U.S. human rights report selective in criticisms

The Trump administration’s report on global human rights in 2017, released by the State Department on April 20, labeled Russia and China as threats to global stability, saying that their poor human rights records put the countries in the same ranks as Iran and North Korea. The annual report, mandated by Congress, catalogs human rights problems around the world, offering an encyclopedic accounting of government-sponsored murders, forced sterilizations, and other egregious acts.

“The Russian government continues to quash dissent and civil society, even while it invades its neighbors and undermines the sovereignty of Western nations,” said the acting secretary of state, John J. Sullivan.

Mr. Sullivan listed a number of atrocities committed last year, including the slaughter of Syrians by the government of President Bashar al-Assad, the massacres of the Rohingya minority in Myanmar, and the continued repression of North Koreans under Supreme Leader Kim Jong-un.

The report this year, the first written entirely during the Trump administration, exhibits significant alterations that reflect the change in administrations. John Sifton, an advocacy director at Human Rights Watch, said the Trump administration strengthened the report’s criticisms of countries it considers rivals while muting anything directed at nations it considered friendly.

A section that had been labeled “Israel and the Occupied Territories” was retitled “Israel, Golan Heights, West Bank and Gaza.” The word “occupied” was largely eliminated from the text.

Last year, U.S. ambassador to Israel David Friedman asked the State Department to stop using the word “occupation” when referring to the territories, and he has said publicly that settlements in the West Bank are part of Israel — a position contrary to international law.

The United States has referred to the West Bank as “occupied” for decades, and in January, the department’s spokeswoman, Heather Nauert, said that the Trump administration had not changed its policy regarding the term “occupied territories.” But in her remarks at the time, she carefully avoided using the word “occupied.” On April 20, she and other officials declined to answer repeated questions about the word’s almost complete banishment from the report.

Asked whether this year’s frequent descriptions of news media suppression might be considered particularly problematic in light of President Trump’s remarks to reconsider libel laws and his dismissal of critical coverage as “fake news,” officials drew a line between insulting journalists and killing or jailing them.

Rob Berschinski, senior vice president for policy at Human Rights First, said that in choosing to almost exclusively single out rival nations to the United States, Mr. Sullivan had given critics an easy means of dismissing the report. “This administration has taken selective criticism to a new level,” he said. “The result is a further weakening of America’s moral legitimacy when it talks about supporting human dignity overseas.”

As in previous versions, the report identifies problems in 194 nations while excluding the United States, an omission that has long prompted foreign countries to cry hypocrisy.

– edited from The New York Times, April 20, 2018
PeaceMeal, May/June 2018

(In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, this material is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes.)


Jimmy_Carter.jpg (13048 bytes)A cruel and unusual record on human rights

Jimmy Carter

The United States is abandoning its role as the global champion of human rights.

Revelations that top officials are targeting people to be assassinated abroad, including American citizens, are only the most recent, disturbing proof of how far our nation’s violation of human rights has extended. This development began after the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, and has been sanctioned and escalated by bipartisan executive and legislative actions, without dissent from the general public. As a result, our country can no longer speak with moral authority on these critical issues.

While the country has made mistakes in the past, the widespread abuse of human rights over the last decade has been a dramatic change from the past. With leadership from the United States, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights was adopted in 1948 as “the foundation of freedom, justice and peace in the world.” This was a bold and clear commitment that power would no longer serve as a cover to oppress or injure people, and it established equal rights of all people to life, liberty, security of person, equal protection of the law and freedom from torture, arbitrary detention or forced exile.

The declaration has been invoked by human rights activists and the international community to replace most of the world’s dictatorships with democracies and to promote the rule of law in domestic and global affairs. It is disturbing that, instead of strengthening these principles, our government’s counterterrorism policies are now clearly violating at least 10 of the declaration’s 30 articles, including the prohibition against “cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment.”

Recent legislation has made legal the president’s right to detain a person indefinitely on suspicion of affiliation with terrorist organizations or “associated forces,” a broad, vague power that can be abused without meaningful oversight from the courts or Congress (the law is currently being blocked by a federal judge). This law violates the right to freedom of expression and to be presumed innocent until proved guilty, two other rights enshrined in the declaration.

In addition to American citizens’ being targeted for assassination or indefinite detention, recent laws have canceled the restraints in the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act of 1978 to allow unprecedented violations of our rights to privacy through warrantless wiretapping and government mining of our electronic communications. Popular state laws permit detaining individuals because of their appearance, where they worship or with whom they associate.

Despite an arbitrary rule that any man killed by drones is declared an enemy terrorist, the death of nearby innocent women and children is accepted as inevitable. After more than 30 airstrikes on civilian homes this year in Afghanistan, President Hamid Karzai has demanded that such attacks end, but the practice continues in areas of Pakistan, Somalia and Yemen that are not in any war zone. We don’t know how many hundreds of innocent civilians have been killed in these attacks, each one approved by the highest authorities in Washington. This would have been unthinkable in previous times.

These policies clearly affect American foreign policy. Top intelligence and military officials, as well as rights defenders in targeted areas, affirm that the great escalation in drone attacks has turned aggrieved families toward terrorist organizations, aroused civilian populations against us and permitted repressive governments to cite such actions to justify their own despotic behavior.

Meanwhile, the detention facility at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, now houses 169 prisoners. About half have been cleared for release, yet have little prospect of ever obtaining their freedom. American authorities have revealed that, in order to obtain confessions, some of the few being tried (only in military courts) have been tortured by waterboarding more than 100 times or intimidated with semiautomatic weapons, power drills or threats to sexually assault their mothers. Astoundingly, these facts cannot be used as a defense by the accused, because the government claims they occurred under the cover of “national security.” Most of the other prisoners have no prospect of ever being charged or tried either.

At a time when popular revolutions are sweeping the globe, the United States should be strengthening, not weakening, basic rules of law and principles of justice enumerated in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. But instead of making the world safer, America’s violation of international human rights abets our enemies and alienates our friends.

As concerned citizens, we must persuade Washington to reverse course and regain moral leadership according to international human rights norms that we had officially adopted as our own and cherished throughout the years.

Jimmy Carter, the 39th president, is the founder of the Carter Center and the recipient of the 2002 Nobel Peace Prize. His op-ed was published in The New York Times, June 24, 2012, and reprinted in PeaceMeal, July/August 2012. For letters in reply to his op-ed, see below.

(In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, this material is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes.)

U.S. record on human rights letters

Following are letters published in The New York Times on July 2, 2012, in response to the op-ed by Jimmy Carter, “A Cruel and Unusual Record.”

To the Editor: Former President Jimmy Carter is right that “America’s violation of international human rights abets our enemies and alienates our friends.” The United States must take seriously the international human rights norms and treaties it has professed to follow, even as it wages “war” on terrorism.

Equally important, killing a broad range of suspected “enemies” around the world not only violates human rights norms but also escalates armed conflicts that we should not be engaged in. The United States can fight terrorism effectively without perpetuating a global war that only encourages attacks against us.

It’s time for the United States to end indefinite detention without trial and secret killings of people who don’t directly threaten us. We can’t wait to “regain moral leadership” only after we’ve ended all terrorism and achieved world peace; these are things we must do now to further it.

Daphne Eviatar, Senior Counsel
Law and Security Program, Human Rights First
New York, June 25, 2012

To the Editor: Bravo to Jimmy Carter for yet again stating the simple truth. I have been shocked and appalled by the dramatic change in the American conscience post-9/11. Even assassination, once an outright abrogation of human rights, has now become an achievement on which to run for re-election.

When I’ve expressed my dismay to even some of my most progressive friends, the usual response is that they are not “bothered” by it.

How can we preach the importance of human rights to governments around the world when we’ve become so accepting of violations by our own country?

Miriam Lawrence
New York, June 25, 2012

To the Editor: It is a sad day when former President Jimmy Carter has to castigate the United States government for repudiating its own human rights record since 9/11. Our rejection of 1948 human rights promises and our refusal to submit our current official deeds to judicial scrutiny foul our own nest and earn the calumny that now rains down on us all.

Benjamin B. Ferencz
Delray Beach, Fla., June 27, 2012

The writer, a World War II combat veteran, was a prosecutor at the Nuremberg war crimes trials.