Rights Race: No Show by Uncle Sam

NEW YORK – When the General Assembly meets next week to elect 15 members to the UN Human Rights Council, there will be a notable absentee on the ballot paper: the United States. A country which has persistently taken the moral high ground on human rights issues — including rule of law, multi-party democracy, humane treatment of prisoners of war and protection of minorities — the US continues to be challenged for its political hypocrisy and double standards.

The criticism against the US has been particularly virulent under the Bush administration as it rarely practises what it preaches — or justifies its human rights violations on the grounds of fighting terrorism.

After the United States was ousted from the Geneva-based Human Rights Commission (HRC) back in May 2001, the Bush administration has scrupulously kept away from elections to the Human Rights Council, the successor to the Human Rights Commission. The primary reason for skipping the HRC for the last seven years is the lingering fear it will not be voted into the Council while its human rights record is under a political cloud.

At the UN, most member states are livid that the Bush administration continues to point an accusing finger at countries such as China, Cuba, Sudan, Zimbabwe, Libya and Myanmar, accusing them of gross human rights violations, while the US itself has failed to maintain exemplary standards on human rights issues.

At the elections in 2001, the US apparently went before the General Assembly with “43 solid written assurances” of promised votes. But at vote count, it ended up with only 29 votes, while three members of the European Union, namely France (52 votes), Austria (41) and Sweden (32) beat Washington to obtain seats in the Human Rights Commission that year.

Since the voting has always been by secret ballot, it was virtually impossible to track down the member states who reneged on their promises and written pledges given to the United States. The speculation is that even some of its own political, economic and military allies had refused to vote for the US. And until and unless a new US administration sets the country’s human rights record right, Washington will not be able to get back its seat in the Human Rights Council.

The US, after all, is described as “one of the world’s greatest human rights defenders.” So why is it that it cannot get a seat in the UN’s premier human rights body? The strongest political indictment against the US is found in the latest 2008 annual report put out by the New York-based Human Rights Watch (HRW) which says that the Bush administration’s resistance to scrutiny of its counterterrorism policies and past abuses continues to be a major obstacle to human rights improvement in the United States.

“Despite some efforts in Congress to change practices violating basic human rights, there was no evident progress concerning the treatment of so-called enemy combatants, including those held at Guantanamo Bay, or the use of secret detention facilities.”

The study, released in January, also points out that undocumented migrant workers continue to face an increased risk of detention, while other non-citizens are blocked from vindicating their rights in US courts. Additionally, persons convicted of crimes face harsh sentencing policies and in some cases abusive conditions in American prisons.

The catalogue of human rights abuses goes on and on — as it does with other countries such as China, Cuba, Zimbabwe and Sudan. The crucial difference is that these countries, unlike the US, do not take a holier-than-thou attitude or preach morality to the rest of the world. After all, you cannot cast the first boulder, unless your hands are clean.

The HRW report also said that although the Department of Defence released over 100 detainees from Guantanamo Bay in 2007, about 305 still remain in custody. But what is unacceptable to human rights activists is that most of these men have been held without charge for six years.

Worse still is the US torture policy, which is as reprehensible as that of other countries which it condemns. The HRW report says that over the past two years, the US Congress and American courts have repudiated the Bush administration’s authorization of “abusive interrogation techniques that amount to torture”.

In response, the Pentagon has announced new rules applicable to all interrogations carried out by American military forces and disavowed many abusive techniques. But the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), however, contends that it is not bound by these rules, according to HRW.

The Department of Justice apparently issued a legal memoranda in 2005 that authorized the use of “waterboarding” (simulated drowning), head slapping, and exposure to frigid temperatures. The ruling was that neither these techniques, nor any other techniques being employed by the CIA, violated the then-pending legislation prohibiting cruel, inhuman, and degrading treatment.

And in October last year, Attorney General, Michael Mukasey, refused to repudiate waterboarding as a form of torture during his confirmation hearings. But the bottom line is that torturing by the US is justified– as long as those being tortured are terror suspects. And this, from one of the world’s greatest defenders of human rights.