HUMAN RIGHTS
WATCH
Human
Rights Watch (HRW) was founded in 1988 but its origins
date to a seminal event in Cold War history, the Conference
on Security and Cooperation in Europe which was held in
'neutral' Helsinki, Finland in July/August 1975. The Soviets
went along with it because the Helsinki Accords, as the
final agreement of this star-studded conference was popularly
known, recognized contemporary national borders as being
set and inviolable, thereby confirming Soviet suzerainty
in Eastern Europe. The Americans and their European allies,
for their part, pressed by a nervous West Germany, were
happy to see a ratcheting down of tensions in Europe.
No
sooner had the ink dried, the CIA, the KGB, and allied
masters of the dark arts started undermining the pact.
The 'civil rights' portion of the agreement, which the
Soviets had agreed to with great reluctance, was soon
being used by the West as a cat's paw to undermine Soviet
power, especially in Eastern Europe. The Moscow Helsinki
Watch Group spawned 'human rights' groups in Eastern European
capitals. Typically, Western countries pronounced themselves
quite beyond the need of such patronizing supervision.
Human
Rights Watch descended directly from these NGOs that poked
about in the Soviet Union's nether regions. Its New York
base probably reflects its old CIA affiliations. Be that
as it may, HRW has done stellar work around the world
during the last 20 years in calling out when groups violate
'human rights' (as it defines them). And there's the rub;
human rights for people with Judaeo-Christian sensibilities
are not necessarily the same as those of people with other
backgrounds. The right to life itself surely overrides
more pedestrian rights like the right to free expression,
for free movement, etc. but HRW often forgets that. And
'Western' causes get a relatively free ride; the weak
protests of HRW during Israeli outrages against the Palestinian
people contrast starkly with its vehemence against Sri
Lanka.
-Read Full Story- (HRWW)
|
HRW
revising its Russian cluster bomb accusations
Posted by Helena Cobban September
4, 2008
Yesterday, Human Rights Watch started to step back from the claims it
made very loudly last month that during the fighting in Georgia,"Russian
aircraft dropped cluster bombs in populated areas in Georgia, killing
at least 11 civilians and injuring dozens." Those claims were first
made August 15, and were repeated in two further public statements issued
by the organization, this one on August 21 and this one on September
1. In addition, individual HRW staff members repeated these accusations
against Russia-- which it claimed were backed up by solid "evidence"--
in a number of other signed articles, media appearances, etc. .-Full
Report-(justworldnews.org-04/09/08)
HRW's
flawed 'Research' on Georgian cluster bombs
Posted by Helena Cobban September
2, 2008
n August 15, Human Rights Watch issued a statement-- still published
on their website without comment-- saying its researchers "have uncovered
evidence that Russian aircraft dropped cluster bombs in populated areas
in Georgia." On that same page is a photo of Georgian men standing around
a crater pointing to what is described in the caption as "the remnants
of an RBK-250 cluster bomb dropped by Russian aircraft on the village
of Rusisi..." This story about "Russia's use of cluster bombs in Georgia"
got huge play in the western MSM, many of whose leading contributors
have come to treat HRW with almost oracular reverence. On August 21,
HRW issued another statement on the same subject, adding that despite
Russia's denials that it had used these weapons, its researchers had
"documented additional Russian cluster munitions attacks during the
conflict in Georgia." It turns out, though that the "research" in question
was considerably less than expert or thorough, and that HRW's much-lauded
lead "researcher" on this topic, Marc Garlasco, may have fallen victim--
or worse-- to a Georgian disinformation campaign. .-Full
Report-(ustworldnews.org-02/09/09)
Human
Rights Watch as a Political Instrument of Liberal Cosmopolitan Elite
of the United States of America
Co-operation of Russian and western human rights activists depends not
only on their professional solidarity but on their ideological closeness
of interests, sometimes - closeness of their goals. -Full
Report-(pravoslavie.ru-19/11/04)
Hijacking
Human Rights
By Michael Barker
August 03, 2007 -Human Rights Watch (HRW) is one of the latter
such organizations, and as a highly regarded and influential international
nongovernmental organization (NGO), it is vital that its global
work be regularly examined to ensure that it remains true to it's
stated humanitarian mission. Simply put, this is because as Jonathan
Cook writes: "The measure of a human rights organisation is to
be found not just in the strides it takes to seek justice for
the oppressed and victimised but also in the compromises it makes
to keep itself out of trouble. Because of the business that human
rights defenders are in, they must be held to a standard higher
than we demand of others."[2] -Full
Story- (zmag.org)
Human
Rights Watch as a Political Instrument of Liberal Cosmopolitan
Elite of the United States of America
Co-operation of Russian and western human rights activists depends
not only on their professional solidarity but on their ideological
closeness of interests, sometimes - closeness of their goals.
-Full
Report-(pravoslavie.ru-19/11/04)
O'Reilly
smeared "very shadowy" Human Rights Watch
FOX News Channel and radio host Bill O'Reilly called the group Human Rights
Watch (HRW) "very shadowy" and claimed that "they don't tell you where
their money comes from" because the group "knows how they're perceived
by most Americans." In fact, HRW's website freely discloses its donors.
Later, O'Reilly's guest from the conservative Heritage Foundation complained
that HRW has focused narrowly on "Abu Ghraib, Abu Ghraib, Abu Ghraib"
(prison in Iraq) and "Gitmo, Gitmo, Gitmo" (Guantánamo Bay, Cuba), where
Americans have been accused of abuses, rather than "using their scarce
resources to really shine the light on these places around the world where
there truly are human rights abuses" like China, Syria, and Sudan. In
fact, Human Rights Watch does extensive research and advocacy on these
nations and scores of others. -Full
Report-(mediamatters.org-Fri,
Nov 19, 2004)
Who
is behind Human Rights Watch? (2004)
Under President Clinton, Human Rights Watch
was the most influential pro-intervention lobby: its 'anti-atrocity crusade'
helped drive the wars in ex-Yugoslavia. Under George W. Bush it lost influence
to the neoconservatives, who have their own crusades. But the 'two interventionisms'
are not so different anyway: Human Rights Watch is founded on belief in
the superiority of American values. It has close links to the US foreign
policy elite, and to other interventionist and expansionist lobbies. .-Full
Report-(web.inter.nl.net-).-Full
Report-(forfolksake.com-29/08/08)
Why
human rights are wrong
Paul
Treanor,
Human rights conflict with the principle of
moral autonomy, and form an excuse for oppression. Any harm to others
can be justified by claiming that it is intended to respect certain 'rights',
even if the victim does not know of their existence. Revised June 2004. -Full
Report-(web.inter.nl.net-)
I
renounce my human rights
Paul Treanor, 7 September 1999
The first online renunciation of human rights by an individual, written
in the immediate aftermath of the Kosovo war. Since then, the crusade
in the name of such liberal ideologies has intensified. The supporters
of human rights believe that they are morally entitled to conquer the
world - and they have begun to do so. .-Full
Report-(web.inter.nl.net-) |
