In its 2008 annual report released yesterday, Human Rights Watch criticizes Western governments for devaluing democracy by allowing “dictators to legitimize themselves on the cheap.”
The sweeping report says Western nations are undermining human rights worldwide by allowing autocrats to pose as democrats, without demanding they uphold the civil and political rights that make democracy meaningful.
World Report 2008 identifies many human rights challenges in need of attention, including atrocities in Chad, Colombia, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Ethiopia’s Ogaden region, Iraq, Somalia, Sri Lanka, and Sudan’s Darfur region, as well as closed societies or severe repression in Burma, China, Cuba, Eritrea, Libya, Iran, North Korea, Saudi Arabia and Vietnam.
The United States also comes in for harsh criticism:
- 275 prisoners are still being held at the U.S. naval base in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, without being charged with any offense. Many have been there for six years, and several were cleared long ago of wrongdoing but simply not released.
- The CIA continues to assert, with White House backing, that it is not bound by key U.S. anti-torture rules.
- Secret prisons that were closed in 2006 appear to have been reopened.
- Under U.S. anti-terrorism laws, authorities have denied refugee protections “to persons who fit the refugee definition under international law, including rape victims forced into domestic servitude by rebel groups,” the report says.
Canada was not one of the 75-plus countries that the report focused on.
Human Rights Watch was founded in 1978 and has produced an annual global survey of human rights for the last 18 years.
For more information, including video footage of yesterday’s press announcement delivered by Human Rights Watch Executive Director Kenneth Roth visit the World Report Special Feature.
Canadian News Coverage:
CBC News – Western states turn blind eye to brutality by allies, NGO finds
Toronto Star — Olivia Ward — Rights group says West backs `sham’ democracies
