[Peace] Fwd: Human Rights Hypocrisy

Wed Mar 1 07:25:12 CST 2006

Begin forwarded message:

> From: moderator at portside.org
> Date: February 28, 2006 10:05:46 PM CST
> To: portside at lists.portside.org
> Subject: Human Rights Hypocrisy
> Reply-To: portside at portside.org
>
> Human Rights Hypocrisy
> By Marjorie Cohn
> t r u t h o u t | Perspective
> Truthout -- Monday 27 February 2006
>
> http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/022706J.shtml
>
> Last week, the President of the United Nations General
> Assembly announced a new proposal to revamp the UN
> Human Rights Commission and rename it the UN Human
> Rights Council. The product of months of negotiations
> between the 53 member nations of the Commission, the
> proposal will be voted on by the General Assembly next
> month. The United States, however, immediately
> denounced the compromise. John Bolton, US ambassador to
> the United Nations, said it has too many "deficiencies"
> and should be renegotiated.
>
> Bolton stated last month, "Membership on the Commission
> by some of the world's most notorious human rights
> abusers mocks the legitimacy of the Commission and the
> United Nations itself." But Bolton was not referring to
> the United States, which invaded Iraq in violation of
> the UN Charter, killed thousands of innocent Iraqis,
> and tortured and abused prisoners in Iraq, Afghanistan
> and Guantánamo Bay.
>
> The United States and Western European countries have
> criticized the Human Rights Commission because it has
> elected countries such as Sudan, Zimbabwe, Libya and
> Cuba, whom the Western nations have accused of human
> rights violations.
>
> In a press release issued last week, the Permanent
> Mission of Cuba to the United Nations said, "If any
> government does not deserve to be part of the Council,
> it is the one who represents a State that benefited
> from the slavery and the transatlantic slave trade,
> that kept a 'constructive commitment' to extend the
> existence of the apartheid regime, that protects and
> bestows impunity to the human rights violations
> perpetrated by the Israeli occupation of Palestine and
> other Arab territories, that supported the bloody
> military dictatorships of Latin America, that today
> tortures and murders in the name of liberty which the
> majority of its own citizens do not benefit from, that
> fails to meet its commitments and obligations of
> official development assistance to the Third World, and
> that threatens and attacks the Southern countries."
>
> The United States objects to the new proposal's
> commitment to the protection of economic, social and
> cultural rights. The refusal to enshrine rights such as
> employment, education, food, housing, and health care
> in US law is the reason the United States has not
> ratified the International Covenant on Economic, Social
> and Cultural Rights. Since the Reagan administration,
> there has been a policy to define human rights in terms
> of civil and political rights, but to dismiss economic,
> social and cultural rights as akin to social welfare,
> or socialism.
>
> Indeed, the United States' inhumane policy toward Cuba
> exemplifies this dichotomy. The US government
> criticizes civil and political rights in Cuba while
> disregarding Cubans' superior access to universal
> housing, health care, education and public
> accommodations and its guarantee of paid maternity
> leave and equal pay rates.
>
> The US also opposes the new proposal's affirmation that
> the right to development is on par with the rights to
> peace and security, and human rights, as the three
> pillars of the United Nations system. Last year, the
> United States and Australia were the only nations to
> vote against a General Assembly resolution on the Right
> to Development, which was passed by a vote of 48 to 2,
> with 2 abstentions. It reaffirmed the principle that
> the right to development is an "inalienable human
> right."
>
> A member of the Commission since it was formed in 1947,
> the US was furious when it was voted off the Commission
> in 2001. Many countries were angry with the United
> States for its policies in the Middle East, and its
> opposition to the International Criminal Court, the
> treaty to ban land mines, the Kyoto Protocol, and
> making AIDS drugs available to everyone.
>
> It was only after behind the scenes negotiations among
> Western nations that the US was able to manipulate its
> way back onto the Commission one year later.
>
> The new proposal provides that members of the Council
> will serve for a period of three years and shall not be
> eligible for immediate re-election after two
> consecutive terms. This is objectionable to the United
> States, which wants to guarantee a spot on the Council
> for the five permanent members of the Security Council
> - France, Britain, Russia, China and the US.
>
> The United States also wants open voting on Council
> membership instead of the secret ballot elections that
> the proposal calls for. The US would like to make it
> easier to blackmail smaller nations for their votes.
>
> In his statement last week, Bolton also said, "We
> consider the United States a champion of human rights.
> It is a fundamental and bedrock tenet upon which our
> country was founded. Thus, when the United States falls
> short of the high standards we set for ourselves, we
> move swiftly and decisively to vigorously prosecute
> offenders who are US citizens in our courts." Yet only
> a few low-ranking soldiers and a chief warrant officer
> have been prosecuted for the widespread and systematic
> torture and abuse of prisoners in US custody.
>
> Ironically, two weeks ago, the UN Human Rights
> Commission issued a report decrying the torture and
> cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment of prisoners by
> United States forces at Guantánamo. It called on the US
> government to ensure that "all persons found to have
> perpetrated, ordered, tolerated or condoned such
> practices, up to the highest level of military and
> political command, are brought to justice." The United
> States, which has refused to allow UN or other human
> rights experts to speak directly with the Guantánamo
> prisoners, rejected the Commission's report.
>
> The US has a history of scuttling Commission
> investigations when they focus on the United States as
> a human rights violator.
>
> Last spring, the United States refused a request by
> Jean Ziegler, the UN Human Rights Commission's Special
> Rapporteur on the Right to Food, to meet with State
> Department officials to discuss the impact the US
> embargo on Cuba was having on the Cuban people's right
> to food. Last fall, Ziegler reported that both
> Coalition Forces and the insurgents in Iraq "have
> adopted the cutting of food and water supplies to
> cities under attack." Ziegler noted that "the
> starvation of civilians as a method of warfare is
> prohibited in both international and non-international
> armed conflict," citing the Protocols to the Geneva
> Conventions.
>
> The United States likewise pressured the Commission to
> withdraw Professor Cherif Bassiouni, the Commission's
> Independent Expert on Human Rights in Afghanistan, from
> his mission after he issued a report critical of the
> US. Professor Bassiouni accused United States troops of
> breaking into homes, arbitrarily arresting residents
> and torturing detainees. He also alleged that US-led
> forces had committed "sexual abuse, beatings, torture
> and use of force resulting in death." He wrote, "When
> these forces directly engage in practices that violate
> .. international human rights and international
> humanitarian law, they undermine the national project
> of establishing a legal basis for the use of force."
>
> "The United States and the coalition forces consider
> themselves above and beyond the reach of the law,"
> Professor Bassiouni told Amy Goodman of Democracy Now!
> "They feel that human rights don't apply to them, the
> international conventions don't apply to them, nobody
> can ask them what they're doing, and nobody can hold
> them accountable."
>
> Yale Law School Dean Harold Koh concurs. He wrote, "In
> the cathedral of human rights, the US is more like a
> flying buttress than a pillar - choosing to stand
> outside the international structure supporting the
> international human rights system but without being
> willing to subject its own conduct to the scrutiny of
> the system."
>
> The composition of the new Council will not likely
> differ significantly from the old Commission. "That
> reality," according to Phyllis Bennis, a senior fellow
> at the Institute for Policy Studies, "reflects the
> failure of the John Bolton-led US effort to impose an
> entirely new human rights infrastructure on the United
> Nations, one that would privilege those countries given
> a seal of approval by Washington to serve on the
> Council, with others, especially those in bad graces in
> Washington, prohibited from serving."
>
> In the next few weeks, we can expect some strong arm-
> twisting by the United States to scuttle the new
> proposal.
>
> [Marjorie Cohn is a professor at Thomas Jefferson
> School of Law, President-elect of the National Lawyers
> Guild, and the US representative to the executive
> committee of the American Association of Jurists. She
> writes a weekly column for t r u t h o u t.]
>
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