Middle East Times
March 9, 2006
WASHINGTON -- The annual US human rights report gives a hard-hitting assessment of Iran and Syria but largely spared Israel, Saudi Arabia and other allies in the Middle East.
But Barry Lowenkron, the US assistant secretary of state for democracy, human rights and labor, rejected suggestions that the United States practices double standards.
He also insisted that "lower standards" had not been used to judge Iraq and Afghanistan because of US involvement in those countries.
"We do not sit among ourselves and decide: 'This is in or this is out'. We rely on a tremendous amount of input from the media overseas, from nongovernmental organizations, from academics, from jurists," Lowenkron told a press conference to present the annual report.
But Lowenkron said that Iran and Syria were the two countries that should be highlighted as having the worst human rights problems.
Both were mentioned in a 16-page introduction to the report on 196 countries around the world. Israel and Saudi Arabia were not named.
Pressed about Saudi Arabia, where women do not have the vote, the US human rights official said that he would not make "comparisons" between countries.
The report said that conditions in Iran had worsened in 2005 under new hardline president, Mahmud Ahmadinejad.
"The Iranian government continued to ignore the desire of the Iranian people for responsible, accountable government, continuing its dangerous policies of pursuing a nuclear weapons capability, providing support to terrorist organizations, and advocating - including in several public speeches by the new president - the destruction of a UN member state," the report said of Ahmadinejad's call for the destruction of Israel.
The report accused Iran - which denies that it is pursuing nuclear arms - of interference in neighboring Iraq and of supporting Hizbullah in Lebanon and the Palestinian group Hamas, which are both on a US terrorist list.
Similar accusations about supporting terrorism were made against Syria.
The report said that in Iraq, where there are fears of civil war and reports of police "death squads" targeting the Sunni minority, "2005 was a year of major progress for democracy, democratic rights and freedom".
It did acknowledge, however, that Iraq's "social fabric remained under intense strain from the widespread violence principally inflicted by insurgent and terrorist elements".
The report said that "Afghans in 2005 continued to show their courage and commitment to a future of freedom and respect for human rights".
Again it acknowledged but did not highlight that elections on September 18 "occurred against the backdrop of a government still struggling to expand its authority over provincial centers, due to continued insecurity and violent resistance in some quarters".
Egypt was the only key ally criticized in the report, which highlighted "credible" reports of fraud and vote rigging in the country's election last year and said that rights were not guaranteed.
Neither Israel nor the Palestinian territories were mentioned in the report's introduction.
The report by country said that the Israeli government "generally respected the human rights of its citizens" though it did say that there had been serious abuses by Israeli security services against Palestinian detainees and frequent discrimination against Arab-Israelis.
Lowenkron called the Palestinian elections in January, which produced a Hamas government, "a major event".
But he added: "You can't have one leg in terrorism and one leg in governance. The way I've always put it, you can't do the ballot Monday, Wednesday, Friday and bullets Tuesday, Thursday, Saturday."
The United States has threatened to suspend aid to the Palestinians if Hamas forms a government that refuses to renounce violence and fails to recognize the right of Israel to exist.
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