Amnesty International roundly condemned the UN Commission on Human Rights yesterday, accusing it of choosing compromise, not action, on behalf of victims in countries such as Algeria, China, East Timor and Saudi Arabia.
Amnesty delivered a scathing message on the final day of the annual session of the commission, which has been strongly criticised by other human rights defenders for ignoring major violators of UN rights treaties.
The commission approved a resolution, tabled by Senegal, demanding a halt to killings of civilians in Burundi. The EU took the floor to express concern about Rwanda carrying out public executions of 22 people convicted of genocide involvement.
On East Timor, Amnesty said the commission opted for a "weak statement" from its chairman, hailing Jakarta's decision to invite the UN's working group on arbitrary detention to visit the province before next year's commission session.
The "chairman's statement" was negotiated with Indonesia under a deal reached with the EU to withdraw its more strongly-worded resolution in exchange for concessions, EU diplomats said. A chairman's statement is a milder form of rebuke than a resolution. But an EU official said the Indonesian concessions were "major".
The statement was welcomed by the Australian Foreign Minister. Mr Alexander Downer, currently in Vietnam, issued a statement welcoming Indonesia's decision to invite the UN fact-finding experts as a significant step forward. He said Australia believed that the commission statement would deliver concrete advances in human rights in East Timor.
Activists have criticised the talks, which censured a dozen countries, for failing to act on China or Algeria.
The US ambassador, Ms Nancy Rubin, said in a statement the commission had made significant progress but regretted its lack of action on Algeria and its defeat of a US text on Cuba.
The commission had kept attention on those countries where human rights problems and concerns were the most acute by renewing the mandates of special rapporteurs in the former Yugoslavia, Sudan, Afghanistan, Equatorial Guinea, Iran, Iraq, Myanmar, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Burundi, Nigeria and Rwanda, she said.
Amnesty said: "During its six-week session, thousands of people were killed or injured in Algeria, yet the Commission did nothing. If a blind eye is turned to such blatant and often publicised abuses, what hope can victims not in the international spotlight have?"
There was no serious discussion about the desperate need to send an international team to Algeria to investigate the situation and the plight of the victims, and member-states had hidden behind a "barrage of contemptible excuses to justify their inaction".
The silence this year on China "has more to do with policy splits between the EU member-states and trade deals than any significant improvement in the human rights situation in the country", Amnesty observed. - (Reuters, AFP)
Ms Liz O'Donnell, Minister of State at the Department of Foreign Affairs, welcomed the commission's adoption by consensus of a resolution defining the right to development, co-sponsored by Ireland.
Ms Liz O'Donnell: welcomed resolution on development