Human rights abuses in Israel will be discussed in the meeting

GENEVA, March 18 (IslamOnline & News Agencies) - The United States will be missing from the members' list for the first time when the UN's top human rights forum opens here on Monday, but Washington is nevertheless likely to play an active role, news agencies reported.

Relegated to observer status, the U.S. has been voted off the 53-member UN Human Rights Commission whose annual session will examine human rights violations around the world -- China, Israel and the Palestinian territories, Africa, Colombia and Chechnya will be under the spotlight, reported Agence France-Presse (AFP).

Zimbabwe, fresh in controversy after the re-election of long time president Robert Mugabe, could also join the dozens of other countries to feature on the commission's agenda this year.

The post-September 11 fight against terrorism and the challenges it poses for human rights is also expected to dominate discussions, and the U.S. and its allies could find themselves under scrutiny.

Amnesty International (AI) says that about 1,200 foreigners rounded up after the deadly attacks last year on Washington and New York are still detained in the U.S., some arbitrarily.

The rights watchdog is also worried that resolutions against countries at the commission could be weaker this year because of the need to "pacify" states involved in the international coalition against terrorism.

Hundreds of non governmental organizations will be particularly guarded with regard to China and Russia.

The degree of U.S. participation this year had been uncertain but at the last moment Washington acknowledged it would be active after gaining assurances that its seat would be restored in 2003, diplomatic sources said.

As an observer, the U.S. will be unable to vote but can introduce resolutions. Last year, Washington again tried to see China condemned over its human rights record and was behind a resolution on Cuba, formally sponsored by the Czech Republic.

Every year since 1989, with one exception in 1995, Beijing has successfully blocked a hostile resolution from even being introduced at the commission using a procedural loophole.

"The commission must show that human rights norms apply to big states as well as small states," Reed Brody of Human Rights Watch told reporters. "It cannot ignore the dismal human rights situation in China, or the brazen refusal of the United States to apply the rules of the Geneva Convention to the prisoners at Guantanamo naval base in Cuba," he added.

On Monday, March 11, China broke its policy of refusing to condemn the increased U.S. global military presence following September 11, saying the expansion of Washington's "so-called security interests" violated global human rights.

"The United States has built many military bases all over the world, where it has stationed hundreds of thousands of troops, violating human rights everywhere in the world," said the lengthy document, issued Monday by China's cabinet, the State Council. "Today, the United States has expanded its so-called security interests to almost every corner of the world," it continued.

China has previously been at pains to avoid commenting on the U.S. deployment of troops following September 11 to Central Asian countries on its own borders such as Afghanistan.

The "Human Rights Record of the United States in 2001" – a riposte to a previous condemnations of China's record by Washington – contains an entire section lambasting U.S. military might.

The week before, the U.S. State Department released its annual report on human rights around the world, in which it described the situation in China as poor.

The Chinese document refers to U.S. human right abuses in other countries including:

• police brutality, overcrowded prisons and an inhumane system of keeping prisoners sentenced to capital punishment on "death row"

• widespread sexual abuse of children by members of the clergy in "the greatest scandal in the United States following the Enron case"

• fostering a "culture beautifying violence" through media "inundated with violent content"

• maintaining a "Third World" of poverty at the heart of a superpower.

The U.S. sees itself as "world judge of human rights", the report says. While "distorting human rights conditions in many countries and regions in the world including China", it says, the U.S. "turns a blind eye to its own".

Recently, several human rights groups slammed continued Israeli aggressions against the Palestinian people and deadly incursions into Palestinian refugee camps, which they see as a blatant violation of human rights.

Speaking to IslamOnline last week, Bahy el-Deen Hassan, director of the Cairo Center for Human Rights Studies (CCHRS), said that Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon is continuing with his massacre policy he used in the Sabra and Shateela camps in Lebanon decades ago.

Hassan was commenting at the photographs that were released by news agencies Monday, March 11, and were taken by an amateur photographer from his window in east Jerusalem in which Mahmoud Salah, a 23-year-old Palestinian, was shown being murdered by Israeli soldiers.

The pictures have caused outrage in Arab media. “This is a sample of the kinds of atrocious crimes that were committed in the Sabra and Shatila camps, and comes at a time when the Israeli occupation army is also targeting refugee camps as well,” Hassan said.

He added that it is now important to bring to the world’s attention the resemblance between the daily massacres against the Palestinians and the Holocaust. “What the Israeli occupation army is doing is not less horrific than what was carried out in those camps, if not more appalling,” said Hassan. He added that it is crucial to make sure that these actions are not carried out by irresponsible, radical officers in the Israeli army, but that they reflect Sharon’s policy in general.

The CCHRS will be taking part in the UNHRC meetings, he said adding that they will contribute with two papers.

“The first on how the Palestinian crisis is similar to what has happened in South Africa. The other is on the double standards that is used by the International community in dealing with the Palestinian issue,” said Hassan.

He added that there will also be a workshop held at the side of the conference concerning the situation in the occupied territories and human rights violations in the area. 

• Members of the UN Human Rights Commission
  
  

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