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Old 09-24-2007, 04:12 AM
boracay boracay is offline
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Join Date: Nov 2005
Posts: 766
Default Re: Is There a Human Rights Double Standard?US Policy Toward Saudi Ara

Please, try to be objective. Let’s think about human rights in the US first.

A hint – when talking about human rights search about discrimination against gays $ lesbians, treatment of non-citizens, labor rights, prison conditions/violence, etc. You tell me if USA is the world leader in promoting those human rights.

Then search about criminal sentencing and death penalty (as human rights).
During 2006 at least 1591 were executed in 25 countries. I will purposely name all of them, so one might get a better idea what group was that: Bahrain, Bangladesh, Botswana, China, Egypt, Equatorial Guinea, Indonesia, Iran, Iraq, Japan, Jordan, North Korea, Kuwait, Malaysia, Mongolia, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Singapore, Somalia, Sudan, Syria, Uganda, USA, Vietnam, Yemen. What a company! Leaders in promoting human rights? link

USA is the most aggressive jailer in the world with over 2 million prisoners, followed by China with 1.5 mio and Russia 0.86 mio. No other country in the world is known to incarcerate as many people. That’s 727 prisoners per 100.000 residents in the USA, compared with 102 for Canada or with most European countries that imprison fewer than 100 people. Not to mention again conditions with torture, violence, abuses in US jails.
link

You might be surprised, but in 1999 Amnesty International put the USA on a list of persistent violators of human rights, higher than China.
link

‘World leader in promoting human rights’ while failing so much at home. But let’s go abroad.

Just think about a support of repressive regimes in Latin America, Middle East, Africa, US corporations even employing local militias and militaries to violate people’s rights. How many military actions of the US army were there abroad since WWII? How is that supported by promoting human rights? Like in Iraq? What about kidnapping foreign people abroad, imprisoning people for extremely long periods of time without any sentences, denying visits of Red Cross, humanitarian organizations, their lawyers, Guantanamo, denying of international law and conventions, etc. World leader of promoting human rights? Are you kidding?

You have to admit that people abroad somehow don’t realize how humanitarian purpose of attacking other countries actually is. According to BBC poll in 27 countries (28.000 people), where Israel, Iran and USA share the most negative ratings about countries’ influence in the world. link
Maybe countries/people abroad support rather softer ways of promoting human rights, than by military actions (just compare Canada with only 14% negative votes vs 51% negative votes for the US).

To get a good and objective perspective, sometimes is good to check independent sources and not stay with the common view presented by home media. This time I’d check institutions like Human Right Watch or Amnesty International. I’m sure you shouldn’t have troubles finding much better examples about who’s better in promoting human rights.
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