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   From: o@o.org   
      
   US on human rights: Laugh yourself to death   
      
   It's that time of year for the US State Department's annual comedy classic,   
   the "Country Reports" on human rights. Funnily enough, Iran is now among the   
   worst offenders, along with Cuba, home to the US's own Guantanamo Bay prison   
   for those not charged with any crime. But Iraq - great news - has seen a   
   significant improvement, Abu Ghraib and Shi'ite death squads   
   notwithstanding. Rib-tickling stuff - especially, no doubt, for US captives   
   who have been "rendered" for torture.   
      
   Report by Jim Lobe   
      
   WASHINGTON - Releasing the latest edition of its annual human-rights   
   "Country Reports", the US State Department on Wednesday named Iran and China   
   as among the world's "most systematic human-rights violators" in 2005, along   
   with North Korea, Myanmar, Zimbabwe, Cuba and Belarus.   
      
   In a 16-page introduction, the report also singled out the human-rights   
   performances of Syria, Sudan, Nepal, Russia and Venezuela as particularly   
   problematic through the year, even as it praised what it called "major   
   progress" in Iraq, as well as advances in Afghanistan, Colombia, Ukraine,   
   Lebanon, Burundi and Liberia.   
      
   "In Iraq 2005 was a year of major progress for democracy, democratic rights   
   and freedom," according to the introduction, citing the "steady growth of   
   NGOs [non-governmental organizations] and other civil-society associations   
   that promote human rights", as well as the holding of two elections and one   
   constitutional plebiscite.   
      
   At the same time, however, it conceded that the country's new institutions   
   "remained under intense strain from the widespread violence" committed by   
   insurgents and "terrorist elements", as well as "sectarian militias and   
   security forces" acting "independently of government authority".   
      
   The latest edition of the Country Reports, which were first mandated by   
   Congress in 1976, covers the human-rights situations of nearly 200 countries   
   in 2005 and stretches more than 3,000 pages in length.   
      
   The publication, which is based on reporting by other governments,   
   international and local NGOs, journalists, academics and US diplomats, is   
   widely considered the world's single most comprehensive accounting of rights   
   conditions in specific countries.   
      
   At the same time, the report is focused almost exclusively on political and   
   civil rights and rights to personal integrity. It generally ignores those   
   rights contained in the United Nations Covenant on Economic, Social and   
   Cultural Rights, which has never been ratified by the United States.   
      
   As in the past, this year's edition does not address rights conditions in   
   the United States or in US-controlled facilities overseas, such as detention   
   centers at the Guantanamo Bay naval base in Cuba and in Afghanistan where   
   Washington has been holding suspects in its "war on terror" in conditions   
   that some human-rights monitors, including several UN special rapporteurs,   
   have said amount to "torture".   
      
   That omission has been cited by critics as evidence of hypocrisy and double   
   standards. "This report by the US government provides a thorough review of   
   today's human-rights practices around the globe, except for one glaring   
   omission - its own record," said William Schulz, director of the US section   
   of Amnesty International.   
      
   "The United States government considers itself a moral leader on   
   human-rights issues, but its record of indefinite and arbitrary detentions,   
   secret 'black sites', and outsourced torture in the 'war on terror' turns it   
   from leader to human-rights violator," Schulz said.   
      
   Amnesty International cited cases where suspected terrorists held by the US   
   were transferred, or "rendered", to authorities in countries, including   
   Egypt and Jordan, that are accused in the report of routinely using torture   
   against prisoners held for security-related offenses.   
      
   "This is a serious gap," said Elisa Massimino, Washington director of Human   
   Rights First. Several years ago, she noted, the State Department instructed   
   drafters of the Country Reports not to include actions taken by other   
   governments at Washington's request.   
      
   "That instruction was later withdrawn, but the absence of reporting this   
   year on abuses in which the US is implicated raises questions about whether   
   it continues to skew reporting," she said.   
      
   Massimino said the report's failure to name a US-created anti-terrorism   
   unit, Detachment 88, in Indonesia in an otherwise extensive section on   
   police abuses there raised similar questions about reporting on foreign   
   forces closely tied to the US.   
      
   While the Country Reports avoid comparing the rights practices of different   
   states, the introduction often singles out specific countries, normally   
   those with which the US has hostile or ambivalent relations, for special   
   censure.   
      
   In last year's report, for example, the introduction focused on six   
   nations - North Korea, Iran, Cuba, Belarus, Zimbabwe and Myanmar - which   
   Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice had labeled "outposts of tyranny". It   
   also sharply criticized two key allies in the "war on terror" - Saudi   
   Arabia, which escaped any mention in this year's introduction, and   
   Uzbekistan, with which relations have been severely strained over the past   
   year because of a massacre by government forces of hundreds of peaceful   
   demonstrators last May.   
      
   This year's introduction noted that Tashkent's human-rights record, "already   
   poor, worsened considerably in 2005".   
      
   But Uzbekistan was not included in the worst of six categories of   
   rights-abusing nations - those "in which power is concentrated in the hands   
   of unaccountable rulers [that] tend to be the world's most systematic   
   human-rights violators".   
      
   Leading that group, according to the introduction, were North Korea, "which   
   remained one of the world's most isolated countries"; Myanmar, "where a   
   junta rules by diktat"; and Iran, whose "government's already poor record on   
   human rights and democracy worsened" in 2005 in part because of the election   
   of a "hardline president [who] denied the Holocaust occurred and called for   
   the elimination of Israel".   
      
   The report on Iran stated: "The government's poor human-rights record   
   worsened, and it continued to commit numerous, serious abuses. On December   
   16, the UN General Assembly passed a resolution expressing detailed, serious   
   concern over the country's human-rights problems."   
      
   Also included in the "most systematic" list were Zimbabwe, whose "government   
   maintained a steady assault on human dignity and basic freedoms"; Cuba,   
   where "the regime continued to control all aspects of life"; China, where   
   dissidents "faced harassment, detention, and imprisonment by government and   
   security authorities"; and Belarus, whose president "continued to arrogate   
   all power to himself and his dictatorial regime".   
      
      
   [continued in next message]   
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)