicians and the media, revealing a readiness to assume “typical and natural guilt” on the part of certain communities and ethnic groups — is proof, in the last analysis, of a deep-seated racist and discriminatory culture and mentality in some influential political, media and intellectual circles. We have seen the re-emergence, in statements by politicians and in news stories and opinion pages, of expressions and concepts referring to entire groups and communities drawn from past racist and discriminatory rhetoric. This incident should therefore sound a real alarm concerning the need for and urgency of a set of ethics to combat racism and discrimination based on the idea that this fight is universal, all victims are equal and the problem must be dealt with rigorously. Otherwise, some forms of combating racism and discrimination are liable, in a perverse way, to strengthen these scourges. In the current context of overemphasis on security and isolationism, the political manipulation of ethnicity, race and religion and, in the last analysis, the rejection of cultural diversity constitute the electoral platform for a growing number of political parties in all regions of the world. Behind the demands for national preference often lies a xenophobic, racist and discriminatory political programme seeking legitimacy. 28. We are witnessing the invention of new forms of speech that seek to legitimize racism, xenophobia and intolerance, including through radically uncompromising positions on cultural, ethnic and religious diversity. Such speech, often used by politicians, is increasingly being rationalized and put into theory by certain important schools of thought. Samuel Huntington exemplifies this trend. In his most recent book Who Are We?: The Challenges to America’s National Identity,1 he asserts that the presence in the United States of America of “Latino” immigrants __________________ 1 14 Samuel P. Huntington, Who Are We?: The Challenges to America’s National Identity, Simon & Schuster, 1994.