Human Rights Watch is a respected organization that monitors the human rights situation in the world. These are selections from a New York Times editorial in January, 2006 on the group's 2006 report

 

Human Rights Watch Shames United States

When Human Rights Watch, a respected organization that has been monitoring the world's behavior since 1978, focuses its annual report on US use of torture and inhumane treatment, every American should feel a sense of shame. And everyone who has believed in the US as the staunchest protector of human rights in history should be shocked.

Many nations--Belarus, Uzbekistan, Zimbabwe, Burma, Cuba, Sudan, and China to name only some of the worst--routinely trample on human rights in a way that neither the US nor any of its allies would ever countenance. But the US wrote the book on human rights; it defined the alternative to tyranny and injustice. So when the US vice president actually lobbies against a bill that bans "cruel, inhuman, and degrading treatment, Human Rights Watch is justified in delivering harsh criticism.

...In the introduction by the executive director of Human Rights Watch, Kenneth Roth, the US is singled out not only because it has raised the heinous practice of torture to a "serious policy option," but also because in so doing it is sacrificing its ability to champion human rights in other countries. The US is not the worst violator, Roth writes, but it is the most influential. Now, when Americans accuse Iraqi Shiites of torturing Sunni prisoners, the messenger's reputation taints the message. The report says that 2005 made clear that abuse of detainees has become a "deliberate, central part of the strategy of US President George W. Bush's administration for interrogating terrorist suspects," and it accuses Britain of complicity in this....


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