Hijacking Human Rights and discerning the role of NGOs in ‘nascent democracy’ and justifcation of war

Hijacking Human Rights
By Michael Barker – 3 August, 2007 – zcommunications

[excerpt] – full article HERE

Abusing the Principles of Human Rights

In an instructive article dealing with human rights abuses in China, Ralph McGehee (1999) draws attention to the links between HRW’s Asia branch and the imperial ambitions of the NED and the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA). He notes that: “US corporate-owned media, in league with government agencies, orchestrate media coverage to demonize states in conflict with corporate plans”. He observed that in China’s case many of those stories “seem to be generated by the ‘privately funded’ US-based Human Rights Watch/Asia” and that this:

“…reveal[s] the current US policy of using (rightly or wrongly) the theme of human rights violations to alter or overthrow non-US-favored governments. In those countries emerging from the once Soviet Bloc that is forming new governmental systems; or where emerging or Third World governments resist US influence or control, the US uses ‘human rights violations,’ as an excuse for political action operations. ‘Human Rights’ replaces ‘Communist Conspiracy’ as the justification for overthrowing governments.”[3]

In a similar vein, Sara Flounders (2002) illustrates how HRW provided the global media with information that enabled them to claim that in the West Bank “no massacre had taken place in Jenin” when in fact much other evidence suggested that a massacre had taken place.[4] She notes how HRW claims that “its reports are objective, balanced and evenhanded”, however:

“When it comes to Palestine this has meant equating the violence of the illegal Israeli occupation with the resistance of Palestinians to overwhelming military force. Once Human Rights Watch declared that ‘no massacre’ had occurred in Jenin, the demand for an inquiry and international action against Israeli crimes virtually disappeared. Media coverage shifted sharply. The Bush administration made a new round of demands on the Palestinians to condemn violence while calling Ariel Sharon ‘a man of peace’ and expressing sympathy for Israeli ‘self-defense’ measures. HRW statements echoed these shifts.”

More recently, HRW’s work in Palestine has come under fire from Jonathan Cook (2006) for seemingly “distorting its findings to placate the Israel lobby”.[5] This provoked HRW’s Middle East policy director, Sarah Leah Whitson, to respond to Cook’s critique whereupon she misrepresented his argument, which in turn invited a reply from Cook who observed that:

“If this is how one of the directors of HRW distorts my arguments and evidence when I carefully set out my case in black and white on the page, one has to wonder how faithfully she and her organisation sift the evidence in the far trickier cases relating to human rights, where things are rarely so black and white.”[6]

Crucially Cook clarifies his observations in his initial article by noting that he was “not challenging HRW’s research, which appears to show unequivocally that Israel did commit major war crimes; I am contesting its distorted presentation of the facts it unearthed to suit what looks suspiciously like a political agenda.”

Just over a month later in November 2006, Cook again highlighted HRW’s hypocrisy and doublespeak in Palestine, drawing attention to their press release Civilians Must Not Be Used to Shield Homes Against Military Attacks; which he observed was a travesty for it “denounce[ed] the Palestinians for choosing collectively and peacefully to resist house demolitions, while not concentrating on the violations committed by Israel in destroying the houses and using military forms of intimidation and punishment against civilians”.[7] Others like Norman Finkelstein (2006) also called upon HRW to retract this press release, which was subsequently withdrawn by HRW just over 2 weeks later.[8]

In a similar vein to HRW’s controversial actions in Palestine, Heather Cottin (2002) questioned the way HRW “equates the actions of the Colombian guerrilla fighters struggling to free themselves from the oppression of state terror, poverty and exploitation with the repression of the U.S-sponsored armed forces and paramilitary death squads”.[9] Taken together these recent examples clearly illustrate that there is more to HRW than first meets the eye. However, it is their promotion of foreign interventions in the name of ‘human rights’ that is potentially their most dangerous activity – as revealed by Edward S. Herman, David Peterson and George Szamuely (2007) in a devastating critique, titled Human Rights Watch in Service to the War Party, which examines HRW’s role in supporting the dismantlement of Yugoslavia. They conclude that:

“Sadly, HRW has… been an important contributor to human rights violations in the former Yugoslavia. HRW helped stir up passions in the demonization process from 1992 onward and actively and proudly contributed to preparing the ground for NATO’s ‘supreme international crime’ in March 1999.”[10]

The first full-length investigation of the people working behind the scenes at HRW was undertaken by Paul Treanor (2004), in which he methodically worked through the elite linkages of their Europe and Central Asia Advisory Committee. Treanor noted that:

“…human-rights interventionism became a consensus among the ‘foreign policy elite’ even before September 11. Human Rights Watch itself is part of that elite, which includes government departments, foundations, NGO’s and academics. It is certainly not an association of ‘concerned private citizens’. HRW board members include present and past government employees, and overlapping directorates link it to the major foreign policy lobbies in the US.”[11]

Indeed, HRW was created in 1978 as the Helsinki Watch (which later became HRW’s Europe and Central Asia Advisory Committee) “at the instigation of [ambassador-at-large for President Carter] Arthur Goldberg” with the start-up costs covered by a $400,000 from the Ford Foundation.[12] Furthermore, as Bruce Montgomery (2002) observes their establishment credentials were fortified by Robert L. Bernstein (the founder of HRW) who “began by recruiting the establishment elite to give the cause clout and visibility.”[13] Kirsten Sellars (2002) also points out that:

“The Ford Foundation played a crucial part in the development of the human rights movement in the seventies and eighties. A graph based on The Foundation Grants Index shows that Ford provided the lion’s share of US foundation grants for international human rights work in the years 1977 to 1991, especially in the first five years. (Kathryn Sikkink, ‘Human Rights, Principled Issue-Networks, and Sovereignty in Latin America’, International Organization, 47(3), Summer 1993, 421.) In particular, Ford was responsible for financially kick-starting many new human rights NGOs in the late seventies, including Helsinki Watch and the other Watch committees, the Lawyers Committee for International Human Rights, and the International Human Rights Law Group [now known as Global Rights. It also revived older groups such as the International League for Human Rights.”[14]

For activists and researchers familiar with the Ford Foundation’s elitist and anti-democratic history, this in itself should start alarm bells ringing as to the political motivations guiding the financial support which helped bring about HRW’s existence.[15] This is because the Ford Foundation’s backing of HRW is consistent with ‘democratic’ changes occurring within the US foreign policy elites thinking in the 1970s, which was beginning to recognise the importance of soft-power in promoting American hegemony. These changes were no doubt informed by the political experiences gained by the political elites running liberal philanthropic foundations (like the Ford and Rockefeller Foundations’), which in 1984 eventually led to the creation of the National Endowment for Democracy (NED) and the United States Institute for Peace (USIP). Ironically, these groups carry out the same disruptive work that the CIA and USAID are well known for, yet under the protective rhetoric of democracy and peace.[16] However, the type of democracy promoted by these organisations is best referred to as low-intensity democracy, or polyarchy. …more