Political paper? But of course, US
Friday, May 25, 2007
WHEN Amnesty International issued in London its annual evaluation of human rights promotion and found that the United States-led "war on terror" has stoked fears that are increasingly dividing the world, Washington dismissed it as a mere "political document".
"It's pretty clear that Amnesty International thought that we make a convenient ideological punching ball. And that is something that is not, unfortunately, new," said Tom Casey, a State Department spokesman. "I think if you look at the report, unfortunately, it reads more like a political document than an honest review of human rights around the world," Casey said as reported by AFP yesterday.
But of course. The US crying injury was the only way it would have reacted given the fact that the Amnesty report was more or less centred around Washington's foreign policy.
The report said the gap between Muslims and non-Muslims notably had deepened, fuelled by discriminatory counter-terrorism strategies in Western countries. Human rights are also routinely flouted in Iraq and Afghanistan, the front line of the US-led crackdown on extremism since the September 11, 2001 attacks on the US, which triggered a profound geopolitical shift.
The report showed the "terrible price that ordinary people are paying for the failure of their leaders to uphold human rights", said Amnesty chief Irene Khan.
"The politics of fear is fueling a downward spiral of human rights abuse in which no right is sacrosanct and no person safe," she said. "The 'war on terror' and the war in Iraq, with their catalogue of human rights abuses, have created deep divisions that cast a shadow on international relations."
In the 320-page report, the US detention camp at Guantanamo Bay came in for particular criticism — Amnesty said 400 detainees from more than 30 countries are still held in what it called "the public symbol of the injustices in the 'war on terror' ".
Amnesty had not only targeted the US, rapping various regimes around the globe for much of the abuse documented in the report. Even the United Nations took a shot as well, for dragging its foot and failing to muster the will to call for a ceasefire in the Israel-Hezbollah conflict which saw 1,200 civilians killed last summer.
"A human rights nightmare is unfolding under our very eyes while the international community remains complacent," Khan said on the plight of the Palestinians. But the "war on terror" provided an over-arching theme of the report's criticism, with Khan saying the US was treating the world as "one giant battlefield".
But of course the US was behaving only predictably as were some other regimes named in the human rights group's report. After all, the Amnesty report covers 153 countries, decrying human rights abuses from far-flung areas such as Darfur and to places closer to home such as Singapore, Thailand and Indonesia.
In a section on Europe, for example, it said the region was in denial despite the fact that it was "by no means free of these problems and the European Union has no cause for complacency". The report pointed at how last year, violations continued across Europe particularly in the fields of counter-terrorism, racism and discrimination, and asylum and immigration. Significantly, with the exception of one country, all EU member states are included in this year's report.
Rebuttals aside, the Amnesty International report serves its major purpose of sounding the alarm as it has done many previous years and helps voice what so many people around the world are powerless to voice: the abomination must stop. They may not succeed this time, but they should not stop.
"It's pretty clear that Amnesty International thought that we make a convenient ideological punching ball. And that is something that is not, unfortunately, new," said Tom Casey, a State Department spokesman. "I think if you look at the report, unfortunately, it reads more like a political document than an honest review of human rights around the world," Casey said as reported by AFP yesterday.
But of course. The US crying injury was the only way it would have reacted given the fact that the Amnesty report was more or less centred around Washington's foreign policy.
The report said the gap between Muslims and non-Muslims notably had deepened, fuelled by discriminatory counter-terrorism strategies in Western countries. Human rights are also routinely flouted in Iraq and Afghanistan, the front line of the US-led crackdown on extremism since the September 11, 2001 attacks on the US, which triggered a profound geopolitical shift.
The report showed the "terrible price that ordinary people are paying for the failure of their leaders to uphold human rights", said Amnesty chief Irene Khan.
"The politics of fear is fueling a downward spiral of human rights abuse in which no right is sacrosanct and no person safe," she said. "The 'war on terror' and the war in Iraq, with their catalogue of human rights abuses, have created deep divisions that cast a shadow on international relations."
In the 320-page report, the US detention camp at Guantanamo Bay came in for particular criticism — Amnesty said 400 detainees from more than 30 countries are still held in what it called "the public symbol of the injustices in the 'war on terror' ".
Amnesty had not only targeted the US, rapping various regimes around the globe for much of the abuse documented in the report. Even the United Nations took a shot as well, for dragging its foot and failing to muster the will to call for a ceasefire in the Israel-Hezbollah conflict which saw 1,200 civilians killed last summer.
"A human rights nightmare is unfolding under our very eyes while the international community remains complacent," Khan said on the plight of the Palestinians. But the "war on terror" provided an over-arching theme of the report's criticism, with Khan saying the US was treating the world as "one giant battlefield".
But of course the US was behaving only predictably as were some other regimes named in the human rights group's report. After all, the Amnesty report covers 153 countries, decrying human rights abuses from far-flung areas such as Darfur and to places closer to home such as Singapore, Thailand and Indonesia.
In a section on Europe, for example, it said the region was in denial despite the fact that it was "by no means free of these problems and the European Union has no cause for complacency". The report pointed at how last year, violations continued across Europe particularly in the fields of counter-terrorism, racism and discrimination, and asylum and immigration. Significantly, with the exception of one country, all EU member states are included in this year's report.
Rebuttals aside, the Amnesty International report serves its major purpose of sounding the alarm as it has done many previous years and helps voice what so many people around the world are powerless to voice: the abomination must stop. They may not succeed this time, but they should not stop.
Business Besides Oil
