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TechnoratiWASHINGTON – Advocates fear the Obama administration may be putting the human rights issue on the back burner to focus instead on coping with the global economic crisis and national security.
President Barack Obama sought the moral high ground on human rights with his early order to close the U.S. military prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, and declaration that the United States would never again torture prisoners.
Those moves — which won nearly unanimous international praise — were made soon after Obama took office. He sought to repair the U.S. image abroad, correcting what he believed were mistaken Bush administration policies that had left the United States on the diplomatic outs with much of the world, even with some traditional allies.
But Secretary of State Hillary Clinton dulled the luster, rights advocates say, when she said during a trip to Asia that the administration — while still deeply concerned about human rights in China — could not let that interfere with cooperation with Beijing on the worldwide economic crisis and the fight to ease global climate change.
"We fear she may be setting this tone as a signal to the rest of the world that human rights are not going to be one of the main issues for the administration," said T. Kumar, Amnesty International advocacy director for Asia. "Trade and security should not be promoted at the expense of human rights."
Clinton pushed back Thursday after a Washington meeting with China's foreign minister, noting she and Yang Jiechi had a significant engagement on human rights and the situation in Tibet.
"Human rights is part of our comprehensive dialogue" with China, she said. "It doesn't take a front seat, a back seat or a middle seat. It is part of the broad range of issues that we are discussing."
Beyond China, however, there is a considerable list of Obama positions that have raised doubts about how far the new president will shift from the policies of his predecessor.
_The administration has filed a legal brief that echoed Bush in maintaining that detainees in Afghanistan have no constitutional rights and arguing that enemy combatants held at Bagram Airfield cannot use U.S. courts to challenge their detention.
_Government lawyers continued to invoke the state secrets law in a federal court case that involves the CIA's extraordinary rendition program, in which U.S. operatives seized foreign suspects and handed them over to other countries for questioning. The law blocks the release of evidence the government deems secret and potentially harmful to U.S. security.
_The administration is feeling out Uzbekistan, which has one of the worst human rights records among the former Soviet republics, about using an air base to provide supplies and troops to Afghanistan. The move became necessary after neighboring Kyrgyzstan declared it was canceling the U.S. lease for a base in that Central Asian country.
_Defense Secretary Robert Gates recently greatly scaled back expectations in Afghanistan, declaring the United States was not going to be able to leave behind anything close to a western-style democracy. The U.S. rationale for its seven-year engagement in the country rested partly on having driven the Taliban from power. The Islamic fundamentalists ran a brutal regime that was particularly harsh in its treatment of women. The administration has recently said it was ready to reach out to Taliban members who are willing to work with the U.S.-backed government of President Hamid Karzai. Continue »
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