Topic: human rights

Human Rights, Aid Groups Flak for Hamas

Evelyn Gordon 06.15.2012 - 9:20 AM

Fifty international organizations issued a public appeal yesterday for an immediate end to the blockade of Gaza, which they deemed a “violation of international law.” The signatories were the usual suspects: human rights groups like Amnesty International, aid organizations like Oxfam, and six UN agencies.

As Haaretz Palestinian affairs correspondent Avi Issacharoff points out, this appeal is sheer nonsense. Israel ended restrictions on civilian imports to Gaza two years ago, and today, the only civilian product not available “in abundance” is fuel – which isn’t Israel’s fault:

The source of that problem stems from the Hamas government’s refusal to pay the high price for a liter of fuel (like every Israeli citizen pays) and its insistence on receiving smuggled fuel from the Egyptian side at a cheap price, facing off against the Egyptian regime’s complete refusal to allow the continued smuggling of fuel into Gaza (also in light of the serious fuel crisis in Egypt itself).

And while Israel does maintain a naval blockade of Gaza, that blockade was deemed legal by no less an authority than the UN itself, in last year’s Palmer Report.

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How Irrelevant is Amnesty International?

Jonathan S. Tobin 05.24.2012 - 9:23 AM

The news that Amnesty International’s annual report on the state of the world has condemned the American raid on Osama bin Laden’s hideout in Pakistan, as “unlawful” should surprise no one. The group’s obtuse effort to brand every effort of the United States to defend itself against terrorists has long since reached the level of parody. Where once it could claim some moral legitimacy as a neutral compiler and observer of human rights violations wherever they were committed, the decision of the group to treat the West’s ongoing conflict with al-Qaeda and its Islamist allies as if it were a matter of American persecution of Third World innocents has lost Amnesty its last shred of credibility.

The defense of Osama bin Laden’s right to life and liberty should place the group’s criticisms of Israel’s efforts to fend off Palestinian terrorism in perspective. While human rights monitors are vital in a world where tyrannies are still commonplace, the inability of groups like AI to tell the difference between the perpetrators of violence and those attempting to defend themselves is a fatal flaw that has rendered them irrelevant to useful discussions about how to advance the cause of humanity.

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One in Five Turkish Generals Now in Prison

Michael Rubin 05.14.2012 - 8:30 AM

The Turkish press is reporting that, with the latest round of arrests of former military officers for allegedly forcing the resignation of Necmettin Erbakan’s Islamist government in 1997, one-in-five Turkish generals is now in prison.

Even those who see the end of military influence in Turkey as the litmus test for democracy should worry. Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan now targets political opponents, real or imagined, without restraint. Under the Turkish system, an accusation is enough to jail an opponent, sometimes for years without trial. There is no mechanism for bail. On its surface, the targeting of the generals is ridiculous: The Turkish Supreme Court affirmed the illegality of the Erbakan and disbanded his party for violating Turkey’s constitution. The European Court of Human Rights upheld the Turkish court’s actions. Turkish generals might have pursued unsavory actions—especially toward Turkey’s Kurdish minority—but the sheer number of those now in prison suggests a separate motivation.

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Standing Up for Human Rights in China

Max Boot 04.29.2012 - 10:27 AM

The Obama administration has talked a great deal about a “pivot to Asia,” meaning, presumably a policy of getting tough with China. Now it faces an unexpected but significant test of just how tough it will get. Chen Guangcheng, a blind lawyer, has put the administration on the spot with his unlikely and daring escape from home arrest and his flight of more than 300 miles, apparently culminating in safety at the U.S. embassy in Beijing.

The Chinese security services have large helpings of egg on their face after having let a blind man beat their tight surveillance, and in a society that values “face”–to say nothing of societal control–as much as China does, they will presumably stop at little to get him back. That could make for some uncomfortable meetings in Beijing, where Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and other administration officials are about to arrive. But both American honor and American interests mean that Chen must be allowed to shelter on American territory as long as he wants.

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The Troubling Correlation between Dialogue and Dictatorship

Michael Rubin 04.24.2012 - 10:07 AM

There’s an unfortunate correlation between high-level engagement with Middle East potentates and their human rights abuses. When Nancy Pelosi went to Syria, Syrian dissidents ran for cover. Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak knew he was off-the-hook when Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice went to Egypt and failed to mention democracy. Bush-era Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage called Iran a democracy and signaled regime hardliners that their path to repression was clear. President Barack Obama called Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan one of his favorite leaders; once an emerging democracy, Turkey now ranks below Russia and Venezuela in terms of press freedom and Erdogan rounds up political opponents in the dead of night.

Earlier this month, Kurdish strongman Masud Barzani joined the club. During his trip to Washington, he met not only with his usual interlocutor Vice President Joseph Biden, but also Obama. He gloated at his reception and calculated that the embrace meant that he would face no more pressure to curtail rampant corruption or respect basic human rights.

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Nocera Hits the Bulls-Eye on Magnitsky Act

Seth Mandel 04.17.2012 - 12:45 PM

President Obama has been decrying “the way Congress does its business these days” and promising to act “with or without this Congress,” so fed up is he by the lack of bipartisan solutions coming from the legislative branch. So the president, one would think, would be delighted that Congress has come together to produce a bipartisan, popular bill that would also give the president a strong foreign policy move while simultaneously beefing up his credentials on human rights and democracy.

I’m talking, of course, about the “Sergei Magnitsky Rule of Law Accountability Act of 2011,” a bill that would sanction Russian human rights offenders. It is named after the Russian attorney who was detained without trial for investigating Russian corruption and then beaten and left to die in prison. It is intended to replace the Cold War-era Jackson-Vanik amendment, aimed at getting the Soviet Union to allow Jewish emigration, but which is outdated and will likely be repealed now that Russia is joining the World Trade Organization. The bill was introduced by Democratic Senator Ben Cardin and has broad bipartisan support. But Obama staunchly opposes the bill. Today, New York Times columnist Joe Nocera adds his voice to the growing chorus of commentators, both liberal and conservative, who support the bill:

I have to confess that when I first began receiving press releases about this effort, which has gained traction in Europe as well as the U.S., I didn’t take it very seriously. Visa restrictions didn’t seem like much of a price for allowing an innocent lawyer to die in prison. But after watching the reaction of the Russian government, which has repeatedly and vehemently denounced the bill — and which is now, out of pure spite, prosecuting Magnitsky posthumously — I’ve come to see that it really does hit these officials where it hurts them most.

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On Iran Rights, Obama Finally Echoes Bush

Abe Greenwald 03.20.2012 - 3:00 PM

As Alana noted, Barack Obama’s Nowruz message to Iran has evolved from being solicitous of the Iranian regime to supportive of the Iranian people. Good for him, I guess, in the way that it’s always considered “fair” to say “good for him” after Obama weakly imitates the right move too late. But it should not be forgotten that this approach is precisely what George W. Bush used in 2008 as the first American president to extend Nowruz greetings directly to Iran. Bush said:

First of all, the United States of America wishes everybody a Happy New Year. Secondly, [the] people of the United States respect the great Iranian history and culture. We have great respect for the people, and we’ve got problems with the government. We have problems with the government because the government has been threatening, has made decisions that –and statements that — really have isolated the people of Iran.

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Obama’s Slams Iran’s “Electronic Curtain”

Alana Goodman 03.20.2012 - 1:15 PM

President Obama’s annual message commemorating Nowruz, the Persian New Year, is packed with sharp condemnation of the Iranian regime’s human rights abuses, marking the second year in a row that he’s has made human rights the focus of his Nowruz address. It’s a clear contrast to his 2009 and 2010 messages, which were intended to extend an olive branch to the regime, and glossed over its oppressiveness and belligerence.

This year, Obama also specifically called out Iran on its nuclear program, though he framed his criticism carefully:

“The Iranian government has a responsibility to respect its rights. Just as it has a responsibility to meet its responsibilities in regard to its nuclear program. Let me say again if the Iranian government pursues a responsible path it will be welcome once more among the community of nations and the Iranian people will have greater opportunities to prosper.”

He also slammed the regime’s censorship and control of the Internet, describing it as an “electronic curtain,” in an allusion to the Iron Curtain:

“Yet increasingly the Iranian people are denied the basic freedom to access the information that they want. Instead, the Iranian government jams satellite signals to shut down television and radio broadcasts. It censors the internet to control what the Iranian people can see and say. The regime monitors computers and cell phones for the sole purpose of protecting its own power. And in recent weeks the Internet restrictions have become so severe that Iranians can’t communicate freely with their loved ones in Iran or beyond its borders. Technologies that should empower citizens are being used to repress them. Because of the actions of the Iranian regime, an electronic curtain has fallen around Iran, a barrier that stops the free flow of information and ideas into the country and denies the rest of the world the benefit of interacting with the Iranian people who have so much to offer.”

Obama finally spoke about his administration’s “virtual embassy” for Iranians, a website intended to reach out to the Iranian people directly.

As frustrating and naïve as the administration’s comments on Iran still are at times, it really is remarkable how much worse it was back in 2009. Watching how the president’s Nowruz messages have changed over the past four years highlights how far he’s backed away from his misguided outreach to the regime. The recent focus on human rights and the candid assessment of the regime’s repression is very encouraging – especially when framed in terms of internet freedom – and hopefully signals that the administration will do more to assist Iranian dissidents on this front.

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Obama’s Renewal of Egypt Aid Sends Region a Dangerous Signal

Jonathan S. Tobin 03.16.2012 - 2:08 PM

President Obama faces a difficult task in trying to influence events in post-revolutionary Egypt. With its military rulers brutally abusing the human rights of their people and a rising tide of Islamism threatening to drag the most populous Arab nation into a morass of fundamentalism and violent conflict, maintaining the U.S. relationship with Egypt is inherently problematic. But as he did during the last days of the Mubarak regime last year, the president may have just managed to make a bad situation worse.

On the heels of the Egyptians’ attempt to imprison Americans seeking to promote democracy, Obama has directed the State Department to exercise a national security waiver that will enable $1.3 billion in military assistance to once again flow to Cairo despite legislation linking the aid directly to human rights concerns. It is believed the waiver was payment to the Egyptian military for its decision to allow seven Americans to leave the country this month. The ransom might have seemed reasonable to their families (especially because the father of one of those in peril was Secretary of Transportation Ray LaHood). But the move will disillusion Egyptian democrats as well as send a signal to both the military and the Islamist majority in the new parliament that not only is Obama not interested in human rights but that the U.S. is willing to bow to blackmail.

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Kasparov, Nemtsov call McFaul’s Bluff

Seth Mandel 03.15.2012 - 12:40 PM

On Tuesday, I wrote about U.S. Ambassador to Moscow Michael McFaul’s objection to tying America’s economic interaction with Russia to the promotion of human rights. McFaul was in Washington for a conference and also to push for repeal of the Jackson-Vanik amendment, a piece of Cold War-era legislation that sanctioned Moscow’s trade status for restricting Jewish emigration. Now that Russia is joining the World Trade Organization, Jackson-Vanik disadvantages American businesses, and so it’s time to repeal it.

But I argued that McFaul’s emphasis on repealing Jackson-Vanik was a dodge, since its repeal is uncontroversial. The real issue is whether it should be replaced by legislation that would hold Vladimir Putin’s administration accountable for its atrocious human rights record. Were McFaul not representing the Obama administration, I added, he might very well support such action–McFaul is the author of several books on promoting democracy in the post-Soviet space. Today, Garry Kasparov and Boris Nemtsov, two outspoken Russian opposition figures, take to the pages of the Wall Street Journal to make those points, and a few others.

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The West is Complicit in Assad’s Massacres

Jonathan S. Tobin 03.14.2012 - 6:30 PM

For months we have been hearing prominent Americans from media pundits to President Obama promising that Bashar Assad’s Syrian tyranny was on its way out. Most of this optimism was based on a faulty understanding of the grip that the Assad clan and its Alawite allies have on the Syrian military and security services as well as a misapprehension about what constitutes the tipping point in toppling despotic regimes.

But as Assad’s forces expand their bloodthirsty crackdowns to other cities in the country after squelching the opposition in the north, it is also fair to point out that he is only getting away with this because neither President Obama and the European Union nor the Arab League which professes to be horrified by these atrocities is willing to lift a finger to stop him. Thousands have already been slaughtered and thousands more thrust into Syrian dungeons where they are being tortured by the regime. But all these people have gotten from the West are empty words such as those uttered by the president on the subject.

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End of Jackson-Vanik Shouldn’t Be the End of Russian Accountability

Seth Mandel 03.13.2012 - 12:45 PM

Vladimir Putin’s brazen election fraud, conducted twice in the last few months, has put the Obama administration in an uncomfortable position politically. The administration touts its “reset” policy as a success, but with Russia’s recent attempts to shield Iran’s nuclear program and protection of Bashar al-Assad at the Security Council–not to mention the election-year efforts to stir up anti-Americanism–that policy is increasingly defined by American concessions to Russia.

The reset has also put its architect, current Ambassador to Moscow Michael McFaul, in the unenviable spot of having to defend his signature achievement. McFaul has a long and distinguished career writing about Russian democratization, and the inherently political job of a diplomat requires him to either excuse or ignore behavior by the Putin administration that he has been warning against all along. But the issue that put McFaul on the defensive is the Cold War-era Jackson-Vanik amendment, which punished the Soviet Union’s trade status for its restrictions on Jewish emigration.

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Executions Skyrocket in Iran

Michael Rubin 03.13.2012 - 9:20 AM

Ahmed Shaheed, a former Maldives foreign minister whom the United Nations appointed as its investigator on Iran has, according to Reuters, now issued his report:

Iran executed some 670 people last year, most of them for drug crimes that do not merit capital punishment under international law and more than 20 for offenses against Islam… The investigator, former Maldives Foreign Minister Ahmed Shaheed, also reported what he said were a wide range of violations by Iran of U.N. human rights accords, from abuse of minorities to persecution of homosexuals and labor unions.

Shaheed’s report was almost never issued. As Reuters continued:

His office and mandate were established last year by a narrow vote in the council when Western and Latin American countries, with some African support, joined to create a special investigation on Iran. Cuba, Russia, China and others opposed the resolution.

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Pro-Gay WH Ensures Anti-Gay Haven

Abe Greenwald 03.13.2012 - 9:00 AM

In December, the Obama administration announced a global gay-rights push. Officials declared gay rights to be human rights and issued a memo saying the treatment of gays abroad would be considered when assessing U.S. foreign aid. Gay-rights activists (and progressives, generally) swooned. I didn’t.

In a Contentions post, I noted that the initiative allowed Obama to shirk America’s unique role in actually securing human rights around the world, while earning praise from identity-politics activists. The administration’s failure (and disinclination) to maintain an American presence in Iraq after 2012 meant that anti-gay barbarians such as al-Qaeda and Iranian proxies would stay behind and prey upon Iraq’s homosexuals without fear of American influence. If Obama really wanted to protect gay rights from history’s most vicious anti-gay forces, I wrote, he’d keep America in Iraq (and Afghanistan) instead of issuing memos and giving speeches. And if the progressives singing his praises really felt that gay rights were human rights they’d have been more inclined to support George W. Bush’s freedom agenda and less eager to cut and run in our wars abroad. How tragic to have been proven so right so soon.

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Assad Forces Brag About Mass “Cleansing”

Omri Ceren 03.04.2012 - 2:42 PM

The Obama administration has begun planning how they’re going to prevent Bashar al-Assad’s chemical weapons from falling into terrorist hands. If they succeed, it’ll be the first time, and meanwhile, the president’s continuing flirtation with the Muslim Brotherhood is chilling the chances for any U.S./Russian cooperation on Syria:

A key problem, however, is that we have put our chips on Muslim Brotherhood groups and the brokerage of the Erdogan government in Turkey. That is a very bad policy move, one guaranteed to generate enemies (Russia, China, Iran) for our non-policy policy while giving nations like Saudi Arabia less reason to endorse our activities… If the U.S. policy were to fence in and discourage the Muslim Brotherhood, while bolstering liberalizing elements instead — elements that exist in every nation of the Middle East – we would make it more desirable for a nation like Russia to collaborate with us on the Syria problem.

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Strange Herring

Anthony Sacramone 04.10.2010 - 9:00 AM

Obama limits U.S. use of nuclear weapons to one minute after our glorious republic is a steaming pile of ash, toxic waste, and rotting human flesh. So there’s a plan.

World spared another Salinger “masterpiece.” Thank you. Thank you.

Subways of the future are so cool you’ll want to live in them. Unlike some of us…

Loon’s mommy says Fox News made him threaten Nancy Pelosi. Well, MSNBC made me punch a rodeo clown, you don’t hear me whining about it…

Office of the High Commissioner of Human Rights forces Steve Jobs to stop running those stupid “Buy Apple” ads.

Obama’s judicial nominee withdraws because she’s not universally acclaimed. Somebody needs a hug. Or clozapine. (I said or …)

NY Times Ethicist says stealing’s OK as long as you convince yourself it’s not really stealing. (Immanuel Kant call your office — and cancel your subscription to the Times.)

ObamaCare a definite pain in the prostate.

Do not quit your job as a nanosurgery technician to stuff envelopes from home. There’s no money in it, apparently.

No Flash a problem if you’re in the Hulu loop.

Fit pregnancy could result in scrawny offspring. O the ironies. And by “O,” I don’t mean O. Or O. Or O.

British farmers claim UFOs are attacking their sheep. Damn foreigners.

Minor-league baseball team signs girl pitcher. For the love of Joe Pepitone, where will this egalitarian madness end? Next thing you know, women will be running businesses and becoming heads of state. Miserable communists…

Prehistoric bugs discovered preserved in amber, just like socialism in the head of a Nation editor…

NYU School of Journalism names Top 10 works of journalism in past decade. Wait a minute — they have schools for journalism? They grade on a curve, yes?

The Twinkie is 80. Literally. Like the one you’re eating right now.

And Gatorade goes kosher. So now your rabbi can replenish his fluids during those really long liturgies. (H/T Abe Greenwald)

Karzai’s tirade makes perfect sense now. Hey, Hamid, don’t Bogart that hookah.

Turkey threatens to do to Armenians what they did to Armenians if anyone mentions what they did to Armenians. Which they deny doing. Unless you make them do it.

Fossil of 4-foot-2-inch boy found. He may or may not be the missing link. He may or may not have fronted an Air Supply tribute band.

And finally, Elizabeth Taylor, 78, is engaged. A triumph of hope over experience.

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