‘US violating human rights at home and abroad’ – Russian report

Robert Bridge, RT
Published: 28 December, 2011, 19:21
Edited: 28 December, 2011, 19:45

In a report released by the Foreign Ministry detailing human rights abuses around the world, the United States comes up short, cited for violations on both the domestic and foreign fronts.

The report says that the United States, on the pretext of fighting terrorism, is actually crushing the liberties and freedoms of the very individuals the security measures were intended to protect – the American people.

"The situation in the United States…is far from the ideals proclaimed in Washington," the report says. “The incumbent administration continues to apply most of the methods of controlling society and interfering in the private lives of the American people that were adopted by the special services under George Bush on the pretext of combating terror.”

On October 26, 2001, a little over one month after the terror attacks of 9/11, the Bush administration rammed through the so-called Patriot Act, which many Congressmen admitted they did not have the time to read. Since the ratification of this draconian piece of legislation, the US government has been empowered to sift through emails, telephone calls – even the library books an individual may check out – all in the name of fighting against terrorism.

The Foreign Ministry also noted that the White House and the Department of Justice "shelter from liability CIS operatives and high-ranking officials" connected with serious violations of human rights.

In 2007, the International Red Cross released a shocking report, based on numerous interviews with detainees of Guantanamo Bay detention center, which revealed the existence of “black site” prisons at various locations in Eastern Europe.

In December 2005, Dick Marty, the Swiss politician responsible for investigating the allegations on behalf of the Council of Europe in Strasbourg, reported evidence that "individuals had been abducted and transferred to other countries without respect for any legal standards." Marty’s investigation has found no concrete evidence establishing the existence of secret prisons in Europe, but added that it was "highly unlikely" that European governments were unaware of the American program of renditions.

In June 2007, the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe supported the conclusions of the report by Dick Marty (Resolution 1562 and Recommendation 1801).

The Russian Foreign Ministry report went on to condemn “the exterritorial application of US legislation by the US administration,” which “seriously harms Russian-US relations,” the Russian Foreign Ministry said in its report.

"It leads to violations of the basic rights and freedoms of Russians, including arbitrary arrests and abductions from third countries, cruel treatment, criminal prosecution on the basis of evidence given by false agents and doubtful evidence," the document reads, citing as examples the cases involving Russian citizens Viktor Bout and Konstantin Yaroshenko.

Viktor Bout was arrested in Thailand in 2008 by US and Thai police and extradited in 2010 to the United States to stand trial on charges of arms smuggling. Bout, who is currently incarcerated in the Metropolitan Correctional Center, New York City, says he has no hope for receiving a fair trial in the United States.

In 2005, Hollywood released the film Lord of War starring Nicolas Cage, which portrays a character based on the 'life' of Viktor Bout.

Bout continues to maintain his innocence.
­NATO – force for good?

The North Atlantic Treaty Organization, of which the United States is the primary sponsor, also fared poorly in the Foreign Ministry report.

According to the document, NATO forces repeatedly violated humanitarian law in Libya by killing civilians and failing to prevent numerous crimes by the Libyan opposition. The statistics presented on civilian casualties provide a portrait of a military operation that was reckless at best.

"According to various information, intensive bombardment in the first days of the campaign (and even before the operation was headed by NATO) led to the deaths of civilians: from 64 to 90 civilians, including up to 40 people in Tripoli, and 150 were wounded. On May 13, 13 imams were killed and 50 imams were wounded during a collective prayer in the city of Brega. Nine people were killed during the bombing of Tripoli on June 19. Fifteen people, including three children, were killed as a result of NATO bombing on June 20," the report says.

Meanwhile, NATO officials ignored crimes committed by the Libyan opposition, the report says.

"NATO did not take any effective measures on the numerous crimes committed by the former Libyan armed opposition registered by international human rights NGOs, including killings, violence, ethnic crimes, etc., which essentially promoted such actions taken by the rebels," the report by the Russian Foreign Ministry says.

The document emphasizes that NATO denies that the death of civilians was a result of the bombing carried out by the coalition forces at the official level.

"They are saying that the targets for the bombing were thoroughly selected to rule out civilian casualties. They said, referring to NATO’s support of the Interim National Council, that there would have been much more casualties if it had not been for NATO," the report says.

NATO defended reports on civilian casualties due to NATO actions solely as propaganda put out by the Gaddafi regime, the report adds. Eyewitness testimony, however, as well as media reports, contradicts these statements.

"Various evidence provided by eyewitnesses and media (and in some cases even pro-NATO media publications) indicates that a considerable part of this information is true," the report says.

The report also states that members of the previous Libyan government and its supporters were killed without due process of a court hearing; all the opposition required was the tacit consent of NATO.

Former Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi was captured alive on October 20, 2011 in his hometown of Sirte by members of the Libyan National Liberation Army after his convoy was attacked by NATO warplanes. Despite being taken alive, Gaddafi was beaten and killed by his captors.
­US democracy – not so perfect

The report went on to criticize the United States for what it sees as a faulty democratic system of elections, which increasingly lacks representation from third party candidates.

"Human rights activists are concerned by the fact that independent candidates are barred from elections and electoral offices,” the report said, while going on to mention the “practice of appointing senators by governors in case of offices becoming vacant early,” the Russian Foreign Ministry said in its first annual report on human rights.

The report mentioned the case of Rod Blagojevich, the former Governor of Illinois, who was found guilty of trying to sell the vacated senatorial seat of Barack Obama.

"Curious in this context is the case of former Governor of Illinois Rod Blagojevich, who in fact attempted to sell the seat of a senator from that state, which became vacant after Barack Obama was elected president of the US," the report says.

The ministry document also aired concerns about the condition of freedom of speech in the United States.

"The US Congress has been unable…to pass legislation entitling journalists to keep their sources secret (except for certain situations when a court acknowledges disclosure of information necessary).”

The Russian report on human rights also mentioned the increasing frequency of US journalists losing their jobs due to uttering what is determined to be “politically incorrect” remarks, which the authors of the report suggest is just another form of media censorship.

Recently, two American journalists – 44-year-old senior CNN Middle East editor Octavia Nasr and 89-year-old White House correspondent Helen Thomas – lost their jobs due to “slips of the tongue,” which seems to be a one-way ticket to an early retirement in the world of US journalism these days.

Thomas, who had been part of the White House Press Corps since the Eisenhower administration, was forced to retire for telling a rabbi in May 2010 that Israelis should "get the hell out of Palestine."

Octavia, who had worked at CNN for 20 years, was fired immediately after she posted a Twitter message expressing admiration for Lebanon's Grand Ayatollah Mohammed Hussein Faldlallah, who passed away last July.

A Reform Agenda for Arab Economies

Interviewee:
Manuela V. Ferro, Director, Poverty Reduction and Economic Management for the Middle East and North Africa, World Bank
Interviewer:
Jonathan Masters, Associate Staff Writer, CFR.org

December 22, 2011

ManuelaEconomic challenges are central to the political transformations sweeping the Middle East and North Africa. Arab governments--some of them fragile democracies--need to tackle corruption, slow growth, inequity, and unemployment that helped arouse protest movements. Manuela V. Ferro, a World Bank expert on Arab economies, says the region faces significant difficulties in the near term, including reductions in trade, tourism, and foreign investment. Governments intent on reform, she adds, must strive for an economic recovery with "visible benefits to all citizens," and focus on fiscal sustainability, job creation, and protecting the poor.

We're just over a year out from the start of the Arab Spring. What are the economic prospects for the Middle East and North Africa (MENA)?

Political events in 2011--revolutions and evolutions--in several countries have created opportunities for more open societies and inclusive growth. However, there are also short-term consequences on economic performance; we saw tourism, trade, investment, and in some countries, remittances have also slowed down. Tourism, which comprises 4 and 6 percent of Egypt and Tunisia's GDP, respectively, contracted significantly following revolutions. Yet this labor-intensive sector is a major source of foreign exchange for several countries; in Egypt tourism revenues were the second-largest source of foreign exchange earnings in FY2010. The region has witnessed foreign direct investment (FDI) declines in a number of countries.

In several countries (in particular non-oil exporters - Egypt, Jordan, Tunisia, Morocco, Syria, and Yemen), while the medium-term economic and social outlook remains promising, near-term growth prospects are weaker than a year ago. This is especially the case in countries where there is significant uncertainty about the length, nature, and direction of transition.

It is against this backdrop of economic vulnerability in several MENA countries that the eurozone crisis is hitting. So far, domestic and regional events are still dominating the economic outlook for most countries in the MENA region. Economic and social challenges in MENA are unrelated to the Eurozone crisis, but could be exacerbated by it.

What are the biggest challenges these countries face, from an economic standpoint, during these transitions? And what are some of the basic reforms that are necessary?

Governments need to ensure that economic and social policies support a strong economic recovery with visible benefits to all citizens, not just those politically connected. This means that economic governance policies that ensure a level-playing field will need to play a much greater role than they have in the past.

Many (non-oil exporting) countries in the region had an acceptable--though not stellar--economic performance during the last decade: about 3-4 percent growth per year. Creating the fifty to seventy million jobs needed to reduce unemployment will require three things:

First, ensuring economic stability and fiscal sustainability in the context of increased social pressures and rising borrowing costs.

Second, supporting job creation through a more vibrant private sector, in particular by integrating MENA countries more fully in the world economy. Until now, MENA has been one of the least integrated regions in the world. Looking forward, economic integration through greater trade and investment is an overarching development strategy that can do for the MENA region what it did before for Central and Eastern Europe, East Asia, and other emerging trading partners that are now sustainable growth paths.

Governments need to ensure that economic and social policies support a strong economic recovery with visible benefits to all citizens, not just those politically connected.

Third, protect the poor through more effective, much better targeted social protection. MENA countries have long had redistributive policies through subsidies and public employment programs. MENA countries have operated extensive subsidy systems--for energy, water and food--for the past forty years, which have totaled more than $50 billion for the region as a whole. These systems are inefficient and do not provide an effective mechanism to help households cope with temporary shocks or move out of poverty.

The concerns are very different as you move from the short term, to medium term, and then to the long-term structural problems. Could you talk a bit about the various challenges along this timeline?

Policies that make sense in the short run should also make sense in the long run. There is a question of sequencing, yes, but thinking exclusively of the short run is likely to be detrimental.

For instance, the Tunisian transition government introduced a set of measures to signal a clear break from the past and set the country on a new path. This included enhancing access to information to promote transparency; opening up access to the Internet; improving public procurement procedures; streamlining the regulatory burden faced by firms; introducing new rules for good governance in the banking sector; reforming the National Employment Fund and introducing new programs to better assist the unemployed. Because these reforms helped lay the foundations of a stronger, more open Tunisia, and set the country on a faster, more inclusive, development path, (the World Bank) supported the reforms introduced by the government with a development policy Loan, alongside other development partners.

Are there success stories from other parts of the world that can serve as a model for some of these transitioning Arab countries?

Eastern Europe benefited from a popular rejection of an economic model driven by central planning, by a supportive global economic environment, and by openings towards EU membership. In many Eastern European countries, there was an organized political leadership that adopted market-friendly policies. In Latin America there were many fits and starts, as might be the case in the Middle East and North Africa.

In East Asia, Indonesia offers an interesting example, as governance and economic reforms led to a vibrant, dynamic economy. Each of these experiences offers lessons for MENA. But there is no clear-cut model that applies directly. Each transition happens in a particular context, with particular initial conditions. The path is rarely straight, and we must be prepared for potentially long transitions.

What is the best policy for these countries as they navigate the financial straits of transition?

Different countries in transition face different economic stresses, and will find their own way to address financing needs. Egypt, like other countries in the region undergoing a political transition, is managing a fast-evolving situation, now made more difficult by a global economy that is itself in a dangerous phase. Egyptian authorities have taken some steps recently to address foreign exchange needs. For instance, they auctioned dollar-denominated treasury bills, perhaps part of a strategy to diversify funding away from local sources.

[E]conomic integration through greater trade and investment is an overarching development strategy that can do for the region what it did before for Central and Eastern Europe, and East Asia.

Perhaps for historical reasons, there is a perception in some quarters in Egypt that external debt is at dangerously high levels. In fact, much of Egypt's debt is domestic; the composition and small size of Egypt's external debt makes it relatively resilient to external shocks.

Given that domestic borrowing costs are running at double digits and that public sector borrowing needs are high and could be crowding out the Egyptian private sector, the authorities have remained engaged with potential sources of external finance.

High unemployment, particularly among the youth, is a persistent problem in the region. What steps need to be taken to address this?

What we have heard from young people is that they want jobs, social justice, and dignity. In the late 1990s and early 2000s, the social contract--and the economic model that underpinned it--became increasingly strained, in particular in non-oil producing countries. Governments became gradually unable to continue employing people.

The private sector was unable to absorb labor because of the rapidly growing youth population and government policies that limited entry of new firms but protected those that were politically connected. In some countries, education was increasingly unable to provide the skills for a modern private sector, and labor productivity was low. For non-oil producers, the subsidy bill became difficult to uphold because of unprecedented high prices of fuel and food.

With relatively high rates of unemployment around 10 percent and youth unemployment at 24 percent for the MENA region, approximately forty-eight million jobs will have to be created in the coming decade. Women face even higher rates of unemployment.

Only a dynamic and growing private sector can create jobs at a rate that keeps pace with this growing and increasingly young population. The public sector can help in the short run, but short-term jobs programs cannot solve a structural unemployment challenge. Managing expectations of how fast the deficit of jobs can be addressed is critical.

*Editor's Note: This interview was conducted in writing.

Oil interests push China into Sudanese mire

By Andrew Higgins, Published: December 24
The Washington Post

JUBA, South Sudan — At a restaurant along the River Nile offering crocodile and ostrich meat, officials of the world’s newest — and desperately destitute — nation hosted a lunch this month for Liu Guijin, China’s visiting envoy for African affairs.

Liu’s visit to Juba, the dirt-track capital of South Sudan, which split from Sudan in July, came at a tense time: Sudan had just bombed a refugee camp, armed militias were mining roads, and troops were clashing in disputed border areas.

The Chinese envoy, however, came here mainly to talk about oil.

The Chinese “are very worried,” said Stephen Dhieu Dau, South Sudan’s minister of petroleum and mining, who attended the lunch with Liu. “Their wish is to see the continuation of production and the flow of the crude. This is their concern.”

China, which gets nearly a third of its imported crude oil from Africa, has invested billions of dollars in the past 15 years to pump crude from this war-scarred land. But the division of what until five months ago was a united country has pushed Beijing into a political minefield in defense of its assets, straining China’s “just business” insistence that it doesn’t get involved in the internal affairs of foreign lands.

China’s involvement revolves largely around the interests of a single company, the China National Petroleum Corp., or CNPC, a state-owned giant that, in its quest to match the global reach of Western oil majors and to feed China’s appetite for fuel, has dragged usually risk-averse Chinese diplomats into one of Africa’s most poisonous feuds.

Across Africa, China is getting tugged into local affairs. In Zambia, China’s involvement in mining — and its close ties to the incumbent president — dominated a September presidential election. China’s man lost. A multibillion-dollar, energy-linked Chinese loan to Ghana caused political ructions there. Leaders in Chad, meanwhile, have been struggling in recent weeks to tamp down public anger over a sudden boost in the price of gasoline produced by a new CNPC refinery near the Chadian capital.

China’s entanglement in foreign nations’ quarrels, however, is perhaps deepest in the desert and bush that flank the Nile. Here, CNPC straddles both sides of a murderously volatile fault line: between Muslim Arabs in the north and black, often Christian Africans who inhabit the south.

Most of the oil lies in the landlocked south, but the only way to get it to market is through Chinese-built pipelines that pass through the north to a Chinese-built terminal on the Red Sea.

When CNPC first took a stake in oil fields here in 1996, China placed all its chips on a brutal regime in Khartoum, selling arms and providing diplomatic cover as President Omar Hassan al-Bashir battled to crush southern rebels. With these same rebels now running ministries in Juba, China is rushing to hedge its bets, offering Khartoum’s foes in the south a package of development aid and low-interest credit that hasn’t been announced but that officials here say could be worth as much as $10 billion.

“During the struggle of the people of South Sudan, China took the side of the government in Khartoum,” said Pagan Amum, the secretary-general of the Sudan People’s Liberation Movement, or SPLM, a rebel outfit during the civil war that is now South Sudan’s ruling party. “But that is history, a troubled history, and we will not allow ourselves to be hostages of the past.”

Amum, who got invited to China last month, said that he raised this “difficult past” during a banquet in Beijing at the corporate headquarters of CNPC and that he was assured that the company wants to “sort things out, to heal” and work closely with Juba.

Pursuit of energy

In the vanguard of China’s pursuit of energy and profit overseas, CNPC began looking abroad nearly two decades ago, just as Chinese industry’s appetite for oil started to overtake domestic production. Since then the company has invested in ventures from Peru and Venezuela to Iraq and Kazakhstan.

But nowhere has CNPC poured in so much money and caused itself — and the Chinese government — so many headaches as in Sudan.

China imported more than half the oil it consumed last year, with Africa its biggest source after the Middle East. The country’s largest African supplier by far was Angola, but most of that oil was simply purchased, not produced, by Chinese companies. In the Sudan region, by contrast, CNPC — the dominant partner in foreign consortiums operating there — actually pumped the oil from the ground.

Chinese customs figures show that China imported 92 million barrels of crude from Sudan last year — or 70 percent of Sudan’s total oil exports as reported by the then united country’s Central Bank.

CNPC, thanks in part to its expansion overseas, now ranks as one of the world’s biggest energy companies. Its listed subsidiary, PetroChina, which trades on the New York Stock Exchange, has a market capitalization just behind that of ExxonMobil, America’s biggest oil company.

Though largely motivated by profit, CNPC won strong state support for its push into Sudan by presenting this and other investments abroad as a boost to China’s energy security: They reduce China’s dependence on Western oil majors that dominate production in Angola, Nigeria and elsewhere. But they’ve also left Beijing struggling to juggle often-irreconcilable interests.

“They want to be close to us and close to Khartoum. But Jesus said you cannot serve two masters,” said Dau, South Sudan’s petroleum minister. “They have to make a choice. They have to be honest and say who is right. That is what the Bible says.”

China has tried to stay neutral but gets sniped at by both sides. “It’s a dilemma for China,” said Cui Shoujun, director of the International Energy Research Center at Renmin University in Beijing. China “tries to balance the south and the north but hasn’t come up with an effective way to do this.”

Amid escalating tension across a new international border, Amum, the head of South Sudan’s ruling party, traveled to the Ethiopian capital, Addis Ababa, last month for talks with officials from Khartoum on pipeline tariffs and other issues. The African Union mediated the negotiations, but China played an active role behind the scenes trying to calm tempers.

When discussions broke down and Sudan threatened to disrupt pipeline deliveries, Amum got a call on his cellphone from China’s ambassador in Juba. The ambassador, Amum said, “is very powerful” and wanted to ensure that oil keeps flowing.

“We talked about threats to our national interest and their national interests,” Amum said.

The Chinese Embassy declined to comment. The Foreign Ministry in Beijing then issued a stern public warning that “China thinks it is crucially important . . . to keep normal oil production.”

Sudan, though a close friend of Beijing for years, still held up China-destined oil shipments for several days. Liu, China’s Africa envoy, rushed to Juba and then Khartoum, warning that oil has to keep flowing “because the consequences of stopping . . . will be disastrous to everyone.” Oil tankers are now being loaded normally again, but the underlying dispute is far from solved.

As the talks with Khartoum collapsed, South Sudan’s Petroleum Ministry summoned CNPC and its partners from Malaysia and India to a shabby hotel conference room in Juba to confront another nettlesome issue: the rewriting of oil contracts.

The ministry says it doesn’t want the companies to suffer financially but does want them to pay attention to matters that the old, Khartoum-drafted contracts largely ignored: protection of the environment, respect for human rights and social responsibility. CNPC officials in Juba, citing the sensitivity of the talks, declined to comment.

Western firms retreat

The deals South Sudan wants reworked date to when CNPC first plunged into Sudan, taking over fields originally developed by the U.S. company Chevron, which, alarmed by mounting violence, had pulled out. Shortly after this, Washington in 1997 imposed economic sanctions on Sudan, which it declared as a “sponsor of terrorism and a relentless oppressor of its minority Christian population.”

As Western companies retreated, CNPC advanced, boosting production and investing in a pipeline to the Red Sea that, in 1999, allowed the first oil exports from Sudan.

Stories spread of atrocities linked to CNPC’s oil wells, including accounts of Chinese-supplied helicopters gunning down villagers as the Sudanese military moved in to clear and secure oil-producing areas. Not all of the accounts were true, but CNPC, steeped in the secretive ways of China’s ruling Communist Party, which appoints the company’s boss, mostly ignored pleas from outsiders for information and access.

By the time Sudan and southern rebels signed a peace accord in 2005 to end Africa’s longest civil war, “China was the devil in the minds of many people here,” said Alfred Sebit Lokuji, an expert in local development at Juba University.

China also came under withering fire from Western human rights activists, who accused it of complicity in Khartoum’s depredations in the western Darfur region and in the south. They called on investors to boycott PetroChina, CNPC’s listed subsidiary, and dubbed the 2008 Olympic Games in Beijing “the genocide games.”

When the International Criminal Court in The Hague indicted Bashir on war-crimes charges in Darfur in 2009, Zhou Yongkang, a member of the Communist Party’s Politburo Standing Committee and a former CNPC boss who had led the company’s 1990s expansion into Sudan, visited Khartoum to attend the opening of a Chinese-built refinery. He declared himself an “old friend of the Sudanese president.”

Amum, the SPLM secretary-general, said he was assured by CNPC’s boss, Jiang Jiemin, during his trip to Beijing that “if anything bad happened, it was not from them but from the government of Sudan. They said they were not involved in human rights violations.” CNPC in Beijing declined to comment.

China shifts gears

As independence for South Sudan became increasingly likely, China shifted gears, opening a diplomatic mission in Juba and reaching out to the SPLM. CNPC also set about mending fences, funding a computer center at Juba University. When Sudan split in July, the oil company began moving staff members from Khartoum to Juba, setting up offices, a dormitory and a canteen in a cluster of prefabricated huts at a Chinese-run hotel. China’s embassy is in the same compound.

Newly relocated CNPC staff members are shocked by Juba’s primitive conditions. A poster on their office wall warns of “Five Major Hazards” — a list of diseases endemic in South Sudan. But, one staffer noted, at “least they sell beer,” unlike in Khartoum, where alcohol is banned.

South Sudan, which gets 98 percent of its revenue from oil pumped by CNPC-led foreign operators, has tried to woo Chevron, Halliburton and other U.S. oil companies but found no takers, leaving China as its only real economic partner.

“Reality makes us work with people who are not our friends,” said Lual Deng, a southerner who served in Khartoum as petroleum minister before the country split. “We would prefer Western companies, but they are not coming.”

China’s money hasn’t opened all doors. Nihal Bor, the chief editor of the Citizen, a local newspaper, recalled how a Chinese diplomat stopped by ahead of an August visit to Juba by Foreign Minister Yang Jiechi and offered to pay for the publication of “an interview” with Yang trumpeting Beijing’s friendship. But there was a snag: The paper would not get to see the minister, only to publish an embassy-scripted “interview” in return for cash. “We are not that desperate,” said the editor, who declined the offer.

Amum, the ruling party’s head, though, thinks China’s deep pockets offer the best hope for development in a country bigger than France but with only a few dozen miles of paved roads. China, he says, can help not just the oil industry, but also mining, agriculture and infrastructure. “There are no hard feelings,” Amum said. He has learned how to use chopsticks.