Human Rights Hypocrisy

The annual US State Department Report on Human Rights has just been made public. It is too early to know if this, like many previous reports is tainted by ideological or national security concerns, criticizing those who are our political enemies and going light over the faults of those who are our friends and allies. In one sense, it coes not matter. The question of truthfulness is certainly not determined by US State Department dictamens. There are many good, honest independent groups who can do this. The question if "credibility." And it is on that point that that the US reports is, has always been and will continue to be in the category of "hypocritical", not "credible."

The Washington Times report on the State Department findings wants to use it as a way to criticize Hillary Clinton's recent statements in China about human rights not interfering with other developing agendas. So the Times quotes an Amnesty International source to make their point: "The United States is one of the only countries that can meaningfully stand up to China on human rights issues," said T. Kumar, Amnesty International's advocacy director for Asia and the Pacific. "But by commenting that human rights will not interfere with other priorities, Secretary Clinton damages future U.S. initiatives to protect those rights in China."

I am not sure what role T. Kumas plays with Amnesty International, assuming the Times correctly quotes and identifies him, but his statement does his organization no good service by tying its credibility to the credibility of the US.

Clinton, by the way, maintains that human rights is very important to her personally and to the US State Department under her leadership.

The guy from Amnesty is wrong. What meaningful and credible stand can a country like the US which has not even signed many of the most crucial and significant UN Human Rights treaties make to any country in the world? I will not even mention that many independent human rights groups are currently making assessments of who in the previous US government to bring to international courts on charges of violations of human rights and even crimes against humanity. Then add Guantanamo. But, really, even before the Bush administration decided that the only human right that mattered was their right to do unto others before they do unto us, the credibility of the US has always been in question because of its lack of commitment to basic human rights witnessed by the lack of its signature on many of the treaties. this may also explain why the report of the US State Department has always been more reflective of political concerns rather than objective monitoring and evaluation based on human rights criteria.

I guess I am old fashioned or out of tune with reality, but I had the impression that first you had to demonstrate your commitment to human rights (by signing basic traties accepted by considerable number of other states in the world) and, then, demonstrate that you actually respect them before you go around pronoucing on how others respect human rights.

I am confident that human rights violations are growing in China (many credible sources have documented this fact). I am not confident at all that whatever the US State Department says about Human Rights has much more reach in the world other than that, in times of economic trouble, it creates and supports some number of jobs in order to create the report.

If Clinton and the Washington Times (sic) are really concerned about human rights they can begin by joining together in a campaign to get the Congress to sign, let's see, there are so many, but lets begin with the UN Treaty of the Rights of The Child (President Clinton signed it but the Congress did not ratify). That would be a first step back toward credibility.