Bush’s Failure to Censure Russia, China Shows Disregard for Human Rights

The Bush administration has chosen to place politics over people. At the yearly summit… The Bush administration has chosen to place politics over people. At the yearly summit of the United Nations Human Rights Commission, the administration elected not to censure China and Russia for their egregious human rights violations, including extrajudicial arrests and religious persecution.

In doing so, the United States ensured that injustice there threatens the application of justice elsewhere.

This decision happened concurrently with the U.S. occupation of Iraq. No official statement detailing how and in what timeframe Iraq will be rebuilt has been issued. But any such plan will definitely require United Nations recognition for the new government. Russia and China influence this vote.

Russia – one of these shareholders and a permanent member of the U.N. Security Council, along with the United States and China – seems to be the chief beneficiary of the Bush administration’s actions.

Bush’s politicking will prove detrimental to world human rights efforts. The administration exacerbates the situation by issuing tacit approval of China and Russia’s contemptible actions, and using this approval as bargaining chits. In short, we have traded our acceptance for China and Russia’s UN influence.

The United States has already sought the attention of the World Bank and International Monetary Fund, which would fund and oversee Iraq’s rebuilding. As the April 12 Pittsburgh Post-Gazette reported, “World Bank President James D. Wolfensohn said that in the absence of a United Nations resolution affording legitimacy to a new authority in Baghdad, the bank can’t even send a mission to Iraq unless its major shareholder countries give the go-ahead.”

Though France and Germany are also creditors for Iraq, and permanent and current members of the Security Council, respectively, the United States can court neither. They – unlike Russia – do not benefit from U.S. approval. The administration targeted countries with the most to gain.

By failing to condemn Russia’s ongoing war with Chechnya – its chief violation of human rights – the administration curries favor from Russia, hoping that the new Iraqi government will be recognized and the World Bank and IMF deployed. A Human Rights Watch press release identifies Russia as having perpetrated “extrajudicial killings, forced disappearances and torture.” But the administration overlooked these, in favor of its agenda.

Resultantly, human rights groups such as Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch have voiced their disapproval, according to an April 12 article in The Washington Post. Both U.S.-based organizations monitor human rights violations, taking particular interest in China’s religious intolerance and Russia’s often-violent interactions with the secessionist republic of Chechnya.

Not censuring both Russia and China also undermines a recent State Department report on human rights condemning both countries. National security advisor Condoleezza Rice’s trip to Moscow to patch the tattered U.S.-Russian relationship compounds this. Furthermore, State Department spokesman Richard Boucher’s statement that “we are beginning to see some limited, but significant progress [in China]” despite what he calls “backsliding.”

Such backsliding includes closing a politically subversive newspaper, exiling a 26-year-old Tibetan nun – who had been China’s longest-sentenced female political prisoner – and jailing a U.S. citizen for his participation the Falun Gong spiritual movement within the past three months.

Clearly the Bush administration has acted in its best interest, neglecting those of the world community. In failing to condemn Russia and China, Bush elucidated his priorities. To carry out Operation Iraqi Freedom, the United States has denied the importance of freedom everywhere.

E-mail columnist Sydney Bergman at sbergman@pittnews.com.