The UN Human Rights’ Panel is a Joke
This is like the pot calling the kettle, black. The UN Human Rights Panel, you know the one staffed by human rights giants like Libya, China, Egypt, Cuba, Sudan, Zimbabwe, Bhutan are now giving the US a dressing down for their human rights’ record.
A U.N. rights panel yesterday demanded the immediate closure of any secret U.S. detention facilities and criticized Washington on a range of other issues — calling for a moratorium on capital punishment, representation in Congress for the District of Columbia and for improved treatment of poor and black citizens victimized by Hurricane Katrina.
Let’s look at these issues. At least in the US, a convicted criminal has access to a jury of his/her peers, proper representation, and an open and fair trial. Many of these countries denouncing the US have religious police who kill people for ‘religious crimes.” Many of these same countries do not have fair and open trials, fair representation, or even a jury.
The issue of the District of Columbia is a more complex. DC residents have a non-voting delegate to the House of Representatives. As such they have representation to a degree. For the US giving DC a vote in Congress is an ongoing issue to be resolved by the US. How many of these counties on the Human Rights Panel allow their residents to vote or even have representation? Cuba—no, China—no, Libya—no, Egypt—no, Sudan—no.
The Human Rights Panel’s last issue of treatment of the victims of Hurricane Katrina is particularly vicious considering the outpouring of generosity by the American people. The people devastated by Hurricane Katrina have been welcomed into our homes, their city being rebuilt, they are allowed to vote in absentia, and they are being welcomed back home as things return to normal. What else does the Human Rights Panel want or expect?
Then comes the issue of ‘secret detention centers’ around the world.
“The committee is concerned by credible and uncontested information that the state party has seen fit to engage in the practice of detaining people secretly and in secret places for months and years on end,” according to the 12-page report by the committee, which held a two-day hearing last week on U.S. compliance to a major human rights treaty. (emphasis added by TRS)
Eh? I did not know the United States had a state party. So the US holds terrorists in secret prisons in other countries. Seems to me if these detention centers are in other countries, these home countries would have a large say in what happens there. Perhaps we should just turn over these terrorists to their home countries, but the UN panel would most likely call this cruel and unusual.
It is real easy tell other countries of their problems when you ignore your own. The UN has hardly been a bastion of enlightened behavior considering its glaring failures in southern Lebanon, the former Yugoslavia, keeping Saddam Hussein in check in its oil for food scandal, the massacre in Rwanda, slavery in Sudan, and many, many others. The problem is the US is everybody’s favorite kicking victim. If I could be so bold as to quote from the bible, Jesus said in Matthew 7:
3“Why do you look at the speck of sawdust in your brother’s eye and pay no attention to the plank in your own eye? 4How can you say to your brother, ‘Let me take the speck out of your eye,’ when all the time there is a plank in your own eye?
This UN Human Rights Panel is a joke. They have so many problems of their own and yet they want to kick the US for their ‘problems.’ Like I said, it’s like the pot calling the kettle black.
After hearing of the UN recommendations, some US officials declared they would ‘consider its recommendations.’ Bucklog at Its a Paul World says we should just tell the UN to get lost.
Consider its recommendations? How about telling them to get lost and clean up their own
problems? Direct them to places like North Korea, Iran, Cuba or go to any number of countries in Kofi show me the money Annan’s backyard, Africa. Then they wonder why Americans are so anti UN. Just amazing!
Yeah, what he said!
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