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An Indictment of America    [

    Groups Fault US Vote in UN on Gays
    By Warren Hoge
    The New York Times

    Friday 27 January 2006

    United Nations - Human rights organizations and the co-chairman of the Congressional Human Rights Caucus protested on Thursday a decision by the Bush administration to back a measure introduced by Iran denying two gay rights groups a voice at the United Nations.

    In a vote Monday, the United States supported Iran's recommendation to deny consultative status at the United Nations' Economic and Social Council to the Danish National Association for Gays and Lesbians and the International Lesbian and Gay Association, based in Belgium.

    Nearly 3,000 nongovernmental organizations have such status, which enables them to distribute documents to meetings of the council.

    Among countries with which the United States sided were Cuba, Sudan and Zimbabwe, nations the State Department has cited in annual reports for their harsh treatment of homosexuals.

    Representative Tom Lantos, a California Democrat who is co-chairman of the caucus, wrote a letter to John R. Bolton, the United States ambassador to the United Nations, saying the move was "a major setback" for "a core component of our nation's human rights diplomacy."

    Matt Foreman, executive director of the Washington-based National Gay and Lesbian Task Force, said, "It is an absolute outrage that the United States has chosen to align itself with tyrants - all in a sickening effort to smother voices of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people around the world."

    Mark P. Lagon, a deputy assistant secretary of state, said in an interview that the vote did not stem from "being against gay rights groups" but was based on "the controversial history of the International Lesbian and Gay Association - an affiliate of the North American Man/Boy Love Association, was associated with it in the past and openly condoned pedophilia."

    Scott Long, a Human Rights Watch director, said that the association had publicly expelled the man/boy group in 1994.

    Martin Th mmel, the German delegate at the vote, protested that "those delegations that claim that this organization is supporting pedophilia are using this as a pretext in order to shirk the real issue of sexual orientation."

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    An Indictment of America
    The International Herald Tribune | Editorial

    Friday 27 January 2006

    When Human Rights Watch, a respected organization that has been monitoring the world's behavior since 1978, focuses its annual review on America's use of torture and inhumane treatment, every American should feel a sense of shame. And everyone who has believed in the United States as the staunchest protector of human rights in history should be worried.

    Many nations - Belarus, Uzbekistan, Zimbabwe, Myanmar, Cuba, Sudan and China to name only some of the worst - routinely trample on human rights in a way that neither the United States nor any of its allies would ever countenance. But the United States wrote the book on human rights; it defined the alternative to tyranny and injustice. So when the vice president of the United States actually lobbies against a bill that bans "cruel, inhuman, and degrading treatment," Human Rights Watch is justified in delivering harsh criticism.

    The report does not let anyone else off the hook. The massacre of hundreds of demonstrators in Uzbekistan, the ethnic cleansing in Darfur, the restrictions on civil society in Saudi Arabia, the atrocities in Chechnya and all the other familiar episodes of human-rights abuse are reported and condemned.

    But in the introduction by the executive director of Human Rights Watch, Kenneth Roth, the United States is singled out not only because it has raised the heinous practice of torture to a "serious policy option," but also because in so doing it is sacrificing its ability to champion human rights in other countries. America is not the worst violator, Roth writes, but it is the most influential. Now, when Americans accuse Iraqi Shiites of torturing Sunni prisoners, the messenger's reputation taints the message.

    The report says that 2005 made clear that abuse of detainees has become a "deliberate, central part of the Bush administration's strategy for interrogating terrorist suspects," and it accuses Britain of complicity in the practice. We have no illusion that the administration will pay any more heed to Human Rights Watch than they have to anyone else on this issue. But the report is also an indictment of the rest of the United States for failing to stop the destruction of its most cherished values.

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