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U.S. and Human Rights in 2019: A Summary

The U.S. State Department has issued a summary of America’s fight for human rights. We provide the text:

The Trump administration has made the protection and promotion of human rights a priority. The U.S. State Department outlined its 2019 activities in this area: 

In 2019, governments in Iran, China, Russia, and Syria, as well as the former Maduro regime in Venezuela, as well as many others, continue to suppress human rights and fundamental freedoms, including the freedoms of expression, association, peaceful assembly, and religion or belief. The United States consistently took and will continue to take action to ensure these and other human rights violations and abuses are not ignored. Our focus remains on calling out governments and other actors when they commit serious abuses and pressing to hold them accountable. We seek to lend our voice to the voiceless.

As always, we have raised human rights cases and concerns bilaterally and multilaterally, publicly and privately. We have provided advice and assistance to governments seeking to reform and strengthen their democratic institutions. We have funded programs to empower local NGOs and citizens to build foundations for transparent governance, support access to justice, accountability for atrocities, and to document human rights abuses. And where appropriate, we’ve used sanctions and multilateral mechanisms to promote accountability and protect civilians from atrocities.

Among the most significant actions we have taken over the past year, year and a half or so, is our increasing use of our visa restriction authorities. Since the beginning of FY2019 – that would be September, 2018 – the Department of State has announced over 100 designations of foreign officials and their immediate family members in countries across every region of the world for their involvement in gross human rights violations and corruption, under Section 7031(c) of the Department of State, Foreign Operations, and Related Programs Appropriations Act.

Similarly, we have worked closely with the Treasury Department to designate 97 individuals and entities for their roles in corruption and serious human rights abuse under the Global Magnitsky sanctions program. We have also worked with Treasury to make six designations under the Russia Magnitsky sanctions program, including a designation of the organizer of the 2015 killing of Russian opposition leader Boris Nemtsov and other Chechen officials who were implicated in the horrific campaign of mass detentions and torture of LGBTI persons. We took punitive action in a number of other areas of serious concern as well.

On China, the Secretary has led a global effort to call the communist party to account for its wide range of violations and abuses, including the detention of over 1 million Uighurs, ethnic Kazakhs, and members of other Muslim minority communities in Xinjiang. In October, for instance, the department announced a new visa restriction policy under which we have restricted the visas of those Chinese Government and Communist Party officials who are believed to be responsible for or complicit in the detention or abuse of Muslim individuals in Xinjiang. This action was taken in conjunction with the Department of Commerce’s imposition of export controls on a number of entities complicit in those same abuses.

At the UN’s Third Committee, we worked with likeminded partners to develop a joint statement on Xinjiang, which was signed by 23 countries, including Albania, the first Organization of Islamic Cooperation member-state to participate in a joint call to action on Xinjiang’s human rights crisis.

On Iran, in his December 19 speech and elsewhere, Secretary Pompeo has made clear that the United States and the international community expect the Iranian regime to treat its people with the dignity that all human beings deserve, and to fulfill the human rights obligations and commitments both under Iranian law and in treaties to which it is a party, including the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights. To this end, the United States imposed sanctions on a number of Iranian persons and entities responsible for human rights abuses over the past year, as well as two Iranian Revolutionary Court judges who have repeatedly punished Iranian citizens and dual nationals for exercising their freedoms of expression or peaceful assembly.

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On Venezuela, the United States continue to use diplomacy, sanctions, humanitarian assistance, and support to the legitimate National Assembly and Interim President Juan Guaido to build pressure for a peaceful, democratic transition in Venezuela.

In 2019, we also took significant action on the deplorable human rights situation in Nicaragua. We restricted visas and imposed targeted sanctions under the Nicaragua Human Rights and Anti-Corruption Act of 2018, the Global Magnitsky sanctions program, and Executive Order 13851. So far, we have imposed sanctions on Vice President Rosario Murillo and other members of the Ortega family, the head of Nicaragua National Police, the president of the Nicaragua National Assembly, and the minister of health, among others. By the end of 2019, we had taken action on a total of 15 individuals and five entities.

We have also sought to seize opportunities for improvements in human rights, rule of law, and democratic governance in a number of countries where there have been openings. We will continue to make this a priority in the coming year.

In Sudan, for instance, we supported the first steps towards the country’s historic transition to democratic civilian rule.

In Ethiopia, we continue to support Prime Minister Abiy’s ambitious reform efforts and his plans to hold free and fair elections later this year.

In Angola, we revived our human rights dialogue with the government and are working closely with it to advance fundamental freedoms and address the serious corruption that has plagued that country for so long.

In the Democratic Republic of the Congo, we are encouraging President Tshisekedi to advance democratic reforms and plan to hold our first human rights dialogue with his government in the near future.

In Bolivia, we are working closely with the transitional government to ensure free and fair elections that are credible in the coming year.

In Armenia, following a historic change in the 2018 Velvet Revolution, the U.S. has expanded assistance to help the government combat corruption, improve governance and political processes, and lay the groundwork for a transparent, accountable, and effective justice sector.

In Malaysia, we’re continuing to support the new government’s reform efforts while bolstering the capacity of civil society.

We also took action to bolster the department’s capacity to identify and respond to significant abuses and atrocity risks. In 2019, we held the first-ever State Department field training on atrocity prevention for U.S. embassy staff abroad. Held in Johannesburg, South Africa, we trained 52 U.S. Government employees working at 28 U.S. embassies and consulates throughout Africa.

Beyond atrocity prevention, we also train embassy officials and local staff on labor rights, such as freedom of association and forced and child labor. In 2019, we coordinated interagency training sessions on labor in Washington, Bratislava, Kuala Lumpur, Muscat, Mexico City, and Addis Ababa for a total of more than 125 officials.

Illustration: Pixabay

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The Deafening Silence

The extraordinary crises in U.S. foreign affairs, and the plight of human rights throughout the world, have failed to gain attention in much of the media.

The reasons are clear.  It is the mantra of much of the political left that America is in no military danger from abroad, freedom is not imperiled, and that whatever global challenges Washington must deal with are the products of its own prior actions. That has been the guiding principle of the Obama Administration. Whatever inconvenient facts depart from that narrative are wholly disregarded because much of the media shares that viewpoint.

There is clear precedence to this from the last presidential election. During a televised debate, Republican challenger Mitt Romney noted that Russian belligerence was a key problem. He was mocked not just by rival candidate Barack Obama, but also by the moderator of the debate, who abandoned all pretense of impartiality.  Despite the clear, overt and overwhelming evidence during the past several years proving Romney correct, there has been no admission of being drastically incorrect either by the President or the many journalists who joined him in mocking Romney’s statement.

While international affairs can sometimes be nebulous, the poor results from the foreign policy actions of President Obama and Secretaries Clinton and Kerry are crystal clear.

Russia and China have found that aggressive use of force achieves results, and comes at almost no cost.  Iran has found that it can be financially rewarded for holding Americans for ransom. Evildoers such as Syria’s Bashar al-Assad have learned that there is no such thing as a “Red Line” beyond which they dare not go. Afghanistan’s Taliban knows that all it has to do is wait out the clock for American forces to leave.

Consider:

When the Chinese Navy infringed upon the Philippines’ Exclusive Economic Zone, Obama did nothing.  The White House didn’t even lodge a diplomatic protest.  Even after the World Tribunal at The Hague ruled in favor of the Philippines, the White House remained largely on the sidelines.

When Russia invaded Ukraine, the only Obama/Clinton response was a weak set of sanctions. A simple, nonviolent, and extremely effective response would have been to open up federal lands to energy exploitation, in order to eventually bring down the cost of energy. This would have bankrupted Moscow, which is heavily dependent on energy sales to finance its military. It would also have reassured European allies of future access to energy without kowtowing to Russia. But the policy was ignored by the White House.

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On the flip side, America’s friends, allies, or simply those who happen to be on the same side of a controversy as the U.S. have found that Washington is neither reliable as a partner nor even committed to protecting its own shared self-interest. Ask the Israelis or Egypt’s former President Hosni Mubarak about that.

The utter failure of the Administration to enforce its own “Red Line” in Syria, or to respond in any meaningful way to the Benghazi attack, and to give the Taliban high status by negotiating with it, allowed depraved forces both in power in the Middle East and around the world seeking to gain dominance all the encouragement they needed to stay their course.

The Obama-Clinton foreign policy is not the product of dedication to non-violence or human rights, reasons often given for President Carter’s unsuccessful foreign policy moves. This White House and its supporters have turned their backs on atrocities whenever convenient.

Just one example: Vice News reports that “human rights groups, Malaysian activists, and a number of US Senators accuse Barack Obama’s administration of manipulating [that nation’s record on human trafficking] to allow the Southeast Asian country to join the president’s massive free trade deal, the Trans-Pacific Partnership… Many anti-human trafficking advocates are crying foul.  ‘The State Department has sold out human rights to corporate and regional interests,’ David Abramowitz, the former chief counsel to the House Foreign Affairs Committee and a member of the Alliance to End Slavery and Trafficking, told Vice News.”

The number of humans in slavery has grown during the Obama-Clinton-Kerry tenure. The California Department of Justice reports that “Human trafficking is the world’s fastest growing criminal enterprise and is an estimated $32 billion-a-year global industry.”

Shoebat  reports that “In Saudi Arabia, (A major contributor to the Clinton Foundation) and other Gulf States, there are around over a million slaves. Obama has never mentioned this…These are deprived of food, adequate living conditions and are many times abused.”

The consistent record of foreign policy failure by Obama, Clinton and Kerry should not be overlooked or ignored.  However, that is precisely what America’s highly biased media is doing.

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North Korea rejects dialogue on human rights, nuclear weapons

In an announcement first reported by Spacewar.com, the North Korean Foreign Ministry has ruled out any dialogue concerning either human rights or its nuclear program.

The pronouncement came in anticipation of the imminent presentation by the European Union and Japan to the United Nations General Assembly describing horrific abuses by the Pyongyang regime, including numerous accounts of “extermination, murder, enslavement, torture, imprisonment, rape, forced abortions and other sexual enslavement.”

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The issue has become more urgent following reports that the regime has, according to a spacedaily.com report, constructed a test facility at the Sinpo South Shipyard, apparently intended to develop sea-based ballistic missiles.  The capability could facilitate either a surprise nuclear strike, an EMP attack, or provide the regime with a means to retaliate in the event a pre-emptive strike occurs to take out the country’s nuclear assets.