Amnesty International condemns US, China in report

Source: Associated Press

The United States is shirking its duty to provide the world with moral leadership and China is letting its business interests trump human rights concerns in Myanmar and Sudan, a human rights group said Wednesday.

Amnesty International's annual report on the state of the world's human rights accused the U.S. of failing to provide a moral compass for its international peers, a long-standing complaint the London-based group has against the North American superpower.

This year it also criticized the U.S. for supporting Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf last November when he imposed a state of emergency, clamped down on the media and sacked judges.

"As the world's most powerful state, the USA sets the standard for government behavior globally," the report said. It charged that the U.S. "had distinguished itself in recent years through its defiance of international law."



Read more: http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20080528/ap_on_re_eu/britain_human_rights

May 29, 2008
Amnesty International Report Assails U.S.
By ALAN COWELL

PARIS — Sixty years after the United Nations adopted the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, governments in scores of countries still torture or mistreat their people, Amnesty International said Wednesday in a report that again urged the United States to close down the Guantánamo Bay detention camp in Cuba.

In its annual report, the London-based human rights watchdog said “flashpoints” in Darfur, Zimbabwe, Gaza, Iraq and Myanmar “demand immediate action.”

“World leaders are in a state of denial but their failure to act has a high cost,” Irene Khan, the secretary general of Amnesty International, said in a statement accompanying the report. “As Iraq and Afghanistan show, human rights problems are not isolated tragedies, but are like viruses than can infect and spread rapidly, endangering all of us.”

The report singled out China, the United States, and Russia and accused the European Union of complicity in the extraordinary rendition of terrorism suspects. The European Union it said, must “set the same bar on human rights for its own members as it does for other countries.”

It urged Washington to close down the Guantánamo facility and other ‘’secret detention centers, prosecute the detainees under fair trial standards or release them and unequivocally reject the use of torture and ill-treatment.”

The U.S. State Department had no immediate comment on the Amnesty International allegations, which followed an exhaustive report earlier this month by the Justice Department inspector general in Washington. That review provided the fullest account to date of internal dissent and confusion within the Bush administration over the use of harsh interrogation tactics by the military and the Central Intelligence Agency.

More:
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/05/29/world/29amnesty.html?_r=1&oref=slogin&partner=rssnyt&emc=rss&pagewanted=print

(snip)

"2007 was characterised by the impotence of Western governments and the ambivalence or reluctance of emerging powers to tackle some of the world's worst human rights crises."

Ms Khan stressed that "governments must act now to close the yawning gap between promise and performance".

She said: "2008 presents an unprecedented opportunity for new leaders coming to power and countries emerging on the world stage to set a new direction and reject the myopic policies and practices that in recent years have made the world a more dangerous and divided place."
(snip)

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/in_depth/7422528.stm

Our government is actively leading the assault on human rights, and has dropped us into the category of the most flagrant violators.

Source: NY Times




Read more: http://www.nytimes.com/2008/05/29/world/29amnesty.html?hp

Do we have a shame smilie?

I agree that we deserve to be blasted for Iraq, but I do not believe we should be providing "moral leadership" in the first place. AI had it right years ago when it blasted us for assuming that we get to play the role of world policeman.