Tuesday, January 14, 2003

"To fight terrorism, you need the support of the people in countries where terrorists live"


U.S. Human Rights Abuses Weakening Terror War, Group Says
International support for the war on terrorism is weakening because of human rights abuses by the United States, Human Rights Watch charged in a report published today.

The report, the group's annual survey of human rights issues worldwide, cited the Bush administration's detention of so-called enemy combatants without formal charge or access to lawyers, closed-door deportation hearings of terrorism suspects and the refusal to abide by the Geneva Convention in the treatment of prisoners held at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, among other examples.

"The United States is far from the worst human rights abuser," said Kenneth Roth, executive director of Human Rights Watch, a private advocacy group. "But Washington has so much power today that when it flouts human rights standards it damages human rights causes worldwide."

The report is replete with examples of other countries slacking off of their commitment to human rights and asserts that, in many cases, they have used America's recent behavior as an excuse for that. But the evidence cited for the main assertion, that support for the war on terrorism is slackening, is indirect at best.

An example, said Tom Malinowski, a director in the group's Washington office, was last year's elections in Pakistan.

"The radical anti-American party gained huge support in part, we assert, because Musharraf repressed the moderate center, and the United States did not call him on it," he said. Pervez Musharraf is president of Pakistan.

The organization cites that and other indirect examples in support of its conclusion.

"To fight terrorism, you need the support of the people in countries where terrorists live," Roth said. "Cozying up to oppressive governments is hardly a way to build those alliances."

The report says: "Even when the U.S. government does try to promote human rights, its authority is undermined by its refusal to be bound by the standards it preaches to others. From its rejection of the Geneva Conventions to its misuse of the 'enemy combatant' designation, from its threatened use of substandard military commissions to its misuse of immigration laws to deny criminal suspects their rights, Washington has waged war on terrorism as if human rights were not a constraint."

What is more, the report adds, Washington stood by and said little about human rights abuses by numerous friends and allies, including Russia, Israel and Malaysia.

"The overriding message sent by these U.S. bilateral actions," the report says, "is that human rights are dispensable in the name of fighting terrorism." And the result, it adds, has been to breed a "copycat phenomenon."

"By waving the anti-terrorism banner, governments such as Uzbekistan seemed to feel that they had license to persecute religious dissenters, while governments such as Russia, Israel, and China seemed to feel freer to intensify repression in Chechnya, the West Bank, and Xinjiang."
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/01/14/international/14CND-RIGHT.html

No comments:

Post a Comment

con·cept