What Rights & Whose

by Peter G. de Krassel

Hong Kong. January 28, 2005. America lecturing China about human rights is another perennial electoral classic pot calling the kettle black - or to paraphrase Deng Xiao-ping, is it the black cat trying to determine whether it is white while it catches mice?

Eleanor Roosevelt was one of the prime movers behind the adoption of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Nevertheless, America still has a pathetic record of living up to her standards while again being a verbal bully on the question of China's human rights abuses during a presidential election.
Let's look at the record. Instead of leading, America has merely taken the politically expedient move when it comes to human rights. It has merely ratified many of the human rights treaties only after most other countries have already done so. It took 40 years to ratify the Genocide Convention, 28 for the Convention Against Racial Discrimination, 26 for the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, the most important treaty of all. At the dawn of the 21st century, over 160 countries have ratified the convention banning discrimination against women -- but not the United States. Only two in the world have not ratified the Convention on the Rights of the Child; the U.S. and Somalia which has no effective government. And even when America has ratified treaties, it has often attached extensive reservations, making them inapplicable to America.

In the 1990s, the United States played the key role in setting up tribunals to put on trial individuals accused of war crimes and genocide in Rwanda and ex-Yugoslavia. Yet alone among its allies, it refused to sign the treaty that established the permanent international criminal court -- because it could not win an absolute exemption for its own soldiers.

The Bush administration then launched a global campaign to shield U.S. military personnel from the new court once it was established. America demanded countries sign bilateral treaties if they wanted America's support to join NATO or the EU. An obstructionist approach to public diplomacy, which can only backfire on America and reduce it to a Pacific Power. America has to lead by example not by exemption. Practice what it preaches and the values it stands for and advocates to China.

While seeking support of its war on terrorism America not only opposed the establishment of the International Court of Justice, but also the International Convention on Torture, which allows an independent prisons inspection system. The Convention on Torture was passed in 1989 and has since been ratified by over 130 countries. The non combatant prisoners, American citizens and foreigners, held in Guantanamo is a violation of international treaties and the U.S. constitution according to U.S. federal courts. The court judgments are naturally being appealed by the Bush White House to the friendly Supreme Court that put him in the White House to rewrite the constitution.

This while America has also refused to back ratification or ratify the treaty to ban land mines.

Bush's decision to reject the Kyoto Treaty on global warming, the Biological Weapons Convention and rescind the 1972 Anti Ballistic Missile Treaty are 21st century millennium examples of U.S. double standards and how it will turn its back on any global rules to suit its geopolitical agenda. The U.S., the world's largest polluter, repeatedly lectures China and the developing world to cut back pollution. Yet the U.S. is the biggest producer of man-made carbon dioxide emissions which many scientists say is the main greenhouse gas causing global warming.

If America wants China to warm up to the various rights conventions China and America have signed, isn't it time America also become a signatory to the rights convention?