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Heaven On Earth
Category Archives: Human Rights Complex
HRW and Self-Criticism: Fallout from the Saudi Arabian Fundraising Junket
NGO Monitor has just posted a further discussion of the HRW Saudi-Arabia fund-raising junket scandal. Part of what the dispute reveals is the very tenuous hold that HRW has on empirical reality, and the nasty ad hominem-style arguments they resort to in their defense. Self-criticism, which is what they call on others to do all the time, is apparently not their long suit.
In his defense of HRW against criticisms from outside, Roth had commented:
“The fact that we publish far more extensively on other Middle Eastern governments (as well as the PA, Hamas, etc) is irrelevant, apparently.”
Similarly, in responding to David Bernstein’s WSJ oped, Whitson declared
Human Rights Watch in recent years has published more reports and news releases on rights problems in Saudi Arabia than any other human rights organization in the world.
Now Roth’s comment is outright dishonest. As an email exchange with someone who is not necessarily familiar with the details, this is a bit like Enderlin drawing me a false map of Netsarim junction — a way to dismiss a subject without addressing it. Whitson’s comment is more careful. She just doesn’t mention that their work on Saudi Arabia is a) very recent, and b) more than anyone else in the way that 2 is more than 1. (Human Rights Complex means minimal attention to what “primitive” people do to each other.)
NGO Monitor comments that they criticize HRW because their reports are “so bad”:
HRW’s frequent “research reports” on Israel are a mix of “eyewitness” testimony (”there were no Hamas/Hezbollah forces anywhere”), pseudo-technical analysis, and speculation… As for the claims on the agenda, the data shows until 2006, Saudi Arabian human rights behavior was hardly on HRW’s agenda. Using a systematic methodology to compare the activities, NGO Monitor data show that between 2004 and 2006, HRW criticism of Israel was 300% greater than the almost non-existent focus on Saudi Arabia. In other words, in HRW’s world, Israel was by far the greater source of human rights violations.
The change – as much as it was — took place in 2008, after the NGO Monitor reports on HRW’s obsessive anti-Israel agenda were published. Some donors then earmarked money for a wider agenda, dragging Roth and Whitson along. But Israel continues to be the main target, with more press conferences, major reports, and United Nations lobbying. HRW is not campaigning for an “independent UN inquiry” on Saudi treatment of women, minorities, or members of other religions.
Don’t forget calling for an independent UN inquiry into war crimes in Sri Lanka.
The Lessons of Sri Lanka: Human Rights Complex Strikes Again
As I have often mentioned here, Charles Jacobs HRC predicts that if the perps in human rights violations are “people of color,” then the human rights community has nothing to say. Sri Lanka is a QED for the theory.
Michael Totten reports a conversation with Robert Kaplan about, inter alia, Sri Lanka (HT Fat Man):
MJT: So you just got back from Sri Lanka. What did you see there? What did you learn?
Kaplan: … Sri Lanka defeated, more or less completely, a 26 year-long insurgency. They killed the leader and the leader’s son. But there are no takeaway lessons for the West here. The Sri Lankan government did it by silencing the media, which meant capturing the most prominent media critic of the government and killing him painfully. And they made sure all the other journalists knew about it.
MJT: Wow.
Kaplan: There are a thousand disappearances a year in Sri Lanka separate from the war. Journalists are terrified there. The only journalism you read is pro-government. So that’s one thing they did.
The Tamil Tigers had human shields by the tens of thousands, not just by the dozens and hundreds like Al Qaeda. They put people between themselves and the government and say “you have to kill all the people to get to us.” So the government obliged them. The government killed thousands of civilians.
MJT: Tamil civilians?
Kaplan: Yes. They killed thousands of civilians in the course of winning this war. It acted in a way so brutal that there are no lessons for the West.
MJT: Would you say it was as brutal as Russia’s counterinsurgency in Chechnya?
Kaplan: Yes. It was. The U.N. is investigating whether as many as 20,000 civilians have been killed during the last few months.
* * *
MJT: Sri Lanka has been fighting this counterinsurgency for decades. Have they slowly made progress all this time and have now finally finished it off, or was there a tipping point recently where a seemingly endless conflict just ended almost suddenly?
Kaplan: The Sri Lankan government was elected in 2005 to win the war. And it has done that. Extremely brutally. It’s a government that’s very nationalist Sinhalese Buddhist. These are not the Richard Gere’s “peace and love” Buddhists. These are the real blood and soil Buddhists, where Buddhism is like any other religion when it’s threatened and it’s defending a piece of territory. It can be very brutal.
It was elected to win the war, which it interpreted from the voters as a right to silence the media and to fight without any restrictions.
MJT: It does work, though, doesn’t it?
Kaplan: It does work, yeah.
MJT: Not that we should do it, of course.
* * *
MJT: So there are no lessons at all? Nothing for the U.S., Israel, or Pakistan?
Kaplan: No.
MJT: Only moral lessons, perhaps. Yes, this works, but it would take an awful lot to get us to fight that way again.
I think there are many lessons to be learned. Kaplan’s simplistic answer is just intended to say, “we can’t do what they did.” Granted. But we still have to fight vicious enemies who turn their own civilians into human shields, and we have to find solutions.
In the meantime, we can certainly learn about the hypocrisy and viciousness of the alleged “human rights community,” especially the UN. While Israel reels from lawfare because of an operation in which hundreds of civilians were killed going after an equally vicious enemy, Sri Lankan’s celebrate in the street and the MSNM gives them something of a pass.
As for the UNHRC, they fulfill Jacobs’ expectations spectacularly.
The response of the UN?
China, Cuba, Egypt and 26 others on the 47-member council voted in favor of a resolution that described the conflict as a “domestic” matter that did not warrant outside interference. The council also supported the Sri Lankan government’s decision to provide aid groups only with “access as may be appropriate” to refugee camps.
Twelve mostly European countries opposed the resolution after failing to get support for a resolution that criticized both sides.
And with all this lack of interest, it looks like the 200,000 refugees may never go home.
Surely there’s much to be learned from all this, no?