U.S. ignores its own rights violations but slams others

By Arif Havas Ugroseno

JAKARTA (JP): The United States' Department of States handed down its annual verdicts on the human rights reports on Jan. 30, 1998.

The verdicts touched on virtually all countries but each verdict comes with different colors and music, depending on national interests towards the targeted countries.

It goes without saying that the verdicts are not applicable to the judge. The United States has conveniently played the role of human rights judge for more than 20 years.

Students of American domestic politics know the meaning of American "exceptionalism": the United States is different from, and superior to, most other countries because of its purported domestic commitment to individual rights.

The isolationist variant of American exceptionalism, expressed with particular clarity in George Washington's farewell address, advocates the country as a beacon of hope for an oppressed world, but only as an example, not as an active participant in the struggle for freedom overseas.

On the other hand, the interventionist American exceptionalism stresses an active American mission to spread its values through direct foreign policy, even military force.

American exceptionalism believes that human rights problems exist only in far away lands that must be reached by muddy roads or large bodies of salt water. So, other countries have massive human rights problems but the U.S. only has minor problems of police brutality, civil rights problems or a health care crisis, which are stated as if they are entirely different from torture, racial discrimination and denial to the right to good health.

The facts show that the U.S. has a very poor human rights record. A tip of the human rights violation iceberg that is worth excavating. It is a public knowledge that racism is in no way diminishing. Racial violence erupts frequently.

Racism is so pervasive and institutionalized that almost all aspects of life is plagued it. Since 1995, there has been more than 40 black churches burned down by white racists. There have been environmentally racist acts. Three of the five largest sites for hazardous commercial waste are in African-American or Hispanic populated areas, with 60 percent of these minorities living in areas with hazardous waste sites. Indian reservations are also targets pursued by waste disposal companies.

In 1995 alone there were 458 cases of anti-Asian violence and 72,864 human rights violations perpetrated against Mexicans. Since 1990, more than 100 Mexicans have died because of American police brutality and border patrols, but impunity reigns supreme.

The U.S. human rights record outside its territorial boundaries is also far from exemplary. Since the U.S. was established 200 years ago, it has launched more than 70 wars and aggressions, killing countless of foreign civilians.

The rape of a 12-year-old girl in Okinawa in 1995 by American soldiers and the beating to death of a Korean woman in 1996 by an American soldier are examples of American human rights practices.

Since 1967, 34,900 rapes, beatings and murders of local people by American soldiers based in South Korea have been reported. During the Okinawa outrage, American troops "accidentally" fired 1,520 uranium tipped bullets on an island near Okinawa.

American exceptionalism also makes an exception as to which human rights deserve its attention. Clearly, the U.S. selects civil and political rights and certain elements of property rights as human rights and denigrates economic and social rights because it perceives economic and social rights as the invention of communist and developing countries.

The domestic and international sides of this arrogance come together in the U.S.'s refusal to ratify the International Human Covenants, as well as most other international human rights treaties. In the spring of 1992, the U.S. finally did ratify the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights but with massive and substantial reservations, making the ratified treaty looks like a senile tiger.

Naturally, it is not likely that the U.S. would give serious considerations to ratifying the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, reflecting its rejection of such rights.

The U.S. has failed to ratify the Convention on the Rights of the Child 1990, although the state of American children is worsening. America has the highest rate of violence against children in the industrialized world and the highest child fatality rate in the world arising from shootings, homicides and suicides. The U.S. has characteristically held other countries to international human rights standards and procedures that it has refused to allow to be applied to itself.

When scrutinized by international human rights mechanisms, the U.S. becomes surprisingly and outrageously defensive. Senator Jesse Helms, the Senate Foreign Relations Committee chairman, declared the results of a visit of the UN Special Rapporteur on extrajudicial killings as an "intentional insult" and labels the visit as "an absurd UN charade" and a "strange investigation which is intended to be merely a platform for more outrageous accusations from U.S. critics at the UN."

The UN Special Rapporteur asserts that some U.S. death sentences result from proceedings which fall short of international guarantees for a fair trial. A counterattack was also launched against the report of the visit of the UN Special Rapporteur on racism, which slams the practice of racism in the U.S.

The report reveals that sentences meted out to African- Americans and ethnic people were usually two or three times more severe than those given to whites for committing similar crimes. The number African-Americans sentenced to death for killing whites was four times that of whites condemned for killing African-Americans. Linda Chavez, an American human rights expert, blasted the UN Special Rapporteur as subjective and inaccurate.

The worst news is that these records of human rights violations were made in a country claiming to be the beacon of democracy and a vanguard of human rights. One cannot imagine what would be the faith of the rest of the world if the so-called beacon of democracy forces others to follow its democratic and human rights record.

Such poor human rights records clearly give no credibility to the annual human rights verdicts. Countries are entitled to ignore at face value this piece of paper named as the human rights report of the Department of States. Without even going into the report's details, one can readily and rightly conclude that the report is biased, subjective and selective. The report will never "treat human rights globally in a fair and equal manner, on the same footing and with the same emphasis", as envisaged by the Vienna Declaration and Program of Action.

Errors in facts and figures are bound to be made but it is guaranteed that errata will never be published. Clearly, the report ignores the principle of cooperation in the promotion and protection of human rights as stipulated in the Charter of the United Nations.

A number of responses against the crusade of the human rights judge whose hands are stained with the blood of those sentenced to death and whose justice is not color blind is worth pondering.

First, countries can just simply ignore the report because it has no credibility at all. One might argue that the international community has never mandated the U.S. to release such a report and, therefore, the international community should never be held accountable to the American authority.

Second, countries could remind the U.S. that such an act is contrary to the principle of international cooperation in the promotion and protection of human rights. However, such a call can only be heard and materialized by sensible countries whose approach to human rights is "nonmessianic".

Third, reciprocality could be a helpful diplomatic tool. Countries could start making an inventory of human rights violations in the U.S. and bring them to the attention of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights and through the United Nations human rights mechanisms.

A discussion on racism, the treatment of American Indians and other ethnic minorities, child abuse, rape, violence against women, denial of various economic and social rights and a huge range of human rights violations in the U.S. at a presidential summit between an American president and the Head of States hosting the visit is not only important but also beneficial, to provide a forum whereby both parties can learn each other's experience in the promotion and protection of human rights.

Simultaneously, local NGOs could be encouraged to report on well-documented human rights violations in the U.S. to the UN human rights mechanisms. However, with large funding from the U.S. and the profitable human rights awards provided in America, it is not likely that major local NGOs dare send such reports.

This third option should not be seen as a confrontational approach running the risk of violating the principle of international cooperation, but more as a way to build a two-way street for communications on the promotion and protection of human rights. Dialog in this mode could be executed to achieve better understanding and build more confidence and trust among countries. Does anybody have the urge to start this dialog?

The writer is an alumni of Harvard Law School.

Window: American exceptionalism believes that human rights problems exist only in far away lands that must be reached by muddy roads or large bodies of salt water. So, other countries have massive human rights problems but the U.S. only has minor problems of police brutality, civil rights problems or a health care crisis...