It's
that time of year for the US State
Department's annual comedy classic, the
"Country Reports" on human rights. Funnily enough,
Iran is now among the worst offenders, along with
Cuba, home to the US's own Guantanamo Bay prison
for those not charged with any crime. But Iraq -
great news - has seen a significant improvement,
Abu Ghraib and Shi'ite death squads
notwithstanding. Rib-tickling stuff - especially,
no doubt, for US captives who have been
"rendered" for
torture.
Report by Jim
Lobe
WASHINGTON - Releasing the latest edition
of its annual human-rights "Country Reports", the
US State Department on Wednesday named Iran and
China as among the world's "most systematic
human-rights violators" in 2005, along with North
Korea, Myanmar, Zimbabwe, Cuba and Belarus.
In a 16-page introduction, the report also
singled out the human-rights performances of
Syria, Sudan, Nepal, Russia and Venezuela as
particularly problematic through the year, even as it
praised what it called "major
progress" in Iraq, as well as advances in
Afghanistan, Colombia, Ukraine, Lebanon, Burundi
and Liberia.
"In Iraq 2005 was a year of
major progress for democracy, democratic rights
and freedom," according to the introduction,
citing the "steady growth of NGOs
[non-governmental organizations] and other
civil-society associations that promote human
rights", as well as the holding of two elections
and one constitutional plebiscite.
At the
same time, however, it conceded that the country's
new institutions "remained under intense strain
from the widespread violence" committed by
insurgents and "terrorist elements", as well as
"sectarian militias and security forces" acting
"independently of government authority".
The latest edition of the Country Reports,
which were first mandated by Congress in 1976,
covers the human-rights situations of nearly 200
countries in 2005 and stretches more than 3,000
pages in length.
The publication, which is
based on reporting by other governments,
international and local NGOs, journalists,
academics and US diplomats, is widely considered
the world's single most comprehensive accounting
of rights conditions in specific countries.
At the same time, the report is focused
almost exclusively on political and civil rights
and rights to personal integrity. It generally
ignores those rights contained in the United
Nations Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural
Rights, which has never been ratified by the
United States.
As in the past, this year's
edition does not address rights conditions in the
United States or in US-controlled facilities
overseas, such as detention centers at the
Guantanamo Bay naval base in Cuba and in
Afghanistan where Washington has been holding
suspects in its "war on terror" in conditions that
some human-rights monitors, including several UN
special rapporteurs, have said amount to
"torture".
That omission has been cited by
critics as evidence of hypocrisy and double
standards. "This report by the US government
provides a thorough review of today's human-rights
practices around the globe, except for one glaring
omission - its own record," said William Schulz,
director of the US section of Amnesty
International.
"The United States
government considers itself a moral leader on
human-rights issues, but its record of indefinite
and arbitrary detentions, secret 'black sites',
and outsourced torture in the 'war on terror'
turns it from leader to human-rights violator,"
Schulz said.
Amnesty International cited
cases where suspected terrorists held by the US
were transferred, or "rendered", to authorities in
countries, including Egypt and Jordan, that are
accused in the report of routinely using torture
against prisoners held for security-related
offenses.
"This is a serious gap," said
Elisa Massimino, Washington director of Human
Rights First. Several years ago, she noted, the
State Department instructed drafters of the
Country Reports not to include actions taken by
other governments at Washington's request.
"That instruction was later withdrawn, but
the absence of reporting this year on abuses in
which the US is implicated raises questions about
whether it continues to skew reporting," she
said.
Massimino said the report's failure
to name a US-created anti-terrorism unit,
Detachment 88, in Indonesia in an otherwise
extensive section on police abuses there raised
similar questions about reporting on foreign
forces closely tied to the US.
While the
Country Reports avoid comparing the rights
practices of different states, the introduction
often singles out specific countries, normally
those with which the US has hostile or ambivalent
relations, for special censure.
In last
year's report, for example, the introduction
focused on six nations - North Korea, Iran, Cuba,
Belarus, Zimbabwe and Myanmar - which Secretary of
State Condoleezza Rice had labeled "outposts of
tyranny". It also sharply criticized two key
allies in the "war on terror" - Saudi Arabia,
which escaped any mention in this year's
introduction, and Uzbekistan, with which relations
have been severely strained over the past year
because of a massacre by government forces of
hundreds of peaceful demonstrators last May.
This year's introduction noted that
Tashkent's human-rights record, "already poor,
worsened considerably in 2005".
But
Uzbekistan was not included in the worst of six
categories of rights-abusing nations - those "in
which power is concentrated in the hands of
unaccountable rulers [that] tend to be the world's
most systematic human-rights violators".
Leading that group, according to the
introduction, were North Korea, "which remained
one of the world's most isolated countries";
Myanmar, "where a junta rules by diktat"; and
Iran, whose "government's already poor record on
human rights and democracy worsened" in 2005 in
part because of the election of a "hardline
president [who] denied the Holocaust occurred and
called for the elimination of Israel".
The
report on Iran stated: "The government's poor
human-rights record worsened, and it continued to
commit numerous, serious abuses. On December 16,
the UN General Assembly passed a resolution
expressing detailed, serious concern over the
country's human-rights problems."
Also
included in the "most systematic" list were
Zimbabwe, whose "government maintained a steady
assault on human dignity and basic freedoms";
Cuba, where "the regime continued to control all
aspects of life"; China, where dissidents "faced
harassment, detention, and imprisonment by
government and security authorities"; and Belarus,
whose president "continued to arrogate all power
to himself and his dictatorial regime".
The China report said: "The government's
human-rights record remained poor, and the
government continued to commit numerous and
serious abuses. There was a trend towards
increased harassment, detention, and imprisonment
by government and security authorities of those
perceived as threatening to government authority.
The government also adopted measures to control
more tightly print, broadcast and electronic
media, and censored online content. Protests by
those seeking to redress grievances increased
significantly and were suppressed, at times
violently, by security forces."
A second
category of countries - those whose systematic
abuses "of their own people are likely to pose
threats to neighboring countries and the
international community" - included Myanmar, North
Korea, Iran and Syria, according to the report. It
argued that the alleged interference of the last
two in the affairs of their neighbors, including
support for groups that Washington deems
"terrorist", were related to their purported
denial of fundamental rights to their own
citizens.
A third group of countries -
those that commit the most serious abuses within
the context of armed conflict - included Sudan,
which Washington has charged with committing
genocide in Darfur; Nepal, whose "poor
human-rights record worsened [in 2005] as a result
of violence by both the government and Maoist
insurgents"; Ivory Coast; and Chechnya and
elsewhere in Russia's North Caucasus region.
A fourth group - those "where civil
society and independent media are under siege" -
included Cambodia, China, Zimbabwe, Venezuela,
Belarus and Russia, according to the report.
The introduction also cited countries,
besides Iraq and Afghanistan, for positive
developments in the course of the year.
While civil-war-related abuses and
official impunity persisted in Colombia, the
report noted that the government's
counter-insurgency operations and ongoing
demobilization of paramilitary groups had led to a
reduction in killings and kidnapping.
It
also said the rights situation in the Great Lakes
region of Central Africa had "improved markedly"
in 2005, permitting the return of tens of
thousands of displaced people, particularly
Burundians, to their homes.
In the same
vein, it welcomed advances in Ukraine after last
year's "Orange Revolution"; Indonesia, where the
peace accord between the government and the Free
Aceh Movement (GAM) ended decades of armed
conflict; Lebanon, where Syrian forces were
withdrawn in the face of domestic and
international pressure; and Liberia, where the
naming of Africa's first elected female head of
state, President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, marked "a
milestone" in the country's transition from civil
war to democracy.
