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Human Rights Watch's 2005 Report Covers 60-Plus Countries

Abu Ghraib, Darfur: Call for Prosecutions

Human Rights Watch's 2005 Report Covers 60-Plus Countries

(Washington D.C., January 13, 2005) –The worldwide system for protecting human rights was significantly
weakened in 2004 by the
crisis in Darfur and the Abu Ghraib scandal, Human Rights Watch said in releasing
its annual world survey today.


While the two threats are not equivalent, the vitality of global human rights depends on a firm response to
each—on stopping the Sudanese
government's slaughter in Darfur and on fully investigating and prosecuting
all those responsible for torture and mistreatment in Iraq,
Afghanistan and Guantanamo.

"The U.S. government is less and less able to push for justice abroad, because it's unwilling to see justice
done at home," said Kenneth Roth,
executive director of Human Rights Watch.

Human Rights Watch urged the Bush administration to appoint a special prosecutor to investigate any U.S. officials
who participated in, ordered
or had command responsibility for torture or cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment.
Human Rights Watch pointed out that senior administration
officials have sought to blame the scandal on the
young soldiers they sent to fight in Iraq and Afghanistan, instead of accepting responsibility

themselves for the policies and orders that weakened the rules against torture and inhumane treatment.

The Human Rights Watch World Report 2005 contains survey information on human rights developments in more
than 60 countries in 2004. In
addition to the introductory essay on Darfur and Abu Ghraib, the volume contains
three essays on broad human rights issues: religion and human
rights, sexuality and the cultural attack on human
rights, and an in-depth analysis of the Darfur crisis.


In the volume's introductory essay, Roth argues that a large U.N.-authorized military force is needed to protect
Darfur residents and to
create conditions of security that might allow them to return home safely. The United States
and other Western governments, he contends, are wrong
simply to hand the problem to the African Union, a
new institution with few resources and no experience with military operations of the scale
needed.

"Darfur is making a mockery of our vows of 'never again,'" said Roth.

Roth also urged that, once the United Nations Commission of Inquiry reports to the U.N. Security Council on
January 25 on the crimes
committed in Darfur, the Security Council should refer the Darfur case to the new
International Criminal Court.


"The crimes committed in Darfur must not go unpunished," said Roth. "The International Criminal Court
would be the most efficient and
effective institution to prosecute these crimes. The permanent members of
the Security Council should not stand in the way of bringing the mass
murderers in Darfur to justice."

Human Rights Watch said that the crisis in Darfur cries out for involvement by the major military powers, but
they have chosen to be
unavailable. The United States, the United Kingdom, and Australia are bogged down in
Iraq, with the United States going so far as to say that
"no new action is dictated" by its determination that the
killing in Darfur amounts to genocide. France is committed elsewhere in Africa, and
Canada is cutting back
its peacekeeping commitments, despite promoting the "responsibility to protect." NATO is preoccupied in
Afghanistan; the
European Union is deploying forces in Bosnia.

"Everyone has something more important to do than to save the people of Darfur," said Roth.

Meanwhile, the U.S. government's systematic use of coercive interrogation has weakened a pillar of international
human rights law — the requirement
that governments should never subject detainees to torture or other
mistreatment, even in the face of war or other serious threat. Yet
in fighting terrorism, the U.S. government
has treated this cornerstone obligation as a matter of choice, not duty.


By ignoring human rights standards in its reaction to September 11, the Bush administration has made it easier
for governments around the world
to cite the U.S. example as an excuse to ignore human rights. Egypt has
defended a decision to renew its problematic "emergency law" by
referring to U.S. anti-terror legislation.
The Malaysian government justifies detention without trial by invoking Guantánamo. Russia cites
Abu Ghraib
to blame abuses in Chechnya solely on low-level soldiers. Cuba now claims the Bush administration had "no
moral authority to accuse" it
of human rights violations.

"Governments facing human rights pressure from the United States now find it easy to turn the tables," said Roth.
"Washington can't very well
uphold principles that it violates itself."

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