Human Rights

As he stood on the white porch of Bogor Palace to announce a trade-opening agreement for the Pacific Rim, Indonesian President Suharto was asked by a U.S. reporter about his country's human-rights abuses in East Timor. Suharto ignored the question. Hours later, Chinese President Jiang Zemin was also pressed about human- rights problems in his country. He gave his pat answer: Nations should not meddle in each other's domestic affairs. Try as they might not to mix business with human rights as they discuss regional trade here this week, Asian leaders are having a hard time keeping the two issues separate.

In the United Nations, and among voluntary organizations worldwide, pressure for governments to respect human rights is growing. But each year hundreds of thousands of people are still being tortured, killed or detained for their political beliefs, according to the human rights group Amnesty International, in its latest annual report. Amnesty said that at least 1,125 individuals in 44 countries were killed by their governments in 1985. Prisoners were tortured in Chile and Cambodia, executed by the hundreds in Iran and Iraq, tortured, abducted or killed in police custody in South Africa and killed under Soviet occupation in Afghanistan and in many other countries.

By Roger Pilon When we think of human-rights problems, most of us imagine arbitrary arrests, political repression, religious persecution, torture, show trials, censorship, and the like. In America, we don't often have those kinds of problems. Even the current controversy over an Islamic center near ground zero isn't about the right to build there; it's about the wisdom of doing so. All of which made it surprising to learn from the Obama State Department that America does indeed have human-rights problems.

Springsteen and Sting and Youssou N'Dour have gone their separate ways. Tracy Chapman has moved on to a pile of Grammy Awards and a burgeoning career. John F. Kennedy Stadium has closed and may soon fall. But for six hours a year ago today, those performers and the old grandstand held together on behalf of human rights, and word has it that the aftershocks of that concert are still being felt. "It was an incredible night, incredible night," enthused John Healey, executive director of Amnesty International USA, which organized the 15-nation Human Rights Now!

Since 1980, U.S. Rep. Chris Smith (R., N.J.) has taken dozens of trips abroad to fight for the rights of those suffering under repressive regimes (Inquirer, July 23). His dedication to international human rights is commendable. He is not to be commended, however, on his own contributions to repressive regimes and human rights violations: his forceful opposition to safe and legal abortion in developing countries. If Smith were truly fighting for freedom of speech, he wouldn't ban overseas organizations from telling women information that could save their lives.

CONDOLEEZZA Rice will be on the hot seat this week, fielding questions from the 9/11 commission. Unlike Richard Clarke, former anti-terrorism czar under the Clinton and Bush administrations, she doesn't have a book to peddle, so I don't anticipate any juicy soundbites, maudlin apologies to families who lost loved one on the day of terror or self-serving flip-flops. Say what you will, Condi is genuine, a woman of intelligence whose loyalty and competence are undisputed. Disagree with her positions, perhaps, but mistrust her motives?

Local producer Joseph Franklin says he's been waiting all year for this one: a concert titled Voices of Dissent, which his group, Relache, will perform here tomorrow and in Washington on May 27. Essentially a repeat of the group's favorite program of last season, Voices of Dissent is a lineup of scores whose focus is international human rights violations. John King's "(corn)" from the suite Immediate Music, and his Current Music "(constitutionmusic)," will be performed by the composer on steel violin.

In Vienna this week, representatives of every country on earth are in conference on human rights. The conference's principal aim - as is to be expected of any conclave of 183 governments, the majority of which are despotic - is to destroy the human-rights idea. Washington sent Secretary of State Warren Christopher to Vienna to hold the fort. The results were mixed. The destroyers, led by China, Iran, Cuba, Vietnam and other paragons of human rights, are not very subtle. Their strategy is to shred the idea of human rights by having the world deny that they are universal and by insisting that they "must be considered in the context of . . . national and regional particularities and various historical, cultural and religious backgrounds.

Is Moscow a proper site for the highest level review conference on human rights mandated by the Commission on Security and Cooperation in Europe? It is - if you accept the cemetery at Bitburg as deserving the laurels of a U.S. president. The administration's willingness to let Soviet leader Mikhail S. Gorbachev play host to such a conference in 1991 brings to mind Elie Wiesel's brief but eloquent plea on the eve of President Reagan's departure for Germany. Wiesel said: "This is not your place, Mr. President.

This month, Akzam Turgunov, an Uzbek human rights advocate, spent his 60th birthday in a prison work camp. Just before his birthday, the Obama administration moved to weaken U.S. sanctions against Uzbekistan that have been in place since 2004 due to its abhorrent human rights practices. Turgunov's imprisonment, recently declared a violation of international law by the United Nations, stands as one example of those practices. Turgunov's record as a political and human rights activist is well established.

CAIRO - An international rights group on Saturday accused the Egyptian armed forces of beating and torturing protesters arrested during antimilitary demonstrations early this month, and said that by permitting such actions the military "enables further abuse. " The three days of street clashes in Cairo that began May 2 and left nine civilians dead were the latest in a string of deadly confrontations between the military and protesters in Egypt since a council of ruling generals took power 15 months ago. In its violent crackdown on the May demonstrations outside the Defense Ministry, the military arrested more than 300 people and referred them to military tribunals.

U.S. Rep. Chris Smith has never met the blind Chinese dissident whose dramatic escape from house arrest to the U.S. Embassy in Beijing dominated international news for days. But the New Jersey Republican has kept tabs on Chen Guangcheng's welfare and whereabouts for seven years, ever since Chinese officials jailed Chen for exposing the government's practice of forcing women to undergo abortions and sterilization to comply with China's "one-child" policy. "This hideous practice has hurt so many women," said Smith, a staunch opponent of abortion who has traveled to China six times seeking the release of political prisoners and persecuted Christians.

TRIPOLI, Libya - Human Rights Watch on Saturday urged the new government in Libya to revoke a law that criminalizes glorifying former dictator Moammar Gadhafi and spreading "propaganda" that insults or endangers the state. The measure issued last week was one in a series of laws the National Transitional Council, Libya's interim rulers, issued recently to deal with the Gadhafi's legacy. The laws have come under criticism from international and local rights groups for violating freedom of speech or being too vague to enact.

BEIJING - With a series of quickly choreographed steps, the U.S. and China outlined a tentative deal Friday to send a blind legal activist to America for study and potentially bring a face-saving end to a delicate diplomatic crisis. The arrangements, if kept, promise to give Chen Guangcheng much of what he wanted: a chance to live with his family in safety and to get a formal legal education. It would also allow Washington and Beijing to put aside a rancorous human rights dispute to focus on managing their rivalry for global influence.

WASHINGTON - Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton headed Tuesday to Beijing, where a tense human-rights showdown awaits over the fate of a blind Chinese lawyer said to be under U.S. protection after escaping from house arrest. The issue of Chen Guangcheng's future threatens to overshadow this year's round of high-level strategic and economic talks between the world's two biggest economic powers. Talks begin Thursday. Publicly, the U.S. and Chinese governments have said nothing about the Chen case.

During more than 40 years as a professor and practitioner of international law, Roger S. Clark has occasionally asked himself this question. What's a little boy from Wanganui doing here? Wanganui (wong-a-noo-ee) is the New Zealand city where Clark, 71, grew up. And "here" could be his office at the Rutgers School of Law in Camden, the United Nations headquarters in New York, or the International Court of Justice in the Hague, where he once got 30 minutes to make a case against nuclear warfare.

Forty-four years after he and Tommie Smith shocked the world with their black-gloved salute on the awards podium at the Mexico City Olympics, John Carlos thought it was time to explain why, and The John Carlos Story was born. "I wrote the book to give my kids and my grandkids an overview of what it was all about from my mind and heart in terms of what I perceived was happening, not what was being written," Carlos, 66, said Thursday, sitting at a table at a gate of Franklin Field signing copies with the inscription, "We live to make history.

Eduardo Luis Duhalde, Argentina's human-rights secretary and a prominent voice in denouncing abuses during the country's military dictatorship in the 1970s and 80s, died Tuesday in Buenos Aires. He had undergone surgery in February for an aortic aneurysm, and in recent days had suffered complications. Mr. Duhalde had been the country's human-rights secretary since 2003, when he was appointed by the late President Nestor Kirchner. At the start of the military dictatorship that lasted from 1976 to 1983, Argentina's authorities ordered Mr. Duhalde's capture and he went into exile in Spain.

Rabbi Steve Gutow says he's known John Prendergast for a long time: "I've always found him a little off the wall - and a tremendous force for good. " On March 16, Gutow shared a jail cell in Washington with Prendergast, 49, a son of Philadelphia and a globally prominent peace and human rights activist, a mover in government, nonprofit, and protest circles. They were among a crowd in front of the Sudanese Embassy, protesting the government and alleged war crimes of President Omar al-Bashir.

John Payton, 65, a civil rights lawyer who defended the University of Michigan's affirmative-action policy before the Supreme Court and led the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, died Thursday at Johns Hopkins University Hospital in Baltimore after a brief illness. President Obama said in a statement that he and Michelle Obama were saddened to learn that their "dear friend" had died. He was a "true champion of equality," Obama said. "The legal community has lost a legend, and while we mourn John's passing, we will never forget his courage and fierce opposition to discrimination in all its forms.