Politics of Human Rights: The UN, US, and Sudan

The US gets its comeuppance in the UN and points the finger of blame at Sudan.


Politics of Human Rights: The UN, US, and Sudan
URL: http://dailynews.yahoo.com/htx/nm/20010506/pl/un_usa_dc_1.html
By Kendall Clark


     We all know that the United States has placed certain trade
     restrictions on Sudan. Yet gum arabic is exempted, and it is the
     number one export of Sudan. Coca-Cola and the other major soft
     drink conglomerates need gum arabic. So what do we do? We proudly
     proclaim that we've got sanctions on Sudan, but we exempt gum
     arabic. -- Rep. Cynthia McKinney
     
     No one should do business with thugs. But if they control a
     product we can't seem to live without, the market will find a way
     to get it to our shelves and newsstands. -- Rep. Bob Menendez,
     whose district has two major gum arabic processing plants
     
     President Bush's national security adviser said on Sunday it was
     ``an outrage'' the United States was ejected from the U.N. Human
     Rights Committee while Sudan remained a member. -- Rice Calls
     U.N. Rights Panel Loss 'An Outrage', Reuters, 06 May 2001
     
   A very precise outrage abounds in official Washington. Angry
   politicians stalk the halls of Congress, muttering darkly about the
   United Nations. The cause of so much official scorn? The US has been
   voted off the UN's Human Rights Commission (HRC) for the first time
   since 1947. But it's not clear what Bush, Condoleeza Rice, and the
   Congress are angriest about -- the US being voted off the
   Commission, or Sudan having been voted on it.
   
     ``The sad thing is not for the United States,'' Condoleezza Rice
     told the ``Fox News Sunday'' program. ``The sad thing is that the
     country that has been the beacon for those fleeing tyranny for
     200 years is not on this commission, and Sudan is on this
     commission. It's very bad for those people who are suffering
     under tyranny around the world, and it is an outrage.'' (Reuters)
     
   In other words, the ``sad thing is not for the United States,'' it's
   for the United States. What Rice asks us to believe is that the US's
   removal from the UN HRC isn't problematic for the cause of human
   rights in the US (which is true, though not in the sense she means),
   but that it, plus the presence of Sudan, is problematic for ``those
   people who are suffering under tyranny around the world'' -- a
   curious set of claims that we must submit to criticism.
   
   Rice's ``beacon'' metaphor is an interesting one. Powerful lights
   can hurt or help. They are examples of what the Greek philosopher
   Plato would have called a pharmakon, something that can equally be a
   poison or a cure, depending on how it's used and by whom. When a
   big, powerful light is used to illuminate a dangerous night path or
   to reveal the bogeyman lurking in the shadows, it's a help, a cure,
   a ``beacon''. But when it's used to illuminate a perimeter within
   which the desperate and the weak are held hostage to the powerful,
   as in every concentration camp and gulag ever constructed, it's a
   harm and a poison. For far too many of the desperate people of the
   world, the US has been a gulag's klieg light, shining on those
   trying to escape, lighting the way of their captors to retake them;
   certainly it's not been a helpful ``beacon'' for Haitian boat
   refugees or Chinese prison laborers or Central American trade
   unionists or Turkish Kurds or the East Timorese or the Kosovars or
   ... -- the list is long.
   
   Not only does Rice unwittingly betray the fundamental hypocrisy of
   American talk about human rights abroad (to say nothing of the
   desperate hypocrisy of the US hectoring others about human rights
   while regularly executing children and retarded people -- practices
   that the rest of the world finds rightfully abhorrent), she also
   exemplifies the other fundamental mood of America's participation in
   international affairs: a petulant refusal to be judged by the
   standards with which it judges others.
   
   Rice implies that our removal won't count against human rights
   domestically because, well, this is America, the ``beacon'' of human
   rights around the world, and we don't have human rights violations
   of our own. In truth, our removal won't count against human rights
   here because, as is historically clear, the UN's influence in the US
   is so insignificant as to be indistinguishable from, say, none at
   all. The US has as little concern for the UN as it has for human
   rights in Sudan. Whether or not its citizens realize it, the US is,
   among the world's industrialized democracies, the place where the
   [1]Universal Declaration of Human Rights is least well-known or
   practiced or enshrined in law. And we're also a place where concern
   for human rights abroad takes a very definitive backseat to
   commerce, trade, and, as Condoleeza Rice's favorite hand puppet,
   President Bush, likes to say, "our strategic interests".
   
   And it isn't just Condoleeza Rice who's ability to sort rank
   ideology from the truth is suspiciously malfunctioning. The
   corporate media can always be relied upon to give aid and comfort to
   its governmental buddies, as when the Reuters reporter says that
   
     The United States, whether through inadequate lobbying or because
     of unpopular global policies, last week failed to win a seat on
     the commission for the first time since it helped found the human
     rights body in 1947.(Reuters)
     
   Such convenient circumspection rankles; and exhibits a degree of
   sycophancy about which it's difficult to surmise the most offending
   party: the one who gives it or the one who receives. Why, one
   wonders, need the US -- recall: ``the country that has been the
   beacon for those fleeing tyranny for 200 years'' -- why need we
   lobby to stay on the HRC at all, to say nothing of adequately? Is
   there some cabal, comprised by Austria, Finland, and Sweden, that
   conspires against the US?
   
   The truth lies in the other direction. The US consistently pursues
   policies around the world which flaunt even the most basic concern
   for human rights. To name only the most obvious recent examples, one
   must mention Clinton's illegal, immoral bombing of Sudan's sole
   medicines factory, the despicably grimy US position on
   pharmaceuticals and AIDS -- which Mark Gevisser has called, in South
   Africa, the ``new apartheid''; our unilateral determination to
   escalate an unconventional arms race with ballistic missile defense;
   our contemptuous and stupid scuttling of the Kyoto global warming
   treaty; our ranking, apparently safe for all time, as the leading
   exporter of military hardware around the world; our 25 year
   obstruction of any implementation of world consensus on the
   Palestinian question, and so on. It's a fantastical understatement
   to say only that the US pursues unpopular policies.
   
     U.S. officials said the United States had received more than 40
     assurances of support, enough to win a seat on the commission,
     but only 29 of those countries came through.
     It lost out to three members of the European Union -- Austria,
     France and Sweden -- while Sudan and Libya, two governments
     widely accused of human rights abuses on the U.S. list of
     sponsors of ``terrorism,'' won seats in regional groups.
     (Reuters)
     
   We were lobbying and still got the boot. Those other countries --
   probably the ones that aren't ``beacons'' of human rights --
   abandoned us. And it seems that Sudan is filling a regional (African
   continent, I presume) slot, which we couldn't have filled in any
   event. Whether we were removed from the HRC fairly or not has
   nothing to do whatever with Sudan or Libya. The constant reference
   to Sudan is meant to direct our attention away from where it
   properly belongs, namely, on what the US does.
   
     >But Rice rejected criticism from lawmakers on Capitol Hill who
     blamed the embarrassing defeat on the White House.
     `It's very sad that people, particularly on the Hill, would
     decide to blame America for this,'' she said. ``Obviously, the
     United States has been too strong on the human rights agenda.''
     (Reuters)
     
   Not to be outdone by the media in the frenzied gymnastics of sucking
   up, Rice rushes to ice the cake before letting it cool. While the
   rest of the world seems to labor under the mass, shared delusion
   that the US is, when not actively violating them, a regular
   hindrance to human rights, Rice assures us that it's obvious that
   the blameless US ``has been too strong on the human rights agenda''.
   That may be obvious to Rice, but it isn't obvious to me. It's far
   more obvious that the US has too strongly obstructed the realization
   of a human rights agenda.
   
     ``I suspect that this was a backlash of those who don't like
     being judged, that perhaps the United States has been a little
     too active on the human rights commission. We were very active in
     this most recent round, and maybe it will be easier now for human
     rights abusers to escape scrutiny.''(Reuters)
     
   As for the unwillingness of others to be judged by the US, one can
   either side with Rice or with the rest of the world (with the
   exception, perhaps, of our junior partner, the UK). The historical
   record is clear. As Madeleine Albright said, the US acts
   multilaterally when it can, but unilaterally when it must; which, on
   issues of human rights, is often.
   
   Whether or not Sudan belongs on the UN's HRC -- and its inability to
   end its very old slave trade, whereby coastal Arabic Sudanese
   enslave inland Christian and animist peoples, suggests that it does
   not -- the United States clearly does not. As a privileged American
   citizen, my first responsibility is to draw moral conclusions about
   my country, not about Sudan, which is better left to the UN --
   which may not be as tough on Sudan as guilty American politicians
   may demand but is vastly and consistently more engaged in Sudan and
   in Africa -- and its African neighbors.
   
   So I say, with regard to the US and the UN's HRC, goodbye and good
   riddance.

References

   1. http://www.udhr.org/


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Posted on Monkeyfist at http://monkeyfist.com/articles/752