Human Rights Report Excludes U.S.

Within two or three weeks, new U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton will present the report about human rights in the world to President Barack Obama. Like every year, the report is going to generate reactions in different sectors of public opinion, not only in Colombia but also in the 193 countries that it includes.

This habit of the Washington government is very curious: the most important member of the presidential cabinet communicates to the head of executive power all the violations of the 30 articles of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, published by the United Nations in 1948. This document has complaints and records of 48 countries in Africa, 31 in East Asia and in the Pacific, 48 in Europe and Eurasia, 19 in the Near East and North Africa, 13 in South and Central Asia and 34 from the Western hemisphere including Colombia.

The only country that does not figure in this report is, take a guess, the United States. Who could report on the one who reports? Who could certify if government officials of this country are submitting anyone to torture, punishment or cruel, inhuman and degrading treatments? Who could certify that they recognize in every moment the right to an effective recourse before national competent courts and protection against acts that violate the fundamental rights of citizens?

For Washington, the key tests are: to have free and fair electoral processes, government with transparent and representative institutions, that respect the law, and to have a “vibrant” (sic) and independent civil society that includes political parties, NGOs and independent communication media.

The report that Condoleezza Rice gave to George Bush on March 11, 2008 contained hundreds of interesting details. It said, for example, that in 2007 the governments of Mauritania, Ghana, Morocco, East Timor, Ivory Cost, Uganda and Thailand did well. Haiti, Nepal, Georgia, Kyrgyzstan, Colombia, Iraq, Lebanon, Congo, and Kenya committed surmountable faults.

Those who definitely performed badly were Russia, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, Afghanistan, China, Nigeria, Egypt, Azerbaijan, Rwanda, Vietnam, Tunisia and Kazakhstan. And in the group of the worst figured North Korea, Burma, Iran, Syria, Zimbabwe, Cuba, Belarus, Uzbekistan, Eritrea and Sudan.

Out of pure curiosity I arbitrarily chose the reports on Japan, France and Germany. Rice said that, in Japan, the families of those condemned to death don’t have the right to know the date of the execution, there are arbitrary acts and mistreatment in prisons, child pornography is not illegal and there is a lot of impunity for violators of women and children. Furthermore, there is ethnic discrimination and discrimination against foreigners.

Also in France there is overpopulation in prisons, frequent trial delays, anti-Semitism, discrimination against Muslims, hostility against immigrants, social violence against women, sexual abuse against children and human trafficking. And in Germany freedom of expression and group association is being restricted with the excuse that these people are extremists, they insult those who are seeking asylum, there is violence against women, anti-Semitism and pestering of racial minorities and foreigners.

We will see this year who has mended their ways. What would happen if we all began to put to the test the people of the White House?