UN Human Rights Charade

Boston Globe
FRIDA GHITIS
The UN charade on human rights
By Frida Ghitis March 27, 2005

IT IS TIME once again to mock the victims of human rights abuse. Yes, it is time for the yearly session of the United Nations Commission on Human Rights, the group that describes itself as the ''world's foremost human rights forum" and, with no trace of irony, dares to declare that it ''continues to set the standards that govern the conduct of states."

In reality, the commission has become the clearest symbol of the UN's need to change. Today, it represents little more than a gruesome caricature of what started in the earliest days of the United Nations as an earnest effort to ensure respect for the rights of every individual on the planet.
To get an idea of the panel's moral authority, picture a project to combat crime featuring Jeffrey Dahmer and Charles Manson on its top commission.

And yet, this 61st annual session presents the world with the ideal opportunity to take constructive action. The UN Human Rights body is such a travesty that even the UN's staunchest supporters know it cries out for reform. Critics and supporters of the UN must seize this moment, with the spotlight on this preposterous organization, to work together on a solution. And the solution must include minimum standards for membership.

During the six weeks from March 14 until April 22, members of the 53-country commission will gather in Geneva and pretend to protect human rights. Those seated at the table, looking serious and committed to the cause, will include a Who's Who of perpetrators of large-scale crimes against their own people.

The commission this year includes countries like Sudan, whose government, much of the world agrees, is complicit in the murder of tens of thousands and the forced displacement of millions of the country's citizens. A UN report found the government and its allies guilty of carrying out a policy of murdering, raping, torturing, and destroying the villages of non-Arab Sudanese in the Darfur region of the country. The world can't quite agree on whether Sudan's government is guilty of genocide or crimes against humanity. Yet Sudan's representative will help ''set the standards" for human rights around the world.
God help us all.

Sudan will receive presumably invaluable help in its efforts to protect human rights from the government of Zimbabwe, whose president used battalions of thugs to intimidate the opposition, destroy freedom of the press, and successfully destroy the country's economy, plunging most of its population into poverty. They will work shoulder to shoulder with that other defender of freedom, equality, and tolerance: Saudi Arabia.
Monarchs, despots, and dictators of all stripes will contribute to the commission's work, with regime representatives from such paragons of human rights as Cuba, Nepal, Egypt, Pakistan, Swaziland, Bhutan, and China, among others, helping craft the agenda to defend human rights and individual freedoms around the world.
Oh, yes. We could hardly be in better hands.
Just wait until you see their work. They will attack the actions of democracies and they will do their best to prevent any resolution that tarnishes the image of the panel's members or their friends.
The commission is an insult to the millions of people who have fled their homes running from slaughter and now live in squalid refugee camps in places like Chad, Sudan, and Congo. It is an affront to the hundreds of millions of women treated as second-class citizens and abused with the consent of their governments in dozens of countries around the world. It mocks the struggle of millions in the Middle East and other parts of Asia, Africa, and even parts of Europe, who want to share the freedoms others take for granted in much of the world.

The gathering of what is supposed to be the world's principal body for protecting human rights should bring hope to the oppressed around the world. Instead, it sinks their spirits. What could be more discouraging than seeing your oppressors treated as honorable members of that, of all commissions?

The time is long overdue for the UN's human rights charade to come to an end. How best to honor the victims than to do some thorough spring-cleaning? Scrub the UN Human Rights Commission of human rights violators and other despots.

Membership on the commission should constitute a high honor. Only those who deserve it should have a seat at the table.

Frida Ghitis writes about world affairs.

Lebanon, Syria, and Israel

Posted on Fri, Mar. 04, 2005

Refusing to take the bait

By Frida Ghitis

Pay close attention to what is taking place just below the major headlines in the Middle East, because something extraordinary has just happened -- or, more precisely, not happened.

For possibly the first time since 1948, since the creation of the state of Israel, an Arab government's principal -- indispensable -- method for manipulating and controlling its people has stopped working. The well-known political sleight of hand consists of deflecting popular anger against the regime by shifting attention and blame onto an outside enemy: Israel.
The trick always worked -- until now. This is no small development.

The people of Lebanon have joined together to face their own government and the foreign dictator who controls it from the Syrian capital. This week, they scored one major victory when their Damascus-backed prime minister and his Cabinet resigned in Beirut. But the push against entrenched anti-democratic powers is far from over.

The turning point came after the Feb. 14 assassination of Lebanon's former Prime Minister Rafik Hariri in a massive explosion along Beirut's waterfront that killed 16 other people. When Hariri, an influential advocate for the removal of Syrian troops from Lebanon, was murdered, the Lebanese people grieved. Enraged, they quickly blamed Syria, the country that has controlled Lebanon for more than 15 years. And they turned on their own Syrian-installed government.

The reaction from the leaders of Syria and Lebanon was as predictable as the results of a one-man presidential election: They blamed Israel.
Immediately after the blast, Tishrin, Syria's government newspaper, accused Israel, saying it "continues to work to sabotage Lebanon's achievements to try to bring anarchy to the country." Another government mouthpiece, the Syria Times, blamed Israel and the United States, saying the killing was the work of "the Arabs' enemies." And Syrian Vice President Abdul Halim Khaddam charged bluntly, "It was Israel which did that."

The government of Lebanon echoed its Syrian bosses' words. Officials in Beirut blamed the murder on "a campaign of intimidation" by the United States and Israel. The very day of the explosion, Ahmad Sweid, a pro-Syrian member of Lebanon's parliament, also accused Israel, urging Lebanon's politicians -- who have now called for a peaceful uprising against Syrian occupation -- to drop the subject of Syria's military control of Lebanon and look at what Israel had done.

The idea that Israel would have killed Hariri is patently absurd. Although Israel has in the past launched "targeted assassinations" of terrorist leaders, the last thing it needs is chaos in Lebanon. Hariri was much more useful to Israel alive than dead -- partly because Israel would like to see Syria, the sponsor of the Hezbollah militia, withdraw from Lebanon.
Imagine the surprise of the governments in Beirut and Damascus when, after their cries of "Israel and the U.S. did it!," the masses did not immediately reach for Israeli and American flags to light their bonfires. They simply refused to take the bait.

Opposition leaders scoffed at the crude manipulation. One of them told Beirut's Daily Star, "Every time [the Syrians] commit a crime, they accuse Israel intelligence of having a hand in it."

The accusation is not new. A Cairo University professor, Mohammed Kamal, described the same phenomenon in 2002 while discussing a U.N. report critical of Arab leaders. "The Arab-Israeli conflict," he said, "is used to deflect attention from domestic problems, including the lack of democracy."

By the time that Hariri's funeral began Feb. 16, the push to get Syria out of Lebanon had gathered such force that hundreds of thousands of Lebanese poured into the streets, turning the procession into an anti-Syria protest march.

Officials did not give up their efforts to blame Israel, and the effort probably will continue. But there is little doubt that the people will stand their ground and maintain the pressure on their own leaders, backed by the crucial support of the United States and parts of Europe.

The prime minister and his Cabinet stood down in the face of massive street protests. If and when Lebanon's Syrian-sponsored president, Emile Lahoud, loses his post and Syria loosens its grip on Lebanon, it will mark the first real victory for a "people power" movement in the stubbornly undemocratic Arab world.

After that happens, Arab leaders will have been warned that the world as they once knew it will never be the same.

Frida Ghitis writes about world affairs. She is author of "The End of Revolution: A Changing World in the Age of Live Television."