Pillay Should Take Strong Approach On Rights Violators

By Bernama,

New York : A leading human rights watchdog has asked the incoming India-born United Nations human rights chief Navanethem Pillay to take a stronger approach on “heavyweight” rights violators including China, Russia and Egypt.


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“As the new high commissioner, Pillay should do her utmost to ensure that situations of gross violations around the world do not go ignored.

“To balance the selectivity and politicisation that is undermining the Human Rights Council, Pillay must take advantage of her independence to assert a universal approach based instead on objective human rights standards,” U.N. Watch’s executive director Hillel Neuer said.

In a new report released Monday, the Geneva-based United Nations Watch said the outgoing chief Louise Arbour’s record was mixed based on her criticism of human rights violators but rejected the criticism by some American lawmakers that she spend her time in condemning democracies and defending tyrants.

The report which was presented at the inaugural meeting of the U.N. Human Rights Council’s expert advisors agreed that the only weapon that top human rights official has is to “name and shame” the violators but said she should use the “unique bully pulpit” to throw spot light on those with poor record.

Analysing Arbour’s record, the report said during 2007 and 2008, she criticized 40 different countries, many of them ruled by non democratic regime.

Out of 79 critical statements, only 10 were directed at countries rated as free by leading think tank Freedom House including Canada, Italy and Japan.

The remaining were directed against States with poor human rights records including Angola, Cambodia and Zimbabwe.

However, the report’s most disturbing findings, said Neuer, “are that in the period examined, Arbour published no statements at all for victims in 153 countries-places where human rights range from poor to appalling, including Algeria, Bangladesh, Belarus, Libya, North Korea, Saudi Arabia, Syria, Viet Nam and Yemen.

“Arbour’s oft-repeated mantra was the fight against impunity. The reality, though, is that, despite Arbour’s other accomplishments, many serial abusers were granted effective impunity,” the report said.

But contrary to claims that Arbour “routinely singled out” China and Russia “for fierce criticism,” the report shows that, in her official statements over 2007 and 2008, she criticised China only once and that she never said a word about Russia, where democracy has “severely deteriorated.”

Beyond the statistics, the report features a qualitative assessment of Arbour’s treatment of selected regions, giving her high grades for taking on Sudan and Myanmar.

Arbour rightly held the U.S. accountable for violations in Iraq and elsewhere, report says, adding that her methods may have been counter-productive, including her filing of legal briefs in U.S. and Iraqi court proceedings, an intervention that she used for no other country.

In the Middle East, the report found that Arbour spoke out against Iran’s violations of women’s rights and its executions. However, unlike other high U.N. officials, she failed to address President Ahmadinejad’s Holocaust denial and calls to eliminate Israel.

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