Report Says U.S. Antiterrorism
Effort Shields Rights Abusers
By Robert McMahon
A prominent human rights watchdog has criticized the United States for shielding
rights-abusing countries that are its allies in the global struggle against terrorism.
Human Rights Watch says in its annual report that the United States has undermined
support for its war on terrorism by failing to speak out strongly against major
abusers like Pakistan and China, as well as through its own treatment of terrorism
suspects. But U.S. officials say they have maintained a respect for human rights
in
foreign policy.
United Nations, 15 January 2003 (RFE/RL) --
A leading nongovernmental organization monitoring human rights affairs says the
United States is undermining its global antiterrorism effort by failing to act
consistently to protect rights at home and abroad.
New York-based Human Rights Watch says in its latest annual report that the United
States in the past year has shown it is unwilling to confront its key antiterrorism
partners on human rights. It says countries such as Pakistan, Uzbekistan, and
Russia have persisted with rights abuses with little challenge from the United
States, tainting Washington's traditional leadership role in improving rights
standards worldwide.
The report also says the United States refuses to be bound by the standards it
has preached to others. It said the U.S. government abused immigration laws to
deny criminal suspects their rights and refused to apply the Geneva conventions
to prisoners of war from Afghanistan.
The director of Human Rights Watch, Kenneth Roth, told reporters yesterday at
UN headquarters that Washington has a special responsibility to uphold rights
standards. "We are not claiming that the United States is the world's worst human
rights offender. But because of America's extraordinary influence, the Bush administration's
willingness to compromise human rights while fighting terrorism sets a very dangerous
and counterproductive precedent," Roth said.
U.S. State Department spokesman Richard Boucher told reporters yesterday that
the U.S. government has not weakened its support of human rights. He said, to
the contrary, that Washington has moved to make rights a central part of helping
strengthen societies in the fight against terrorism. "Democracy has been a hallmark
of our policy around the world, and we've made very clear in the war on terrorism
we think one of the best defenses against terrorism is to have the kind
of society that
is able to sustain itself, have the kind of society that's based on economic and
political freedom, where terrorism has a harder problem growing and a harder problem
existing," Boucher said.
But the Human Rights Watch report says that in a growing number of instances,
the United States appeared willing to overlook abusive behavior by states allied
in the antiterrorism struggle. For example, it faulted Washington for delegating
the security of post-Taliban Afghanistan to warlords and providing them with money
and arms. The report also criticized U.S. support for Pakistan's military ruler
Pervez Musharraf after he pushed through moves to extend his power. Human Rights
Watch said Russia and China received soft treatment from Washington despite repressive
moves in Chechnya and Xinjiang. It also said Washington shielded Israel from international
pressure after alleged abuses by the military in fighting Palestinian group and
their suicide bombings.
Roth told reporters that his organization recognizes the threat posed by Al-Qaeda
and terrorism, saying they can be addressed in part by using "classic security
methods." But he said the United States has proved too willing to permit rights
abuses, feeding what he said was a kind of backlash of growing anti-Americanism
and reluctance to join the antiterrorism campaign. "It is a gift to the terrorists
and for that reason, when we see this pattern replicated in Pakistan, in Afghanistan,
in Uzbekistan, in Indonesia, in Egypt, in Saudi Arabia, in Chechnya, we are profoundly
concerned, because we understand the panic response -- 'let's do anything we can
to stop the terrorists' -- but we hope that the Bush administration can gain enough
critical distance to understand that this flouting of human rights standards is
hurting the antiterrorism effort," Roth said.
The Human Rights Watch charges against the United States were seen as overstated
by another human rights expert, Ruth Wedgwood, who teaches international law at
Yale and Johns Hopkins universities. In comparison with most governments engaged
in war, the U.S. domestic measures have been relatively mild, says Wedgwood, who
is also the U.S. representative on the UN Human Rights Committee, a panel
that reviews how states comply with the International Covenant on Civil
and Political Rights.
Wedgwood told RFE/RL that so far domestically there have been no drastic moves
such as interfering with free speech and that the government has been using its
existing powers over immigration more robustly. The U.S. government, she said,
appears to be acting responsibly to a serious threat from a group that targets
civilians and has shown an interest in using weapons of mass destruction. "You
don't want to let the war on terrorism become the occasion for undoing all the
progress that's been made in trying to limit how military governments behave and
[removing] the kind of court transparency that you would prefer in a democracy,
but at the same time, you have to be realistic about the nature of
the threat," Wedgwood said.
Tom Malinowski, Washington's advocacy director for Human Rights Watch, told RFE/RL
that even as the European Union poised itself to become more diverse by
admitting 10 new members, it became less friendly to migrants and certain
minority communities. "Within the European Union itself, we're concerned about
increasingly restrictive policies on immigration, racist attacks against immigrants,
[and] against long-standing minority communities such as Roma or the Jewish community.
And some of these, particularly the more restrictive immigration practices, have
intensified since September 11," Malinowski said.
Malinowski added that HRW is concerned about the EU's ability to act in an effective
and unified way in defense of human rights outside of the union. "Whether it's
Chechnya, or Central Asia, or China, or Africa, it's very, very difficult for
the EU to come to consensus, to take effective and tough action. And in many cases
we've seen a kind of lowest-common-denominator policy," Malinowski said.
On a separate issue, both Wedgwood and Roth agreed about the need for reform of
the UN Human Rights Commission -- different from the UN Human Rights Committee
-- the Geneva-based body that meets annually to judge human rights compliance.
The commission is appointed by UN regional groups, but in recent years, a growing
number of rights-abusing states have joined and blocked initiatives to seek rights
reforms.
Roth said the commission risks becoming what he called an "abusers' defense society."
"Today, it's gotten so bad that some two dozen of the commission's 53 members
are there mainly for sabotage purposes. That makes it increasingly difficult for
the commission to condemn some of the most abusive governments, whether it's China
or Zimbabwe or you name it," Roth said.
The Africa group at the UN nominated Libya to be the region's candidate for chairman
of the commission, a move that is to be voted on by the body on 20 January.
Roth said the main way to reform the commission is to strengthen the criteria
for membership. He said members must ratify major human rights conventions, provide
standard invitations to human rights rapporteurs, and must not have been recently
condemned by the commission.
(The full text of the HRW report can be found at: http://www.hrw.org/wr2k3/)
(RFE/RL correspondent Antoine Blua contributed to this report.)