InfoAnda - COMMENTARY: Courting controversy

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Yahoo! My Yahoo! Mail More Yahoo! Services Account Options New User? Sign Up Sign In Help Yahoo! Search web search Home Singapore Asia Pacific World Business Entertainment Sports Technology Weekend Edition Australia China India Indonesia Japan Malaysia Philippines Thailand Vietnam COMMENTARY: Courting controversy ANN - Monday, January 31 Send IM Story Print Kuala Lumpur (The Star/ANN) - During Chinese President Hu Jintao's recent trip to the United States, world media focused on the state visit as news foreground. The background was just as vivid: as US military attacks kill more civilians in Afghanistan and Pakistan, Guantanamo Bay prison remains in operation and following the atrocities in Abu Ghraib, President Barack Obama was lecturing Hu on human rights. The sense of exceptionalism -- do what I tell you, not what I do -- remains compelling, with double standards to match. "Human rights" theatre had been a potent Cold War weapon and useful economic leverage on developing nations for the West. There are legitimate human rights that need better protection everywhere, and then there are the politicised equivalents. The first tends to compromise the second. Over the week, Human Rights Watch (HRW) released its annual assessment of national human rights violations around the world. Its familiar finger-pointing induced some familiar responses. HRW's 21st World Report covers five designated regions and the US: Africa, Americas, Asia, Europe and Central Asia, and Middle East and North Africa. Most governments cited for violations shrug them off. Some that feel particularly stung respond in kind, including accusations that these NGOs meddle by supporting the political opposition. HRW, for example, criticises Egypt for "widespread discrimination" of its religious minorities. News reports then quoted Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak as rejecting such allegations. As widespread protests in Egypt threaten political stability, it would be tempting for Cairo to see HRW taking sides. But its report would be seen as more provocative than prophetic. Meanwhile, news sources also focused on HRW's criticisms of Venezuela, prompting a similar broadside from Caracas. This is nothing new -- the New York-based HRW has been criticised by Latin American commentators for bias. Groups like HRW continue to court controversy for several reasons. They would say it is because they identify the guilty, but there is more to it. Its portrayal of specific countries belies some flaws. These include only sketchy impressions of domestic conditions and an eagerness to judge -- a volatile combination inviting condemnation. Another problem is cultural relativism. Even with adequate information, these largely Western assessments are said to look at other countries in unfamiliar regions through the lens of their own cultural and historical experiences. The result is considered an imposition of different values and priorities on others, by way of interfering in the internal affairs of other countries. Whatever the merits of the argument, the contention continues. Perhaps as non-state actors, these NGOs feel less inhibited in hitting country targets, so they dispense with any diplomacy. HRW evidently feels that it pays to criticise harshly, as its report this year shows, but it cannot be certain that this approach works better. In the introduction to the report, executive director Kenneth Roth criticised several governments, the EU, the UN and Asean for appeasing rights violators. The report also acknowledges the importance of (largely Western) media coverage of human rights issues in keeping them in focus. For the countries cited, that is precisely the problem. When Western perspectives in both NGOs and news media build on each other, the resultant outlook on the rest of the world tends to be even narrower. On China it says "there were no mass arrests in 2010 (in Tibet) of the kind that followed the spring 2008 protests", with no mention of these "protests" having begun as vicious, unprovoked and racist attacks on Han Chinese by Tibetan militants. If anything, the Chinese government can be faulted for not responding adequately in providing sufficient public security against the violence. Likewise on the Xinjiang disturbances, there is no mention in the report of US-based Uighur leader Rebiya Kadeer being sponsored by the US Congress. Then after a year in which Israeli occupation of Palestinian lands was accelerated and entrenched, widespread deterioration of conditions in Israel's blockade of Gaza and its controversial attacks on aid flotillas, there is limited mention of Israeli human rights violations. Neither Roth's introduction nor news accounts of the report over the week mentioned Israel. Coming soon after Israel had declared itself innocent of the flotilla raids while rejecting efforts at an international inquiry, the credibility of such reports becomes compromised. At the same time, the 648-page World Report's 82 country chapters contain accounts of rights violations by "the usual suspects" Iran, Myanmar, North Korea and Sudan. Lesser-known countries from Chad and Ethiopia to Turkmenistan and Yemen are also cited. As in previous reports, the country chapter for Israel appears as "Israel/Occupied Palestinian Territories". Here, violations cited include those from the Israeli and Palestinian sides in what might be seen as a dilution of state culpability. Still, HRW co-founder Robert Bernstein can say that HRW has become too critical of Israel. HRW, the former Helsinki Watch formed originally to monitor the Soviet Union, continues to attract controversy. Such reports ought to revise their format and emphases. A scale or ranking based on a points system for countries would also be useful, showing how each country has fared compared to previous years, but only if assessments are more judicious. Despite the endless allegations and denials of human rights violations, most countries accept without fuss the UN Universal Declaration of Human Rights. That document contains protocols for 28 human rights, including a range of cultural and economic rights as well as civil and political rights in no prescribed order of priority. Western assessments tend to emphasise the latter over the former. If human rights NGOs can assess countries on all these rights without undue emphasis on some rights over others, it would also be an improvement. 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