After
Haiti
is US human rights policy confused?
By
Jonathan
Power
March 3, 2004
LONDON - The human rights theologians are going to
have a stressful week or two trying to decide whether the
U.S. and France moved against President Jean-Bertrand
Aristide of Haiti because they defending human rights or
undermining them. Perhaps it all depends on which end of
the telescope you look through. Were they deposing a
freely elected president and thus subverting the cause of
democracy or were they attempting to end a state of
affairs where an elected president had surrounded himself
by street gangs, thugs and manifestly corrupt acolytes,
and the rule of law on which all human rights depend had
become a violence-provoking sham?
There is an unthought out belief circulating in the
human rights community that under the Bush administration
the U.S. stance on human rights has sharply deteriorated.
There is, needless to say, much evidence of this- the
Guantanamo detentions of Al Qaeda suspects and rather
well substantiated reports that the White House is
tolerating torture against other detainees as long as
it's done by the operatives of allies on foreign
soil.
But to concentrate on the obviously distasteful- and
in terms of the larger goal of promoting western
standards of democracy, quite counterproductive- is to
oversimplify. In many areas and on many issues human
rights policy is much more nuanced and depends on a
complicated assessment of priorities and pressures.
This is argued in a new study published by the
International Institute for Strategic Studies, written by
Rosemary Foot. As she points out, before September 11th
Pakistan was dead in the water as far as Washington was
concerned. But once President Pervez Musharraf had
overnight turned his country's foreign policy from pro
Taliban to pro US nearly all sanctions were cancelled.
Subsequently, despite Musharraf's moves to concentrate
power in his hands and a continuation of serious human
rights abuses, Pakistan was given waiver after waiver by
President George W. Bush.
The same happened in Indonesia. In the face of an
earlier unequivocal U.S. demand for trials of those
military officers accused of mass murders in the former
territory of East Timor all significant pressure was
shelved once the hunt for Al Qaeda personnel in Indonesia
became the prime U.S. concern.
But in Uzbekistan, also a front line state in the
battle against Al Qaeda, policy has been more nuanced.
After September 11th the country quickly offered its
airspace and a base to the U.S.. In return the U.S.
sharply increased its amount of economic aid.
Nevertheless, the State Department in its 2003 report on
human rights employed some of the toughest language about
any country when describing the situation in Uzbekistan.
The U.S. kept up the pressure for Uzbekistan to admit the
International Committee of the Red Cross and the UN
Special Rapporteur on Torture. And this was done.
China too has been an important ally in the war
against terrorism. But Washington has been careful not to
allow China to dress up its repression in the Muslim
region of Xingjiang Uighur as an anti-terrorist campaign.
The U.S. ambassador to Beijing, Clark Randt, has been
outspoken on what his position is on human rights
issues. "No other single issue receives more of my
personal attention", he says bluntly. The U.S., although
closer to China now than it has ever been, has made it
clear that it can never have a more equal relationship
with China until matters improve on this front.
So what makes the difference in Washington's
stance? It seems to be very much a question of
Congress' attitude. When Congress is in a compromising
mode then there is no restraint on the Administration's
own desire to compromise. But when Congressional opinion
is firm it seems to work to straighten the spine of the
administration. And this doesn't always correlate well
with the left/right divide.
I recall once interviewing Jimmy Carter, who liked to
think he was the "human rights president". "There is no
way that Amnesty International, for all its wonderful
work, can play the same role as the president of the
U.S.", he told me. I thought at the time "yes, but only
if he wants to". It was Carter himself who let Pakistan
off the hook following the Soviet invasion of
Afghanistan, and Congress allowed him to. But it was a
conservative president, Ronald Reagan, who struck one of
the most significant blows for human rights by winning
Congress' approval for the UN Convention against Torture
(without which General Augusto Pinochet would never have
been arrested). Moreover, many neo-conservatives today
argue vociferously for a "democratic peace" i.e. the
notion that democracies do not go to war against each
other. Spine on human rights can come from all sides of
the political spectrum. Human rights activists have to
know how to take advantage of this.
Following Aristide's overthrow once again they are
being compelled to learn to recognize shades of grey in
winning the battle for high standards on human
rights.
I can be reached by phone +44
7785 351172 and e-mail: JonatPower@aol.com
Copyright © 2004 By
JONATHAN POWER
Follow this
link to read about - and order - Jonathan Power's book
written for the
40th Anniversary of
Amnesty International
"Like
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