Human Rights Watch -- which everyone knows is hopelessly obsessed with Israel and unwilling to criticize Arab autocrats -- issued a statement today that slammed the Syrian government for its "grow[ing] repression" of activists and journalists and urged Catherine Ashton, the European Union foreign policy chief, to press the issue with Syrian officials during her visit there next week.
"As the last few months have demonstrated, talking to Syria without putting its rights record on the table emboldens the government to believe that it can do whatever it wants to its people, without consequence," said Sarah Leah Whitson, Middle East director at Human Rights Watch. "A message to Syria that says 'We only care about your external affairs' is a green light for repression."
As HRW notes, two high-ranking Western officials visited Syria last month: France's prime minister, Francois Fillon, and U.S. undersecretary of state William Burns. Neither made a big deal of Bashar al-Assad's recent crackdown, which rounded up (among others) a 19-year-old blogger named Tal al-Mallohi.
It makes sense for HRW to focus on the EU, since the United States -- despite Obama's half-hearted policy of engagement with Syria -- doesn't have much influence over the Syrian government.
More generally, the Syrian case illustrates why it's bad policy to downplay human rights concerns in the interest of securing a government's "cooperation." Burns' visit focused mostly on arms trafficking: He asked the Syrian government to stop arming Hizballah, and to cut off the flow of insurgents and weapons into Iraq. Assad claimed the Syrian government wasn't doing either of those things. The visit was a wash, in other words. The U.S. didn't make a stink about Syria's human rights violations, and it got nothing in return.
Governments have a moral imperative to urge other governments to respect human rights. But even setting that aside and taking a purely "realist" perspective -- cooperation just doesn't get you very far.
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Categories: Human Rights, Obama Administration, Regional News, Syria
Tags: Bashar al-Assad, Francois Fillon, Human Rights Watch, Tal al-Mallohi, William Burns
3 Comments
So what you're saying is, as long as they aren't listening to us anyway, we might as well stake out the moral high ground? Couldn't you just as easily say we should focus on the most important issues and hope that someday the relationship will improve enough for our opinion to matter?
The problem is... there's always a reason not to mention human rights -- there are always "more important issues" to be discussed. Egypt is a useful example: The U.S. has a certain amount of leverage over Egypt, certainly moreso than over Syria, but still chooses to downplay human rights issues.
That hasn't led to marked progress on the "more important issues" -- Hamas and Fatah still aren't reconciled, the "peace process" is stalled, etc. Egypt's cooperation on those issues isn't worth much because there are all kinds of other structural problems that obstruct progress.
So, acknowledging that, I think the U.S. might as well stake out the moral high ground -- well, I guess we have to put aside the hypocrisy of the U.S. lecturing anyone on human rights these days -- and criticize governments for their internal abuses.
Indeed.
Even a non functioning Clock is right twice a day.
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