Global Policy Forum

By Abid Aslam

The State Department has hailed U.S. efforts to promote human rights and democracy overseas amid criticism of the Bush administration's track record and claims that U.S. involvement in rights violations in key countries has been deeper than previously thought. Democratic forces around the world had made advances over the past year as seen most notably in Afghanistan, Iraq, the Palestinian territories, Georgia, Ukraine, and Lebanon, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said Monday as she released the department's latest Supporting Human Rights and Democracy report.

Congress mandated the annual report, a companion to the State Department's main annual survey of human rights conditions around the world. The administration has plugged this year's edition more than previous years' because President George W. Bush has made promoting democracy a watchword of his second term. Rice said the Bush administration was ''on the right side of freedom's divide,'' adding: ''We have an obligation to help those who are unlucky enough to have been born on the wrong side of that divide.''

Human rights watchdog Amnesty International USA (AIUSA) countered that U.S. moral authority was undermined by Washington's refusal to thoroughly investigate detainee abuse in Iraq and elsewhere and to either charge or try hundreds of detainees held at the Guantanamo prison. ''The Department of State is right to herald its human rights achievements but its worthy efforts are undercut by the administration's overall approach, making its report tantamount to a business ethics manual published by Enron,'' said Alexandra Arriaga, AIUSA's director of government relations.

The administration postponed last year's report amid global outcry over abuses by U.S. personnel of detainees at the Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq. Additional abuses later were reported at U.S.-run prisons in Afghanistan and at the U.S. naval base in Guantanamo, Cuba. More than two dozen prisoners in U.S. military custody reportedly have died over the past year.

This year's report, while touting advances in some regions, renewed criticism of human rights in China and Pakistan, to which the White House said last week it would sell F-16 jet fighters. The report heavily criticized China in particular for suppressing political, social, and religious groups and individual freedoms. It acknowledged that China had amended its constitution to protect human rights and had adopted legal reforms to monitor the government. But how and to what extent these initiatives would be enforced remained unclear, the report said.

It credited Pakistan with some human rights improvements but expressed concern about the military's continued deep involvement in politics. Signs of this, it said, included the government of President Gen. Pervez Musharraf amending the country's constitution to strengthen his powers at the expense of the National Assembly and Musharraf's decision to continue as the army chief of staff. The document noted the Pakistan government's commitment to hold new local elections this year and national elections no later than 2007 and said Washington would ''continue to encourage the government to adhere to this commitment and will provide needed support.''

As the State Department gently rebuked its South Asian counter-terrorism ally, another rights watchdog said recently released government documents showed that the United States secretly operated more detention facilities in Pakistan than previously thought. According to a document summarizing the findings of a U.S. Army criminal investigation--which Human Rights First, formerly the Lawyers Committee for Human Rights, said it obtained under the Freedom of Information Act--U.S. forces were holding individuals at a secret facility in Peshawar, Pakistan through at least July 2002.

Earlier reports had revealed detention facilities operated by U.S. forces only in two Pakistani locations: Kohat and Alizai. ''This new information raises questions about how far reaching the U.S. program of secret detentions has been in Pakistan and continues to be,'' said Priti Patel, an attorney with the New York-based group.

Human Rights First said the Peshawar facility formed part of a global network of secret U.S. detention facilities, described in a report by the group last year, used to hold individuals caught up in U.S. counter-terrorism operations. ''Such facilities appear to operate largely outside the bounds of U.S. or international law,'' the group said. It called on the administration to end secret detentions and to grant the International Committee of the Red Cross full and immediate access to all individuals in the custody of U.S. military and intelligence forces.

AIUSA demanded that people detained in U.S. custody in Iraq, Afghanistan, Cuba and elsewhere be charged and tried in ''fair and public trials that meet international standards for justice'' or be released. The group also called for an end to ''extraordinary renditions''--the forced, secret removal by U.S. agents of targeted individuals for interrogation by security forces in countries known to use torture--and for an immediate halt to all small arms transfers to countries with questionable human rights records.

Last week, Washington rewarded Islamabad for its counter-terrorism support with a go-ahead to buy more than a dozen F-16 jet fighter planes. The sale was portrayed as part of an overall security boost for the region, including India and Afghanistan.