Flumesday.com - The Human Rights Abuse Blame Game

The Human Rights Abuse Blame Game
    I came across an editorial Monday in The Standard, China's business newspaper, that mirrored my own thoughts with regard to America's annual report on worldwide human rights abuses. The editorial by James Rose, titled "Just Look in the Mirror," urges the U.S. State Department to do just that, rather than partaking in this annual finger-pointing exercise. And considering the American abuses in Iraq, Guantanamo Bay and the pending Italian war crime indictment of 25 U.S. CIA officers for kidnapping an innocent Muslim cleric, perhaps this year, the State Department could have kept its ideas about human rights to itself.
    In the 2006 report, released Tuesday, the U.S. State Department points its finger most harshly at China, Russia and Pakistan for rights abuses and declares the Darfur genocide to be the world's gravest human rights crisis. The U.S. perennially chastises China for rights abuses and in this annual report goes into great detail of how China "fell short" with regard to its goals. This year, the U.S. reported the Chinese government sanctions the harassment, detention and imprisonment of journalists, activists and lawyers and permits extrajudicial executions, torture and forced labor. Barry Lowenkron, the U.S. assistant secretary of state for democracy, human rights and labor told reporters last week, "Against the backdrop of 30 years, they (China) certainly have made progress, but against the backdrop of last year, I am disappointed."
    For the eighth straight year, the Chinese government fired back at the State Department issuing its own report on U.S. human rights abuses, released on Thursday. This year, the Chinese response was particularly vicious. The document touches on the Abu Ghraib prison abuses (above); accuses American forces of 500 violent deaths per day in Iraq; discusses the 6,742 individuals held by the FBI since 9/11, 75% of whom were released due to a lack of evidence; said "racial discrimination is deep-rooted in American law enforcement;" claimed American women are not paid equally for doing the same work as men; and addressed the violations of privacy on American citizens by the federal government as sanctioned by the Patriot Act. The document says, "The United States has lorded it over other countries by condemning other countries' human rights practices while ignoring its own problems, which exposes its double standard and hegemonism on the human rights issue."
    James Rose in his editorial Monday is equally condemnatory of the U.S. rights record and the presumptuous nature of the U.S. report. Rose focuses on the post-9/11 use of the U.S. naval base in Guantanamo Bay. Rose writes, "what about the 250 or so detainees at Guantanamo Bay who have been held in most cases, for years, without charge, and who are likely to be held indefinitely without any charges? Rose also brings up America's abnormally high execution rate and the fact that it was only in 2005 when capital punishment for juveniles was abolished. These two points were noticeably absent from China's report-- the death penalty for obvious reasons and Guantanamo perhaps because Chinese Muslim dissidents were held there on the request of Beijing.
    In response to accusations of hypocrisy, U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice stated, "We do not issue these reports because we think ourselves perfect, but rather because we know ourselves to be deeply imperfect, like all human beings and the endeavors that they make. Our democratic system of governance is accountable, but it is not infallible." And in fact, in the U.S. report, the State Department admitted to falling short of international standards for human rights. It seems as though human rights violations are being used as political ammunition and not as actual problems in the world that need resolution.
    I believe if the United States is genuine in its commitment to achieving true human rights throughout the world, it should start by scrapping its annual report on human rights. While the report may have been useful in years past, today's America has no right to single out any other nation for human rights violations. We have uncompromised independent groups, such as Amnesty International and the Human Rights Watch, to point fingers when they need to be pointed. And with every day that there are prisoners sitting in Guantanamo without charge, lawyers or even a trial date, not one person in this world, Chinese or American, should care at all what the U.S. has to say about human rights.