R. Zain's Blog, page 6

HRW and Human Rights Groups are an Insult to Injury

Human rights groups have criticized the election by the United Nations General Assembly of several countries with spotty rights’ records to the U.N. Human Rights Council. Of the 18 countries elected Monday to the Geneva-based body, human rights advocates say only about a third are qualified… Are they sure that only a third are qualified? Can they tell us that the other nations aren’t “spotty”?

“We made the decision in 2009 to seek a seat on the Human Rights Council because the United States believes that we must be at the forefront of speaking out against human rights abuses and speaking up in favor of those who are suffering and living under the grip of the world’s cruelest regimes,” said Rice.  Did Rice somehow forget that she is a part of one of the cruelest dictatorships with a foreign policy always aimed at war.

The United States, with a history of both promoting and disregarding human rights abroad, has a similarly mixed record at home. The federal government continues abusive counterterrorism policies, including indefinite detention and flawed military commissions at Guantanamo Bay. The criminal justice system is marred by racial disparities and harsh sentences. The US incarcerates more people than any other country, often in conditions that violate inmates’ rights. The rights of immigrants—authorized and unauthorized—are threatened by federal policies, state laws, and the rapid expansion of immigration detention. Finally, the US sometimes fails to provide remedies to survivors of abuse, particularly women and vulnerable groups.  -HRW

But I havent heard their concerns for the United States once again reelected to the Human Rights Council and while America’s State Department publishes annual human rights reports for over 190 countries, it turns a blind eye to its own appalling record.

Rights groups have expressed doubts about whether at least seven of these countries – Ivory Coast, Ethiopia, Gabon, Kazakhstan, Pakistan, the United Arab Emirates and Venezuela, however despite Human Rights Watch reports quite clearly state that Human rights abuses are abundant both home and abroad, the only concern raised was that a “group of nongovernmental organizations that work on improving the Human Rights Council had called on some of the countries seeking seats on the Council – Ethiopia, Pakistan, the UAE, and Venezuela – to take specific steps to improve their human rights records in light of their candidacies, given the extent of human rights concerns in those countries.”

I challenge them to name those groups (although the diligent will know who they are ) of which they have been condoning while working alongside and in the meantime if human rights are their real agenda, raise concerns on Nations with a long track record of human rights abuses who consider themselves a ”forefront of speaking out against human rights abuses”.

UN Watch recently put out a statement ”To add insult to injury, many of the unqualified countries trumpeted their election as international recognition of the high level of respect of human rights domestically.” Seriously UN Watch, if you are going to act as a monitor who is monitoring the United Nations, promoting “human rights”, it is an insult to injury to name those countries whilst forgetting the rest.

Human Rights Watch’s U.N. Director Philippe Bolopion criticized the lack of competition and the questionable records of some of the council’s new members, “It is certainly the case of Pakistan, which, for example, needs to do much more to end abuses, including to protect religious minorities or repeal the blasphemy law. It’s also certainly the case of Venezuela which falls short of member standards and needs to, for example, restore judicial independence or release Judge [Maria Lourdes] Afiuni. And it is also the case of the UAE, which needs to end rights abuses in the country. including the arbitrary detention of 63 prisoners,” said Bolopion. 

Bolopian failed to criticize their own HRW Report their own cover up of white washing and besides America’s Deplorable Human Rights Record not far behind the ignorance on British Empire crimes to name two of a few.