RIGHTS: Commercial Gain Came First in 1997

By Jim Lobe Reprint | | Print |

Jim Lobe

WASHINGTON, Dec 4 1997 (IPS) - The United States and other rich, industrialised nations tended to ignore serious human rights abuses during 1997 in order to pursue commercial and other interests, says Human Rights Watch (HRW).

In its annual World Report released Thursday, HRW singles out the administration of President Bill Clinton for tolerating serious human rights abuses abroad – particularly in China and Central Africa, and its “arrogance” in blocking the strengthening of international rights standards and institutions.

The report, which covers human rights conditions in 65 countries, cites the opposition of the United States to treaties banning anti-personnel landmines – as well as its efforts to weaken the proposed International Criminal Court (ICC) – as evidence of its arrogance.

HRW points out that new partnerships between non-governmental organisations (NGOs) and small and mid-sized nations – of the kind which resulted in this week’s signing in Ottawa by more than 100 governments of the landmine ban – offers a way to further the international human rights agenda without relying on the great powers.

“It is time to leave the United States behind until the day that it transcends the great power arrogance toward international human rights institutions that currently prevails in Washington,” says the report, perhaps HRW’s strongest attack to date on Clinton’s human rights policy.

The report also highlights a sustained attack throughout 1997, especially in Asia and Central Africa, on the notion that human rights are universal.

The invocation by some leaders of “Asian values” – which give precedence to social stability over individual freedom – reached its zenith in July with Malaysian Prime Minister Mohamed Mahathir’s call for a formal review of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

But the environmental and economic crises which swept much of Southeast Asia the following month, served to undermine this notion, even while they exposed the lack of government accountability and the absence of checks on executive power that lie at the centre of the region’s problems, the report says.

The new leaders of Central Africa, often referred to as “soldier princes” by their Western supporters, meanwhile introduced a similar concept under the slogan “African solutions to African problems.”

This is merely a “recycled version of the one-party state,” according to Human Rights Watch.

The notion that stability should take precedence over individual freedoms in nations recovering from war, chaos and even genocide, was used in 1997 to justify repression ranging from curbs on the freedom of association in Ethiopia and Uganda to the killings of thousands of civilians in Congo and Rwanda. The report goes on to denounce the West for “moral myopia” in failing to condemn these abuses.

“The US government was particularly conspicuous in its tolerance of grave human rights violations” in the region, according to the report, which adds that “international acquiescence in the abuses of these new leaders is particularly disappointing because it came just when much of southern Africa was showing great promise on human rights.” It especially commends the promotion of strong human rights cultures in South Africa, Botswana, Malawi and Namibia.

The report, released in advance of Human Rights Day Dec. 10, is particularly tough on the United States, insisting that Washington’s “selective commitment” to human rights and its obstruction of efforts to strengthen the international rights regime “reflected a cynical view of human rights as standards to be embraced only if they codify what the US government already does…”

The report also scores the United States and other wealthy countries for exerting “weak pressure” on China to improve its human rights performance in exchange for commercial advantage. The report condemns in particular the failure of France, Germany, Spain and Italy to back European Union sponsorship of a critical resolution against China at the UN Commission on Human Rights.

Similarly, the report charges Washington with being “particularly conspicuous in its tolerance of grave human rights violations” in Central Africa and most European leaders with keeping “quiet” about atrocities committed in Congo. Meanwhile, it says, the Pentagon’s “overriding preoccupation with avoiding all possible risks to its troops” in Bosnia prevented the arrest of war criminals there and clouded long-term peace prospects in the strife-torn nation.

The survey on human rights in the world, however, is not all bad.

With the landmine treaty concluded this week, the “new partnerships” of NGOs, Southern governments, and mid-sized European powers “could assume important leadership roles by insisting on the principle of universality and a strong defense of human rights when the commitment of the major powers is lacking,” the report says.

At the regional level, the report says that Colombia is perhaps the greatest human rights crisis in the Americas. This due to the ongoing killings and massacres, primarily by right-wing paramilitary groups which are often backed by the Colombian army, in Colombia as perhaps the greatest human rights crisis in the Americas. It added, however, the persecution in several countries of reporters and news media is the “most ominous development” of the year.

On the positive side, it cites the amendment of the charter of the Organisation of American States (OAS) to include a provision ostrasizing governments which take power by coup d’etat and the signing of a final peace agreement in Guatemala as especially hopeful.

In Asia, the report notes serious and ongoing abuses by governments and insurgent groups in Afghanistan, Sri Lanka, East Timor, Kashmir, and border areas of Burma, as well as the coup in Cambodia as among the year’s negative developments.

In the Middle East, the report condemns the way the battle against “terrorism” has been invoked by several governments – including Algeria, Tunisia, Egypt, Israel and Bahrain to justify curbs on rights – even as they condemn “deliberate and the indiscriminate killing of civilians” in Algeria, Egypt and Israel by opposition groups.

In Africa, the report expresses special concern about mass killings and forced migration in the Great Lakes region, the civil war in Congo (Brazzaville), ongoing fighting in southern Sudan, and the military coup in Sierra Leone.