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.

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.

U.N. Ambassador Madeleine K. Albright, hinting strongly that Hillary Rodham Clinton will visit China next month, said yesterday that the U.S. delegation would use an international conference in Beijing as a pulpit to decry China's human-rights abuses. "I'm not a diplomat," Albright said. "I'm somebody who speaks her mind. I'm not going to mince words in China. I'm going to say what we believe. " Albright said she had no plans to meet with Chinese officials to demand the release of human-rights activist Harry Wu. But she disagreed with Wu's wife, who has said that a trip to the conference by Clinton would be an unearned, symbolic reward to Wu's captors.

MINSK, Belarus - It's probably the first time in history that teddy bears have defeated generals. Belarus' authoritarian President Alexander Lukashenko has sacked two of the nation's top defense officials after two Swedish advertising agency employees piloted a light plane into the country's heavily guarded airspace, dropping 879 teddy bears decked out in parachutes and slogans supporting human rights. Officials in the ex-Soviet state denied the July 4 incident until Lukashenko called a meeting last week to scold authorities for allowing such a "provocation.

KABUL, Afghanistan - Senior American and Afghan officials held talks Saturday to try to iron out the details of a pact signed a year ago that defines the future of the U.S. commitment to Afghanistan. The Strategic Partnership Agreement outlines a set of principles and general commitments for relations between Washington and Kabul after 2014, when foreign combat troops are to withdraw from Afghanistan. But there is lingering uncertainty over whether either party will be willing or able to stick to the provisions of the pact, which includes loopholes for both nations.

Obama: Mexico set to advance SAN JOSE, Costa Rica - President Obama on Friday cast Mexico as a nation ready to take "its rightful place in the world" and move past the drug battles and violence that have defined its relationship with the United States. He then headed to Costa Rica to prod Central American leaders to tackle those same issues more aggressively. Obama's visit to Mexico and Costa Rica is his first to Latin America since winning reelection. In Mexico in particular, he tried to set a new course for ties between the United States and its neighbor, promoting Mexico's improving economy and its democracy.

A BILL SPONSORED by City Councilman Jim Kenney at the behest of the LGBT community would require newly constructed or renovated city-owned buildings to have gender-neutral bathrooms in addition to men's and women's rooms. "It can be an awkward and embarrassing situation," said Kenney, for anyone who may "feel more like a woman, but can't use the women's room. These functions should be fair for everybody. " Speakers at a recent City Council committee hearing on the bill told stories of transgendered youth who faced discrimination in bathroom access.

WASHINGTON - The U.S. Supreme Court insulated multinational firms from at least some lawsuits over atrocities overseas, scaling back a favorite legal tool of human-rights activists. The court threw out a suit accusing two foreign-based units of Royal Dutch Shell of facilitating torture and executions in Nigeria. The majority said the 1789 Alien Tort Statute generally does not apply to conduct beyond U.S. borders. "All the relevant conduct took place outside the United States," Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. wrote.

BEIRUT - Syrian government warplanes carried out air strikes on a rebellious neighborhood in the capital and a village in the country's northeast on Sunday, killing at least 25 people, including a dozen children, activists said. With its ground forces stretched thin, President Bashar al-Assad's regime has relied heavily on its fighter jets and helicopters to try to stem rebel advances in the country's civil war. The air raids frequently hit civilian areas, drawing criticism from the international community.

AL-QASR, LEBANON - Syrian soldiers backed by warplanes battled rebels for control of strategic hilltop villages near the Lebanese border on Friday, as government troops stepped up counterattacks against opposition forces threatening regime supply lines on the country's frontiers. Bomb blasts and shots fired into the air to mourn a fallen Syrian government soldier could be heard on the Lebanese side of the border as fighting raged around Qusair, a contested central Syrian town near a key highway between Damascus and the coast.

BEIRUT - After weeks of rebel gains in the south, the Syrian regime launched a counteroffensive on Sunday with widespread air strikes and an operation that reclaimed a northern village on a strategically important route. At least 20 people were killed in heavy air strikes that targeted rebels trying to topple the regime in at least seven cities and regions. To underline their resolve, the government called on opposition fighters to surrender their arms and warned in cellphone text messages that the army is "coming to get you. " State television said the aim of the counteroffensive was to send a message to the opposition and its Western backers that President Bashar Assad's troops are capable and willing to battle increasingly better armed rebels on multiple fronts.

GAZA CITY, Gaza Strip - Police in Hamas-ruled Gaza have started grabbing young men with long or gel-styled spiky hair off the streets, bundling them into jeeps, mocking them, and shaving their heads, two of those targeted and a rights group said Sunday. It is the latest sign that the Islamic militants are imposing their strict practices on the population. Hamas has been slowly forcing its fundamentalist interpretation of the religion on already conservative Gaza since it overran the territory in 2007, but the new action against long hair and tight or low-waist pants - in several cases accompanied by beatings - appears to be one of the most aggressive phases of the campaign so far. The crackdown began last week, and two of those targeted told the Associated Press said they were rounded up in separate sweeps in Gaza City that included more than two dozen young men. House painter Ayman al-Sayed, 19, had shoulder-length hair before police grabbed him and shaved his head Thursday.

CENTENNIAL, COLO. - For James Holmes, "justice is death," prosecutors said Monday in announcing they will seek his execution if he is convicted in the Aurora movie theater attack that killed 12 people. The decision - disclosed in court just days after prosecutors publicly rejected Holmes' offer to plead guilty if they took the death penalty off the table - elevated the case to a new level. "It's my determination and my intention that in this case, for James Eagan Holmes, justice is death," District Attorney George Brauchler said, adding that he had discussed the case with 60 people who lost relatives in the July 20 shooting rampage.

BEIRUT - Syrian rebels on Friday captured a strategic town near the border with Jordan after a day of fierce clashes that killed at least 38 people, activists said, as opposition fighters expand their presence in the south, considered a gateway to Damascus. The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said 16 rebels were among the dead in the fighting in and around Dael. The town lies less than 10 miles from the Jordanian border in Daraa province, where the uprising against President Bashar al-Assad's regime began two years ago. The rebel gains have coincided with what regional officials and military experts say is a sharp increase in weapons shipments to opposition fighters by Arab governments in coordination with the United States in the hopes of readying a push into Assad's stronghold in the capital, Damascus.