While Obama has spoken with Chinese leaders in depth about business and trade, human rights issues have not been the main topic of the bilateral dialogue.

Daljit Dhaliwal talks about China’s new role with Jamie Metzl, executive vice president of the Asia Society. He says that China may emerge as a strategic partner.

Johnson describes how an increase in worldwide gay and lesbian rights movements have also created a backlash and an even stronger anti-gay movement.

He also talks about the few countries that allow gay marriage and addresses where it is most difficult to live as a member of the LGBT community.

• Listen to Worldfocus Radio on LGBT politics and gay asylum
• Watch signature videos from Jamaica: Violence and venom force gay Jamaicans to hide and Gays in Jamaica worship in underground church
• Watch our signature video from Greece: Ancient Greek values clash with modern treatment of gays

Should the P5+1 stand in solidarity with Iran’s reformers?

For the past 15 years, Dwight Bashir has worked on international conflict, human rights and religious freedom issues. He is a senior advisor for an independent U.S. commission focusing on international religious freedom. The views expressed here are his own personal views.

Now that the P5+1 (the United States, Britain, France, Russian, China + Germany) have embarked on multilateral negotiations with the Iranian government, it is time to look forward, not backward. The one-day talks in Geneva held last week will resume after an October 25 visit to Iran by representatives of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) to assess Iran’s newly-declared nuclear facility.

As expected, international attention has focused on Iran’s apparent willingness to send most of its enriched uranium out of the country and to allow the IAEA to inspect its latest facility. What has not received adequate attention is what happened on the fringes of the formal talks –- separate discussions between American and Iranian diplomats on human rights.

Here’s how the U.S. State Department spokesman characterized these conversations: “In addition to the focus on the nuclear program, they also had a frank exchange on a number of other issues, including issues of human rights. And we also raised the issue of American citizens who are being held in Iran…”

Understandably, the United States government asked about American detainees in Iran, but what other human rights issues were discussed? Unfortunately, there has been no further explanation.

Did anyone inquire about the hundreds of Iranian citizens injured or killed while peacefully protesting the contested outcome of the June 12 elections? Or the scores of dissidents and reformers who have been beaten by Iranian security and militia forces and unlawfully detained for weeks? What about before the elections, and the thousands of brave women’s rights activists, journalists, bloggers, ethnic and religious minorities, human rights defenders and others who have been unjustly imprisoned?

For that matter, did anyone raise specific cases such as the seven Baha’i leaders, in jail since early last year, who could be sentenced to death on October 18 on baseless espionage charges? What about the status of two Christian women, Maryam and Marzieh, who reportedly have serious health concerns yet continue to languish in prison — now for more than six months — without charge and facing the death penalty for apostasy?

Let’s also not forget that just two weeks ago, President Ahmadinejad arrived in New York on very shaky international standing with internal turmoil alive and well in Iran. Nevertheless, he still felt confident enough to spew anti-Semitic rants and anti-Western vitriol during his address to the United Nations General Assembly.

All is not lost. There is a way forward.

In addition to holding the Iranian government to account for its nuclear ambitions, the P5+1 should use its new platform to raise substantive human rights issues, and not just behind closed doors. The Iranian government has already agreed to “embark on comprehensive, all-encompassing and constructive negotiations,” so human rights are fair game. In particular, the P5+1 should publicly express its genuine concern about the plight of Iranian citizens, as well as raising specific cases (a similar method was used successfully by the United States during the 1970s when it raised human rights effectively during arms talks with the Soviet Union). This message must emerge in future deliberations, otherwise the morale of Iran’s reformers and — of advocates of freedom and democracy globally — will have suffered a major blow.

The P5+1 can cite Iran’s obligations under international human rights law; in particular, the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights to which Iran is a party. Not only would this present a unified front among P5+1 partners, but would also demonstrate solidarity with the Iranian people. If Russia and China balk, the four Western partners can still take a powerful stand. The Iranian people need to know that the international community cares about their fate and will not trade away 30 years of transgressions for potential nuclear concessions.

The U.S. Congress can also play its part. Both the Senate and House are moving forward on providing the Obama administration with a new set of targeted economic sanctions should Iran fail to produce tangible results in a timely fashion. Current legislation under debate identifies nuclear proliferation and support for international terrorism as justification for imposing new sanctions. Final legislation should add international human rights violations to the list. This inclusion would demonstrate that the Iranian government’s poor human rights record is on equal footing with other security concerns.

Even if symbolic, Congress should also consider triggering a targeted sanction under the International Religious Freedom Act of 1998 (IRFA). Iran has been on the U.S. blacklist of religious freedom violators for 10 years, yet no new sanction has been imposed. In addition, the State Department has a statutory requirement under IRFA to identify foreign agencies and officials responsible for violations of religious freedom and can bar individuals from entry into the United States.

This requirement remains unfulfilled.

Ideally, the ultimate goal would be to get international agreement among the P5+1 on any new sanctions. Although this isn’t a must. Again, if Russian and/or China hold out, the four Western allies can still work together. Since late 2006, the U.N. Security Council has passed three rounds of sanctions penalizing Iran’s nuclear program and imposing travel bans on those individuals involved. Why not do the same for Iranian officials involved in human rights abuses? It’s high time to identify Iran’s human rights violations as a justification for tougher sanctions. This act alone would bolster Iran’s reformers to play their part inside Iran.

- Dwight Bashir

Photo courtesy of Flickr user Plug 1 under a Creative Commons license.

Amidst mounting criticisms about conditions, a United Nations human rights expert visited camps in the northern part of the country on Friday.

Bart Beeson, a freelance journalist and campaign organizer, and Annalise Romoser, a freelance journalist focused on human rights and rural development, describe the predicament at World Politics Review.

A displaced person in Sri Lanka.

Everywhere in the Sri Lankan capital of Colombo, posters featuring smiling soldiers holding rocket launchers and machine guns celebrate the recent end to the nation’s 26-year civil war. But in the government-run camps that still house more than 250,000 ethnic Tamils displaced by the war’s fighting, the mood is far from celebratory.

In late August, heavy rains at the largest camp, Manik, flooded tents and led to unsanitary conditions. According to aid worker K Thampu, “The situation was heartbreaking. Tents were flooded and mothers, desperate to keep their children dry during the night, took chairs and tables from school facilities for them to sleep on.”

Rains also caused toilets to flood, with worms covering large swaths of ground near latrines, says Thampu. At stake, according to local experts, is not only the immediate welfare of camp residents, but chances for long-lasting peace in Sri Lanka.

Most of the internally displaced people (IDPs) have been living in the camps since May, when they fled the intense fighting that marked the final battle between government forces and the insurgent group known as the Tamil Tigers. Publicly, the Sri Lankan government has committed to returning IDPs to their homes by November of this year, and several thousand people have been released from camps to live with relatives. But the government under President Mahinda Rajapaksa also maintains that others must remain in camps until the area around their former homes is cleared of mines. At the same time, government representatives are slowly screening camp residents to identify former combatants.

Aid workers and local experts agree that the government must move quickly, for several reasons. The most urgent among them is monsoon season, which starts at the end of September and will only exacerbate the already difficult camp conditions. More tents and toilets will flood, increasing the risk of communicable and mosquito-born diseases.

“We saw how bad things got after the recent rains, which only lasted 3 or 4 days,” says Thampu, who works for the Baltimore-based humanitarian organization Lutheran World Relief. “Imagine how bad they will get once the monsoons are upon us.”

In addition to the rains, long-standing tensions between Tamils and the Sinhalese-led government remain, even if the armed insurgency has been defeated. Many worry that if the government does not act quickly to return people to their homes, it will lead to new problems in northern Sri Lanka.

Thampu says that many teenagers in the camps are already frustrated. “Young people have told me, ‘We have no freedom to talk, no protection, no education, no recreation and no employment! Everything looks like hell in our life. What do we have to live for?’”

Despite living in a warzone, many teenagers were able to pass the university entrance exams. But now they cannot leave the camps to begin their studies. Thampu adds, “Victory has been declared, but what does that mean for them? It is important to give them a new start in life.”

According to T Thevathas, another aid worker in Manik Camp, “Peace and security in the north is the most important thing to consider. People have been waiting 30 years for this, but IDPs in the camps feel no security and have no peace of mind despite the government’s victory.”

Thevatas notes that for real advances to be made in the north, it is crucial for Tamils in the camp to feel that the national government is working on their behalf. “At this point,” he says, “IDPs have placed all their hopes for return on local governments and the international community.”

To read more, see the original post.

The views expressed by contributing bloggers do not reflect the views of Worldfocus or its partners.

Photo courtesy of Flickr user springm / Markus Spring under a Creative Commons license.

Clinton pledged to expand America’s support for Somalia’s weak interim government as it struggles against Islamic extremists. As she makes her way through Africa, economic development and human rights are also expected to be high on the agenda.

Emira Woods, the co-director of Foreign Policy In Focus at the Institute for Policy Studies, joins Martin Savidge to discuss Clinton’s agenda in Africa and U.S. goals in Somalia.

Below, view an interactive map exploring Hillary Clinton’s tour of Africa. Click on a country to view her plans.

Chinese soldiers in Tiananmen Square for National Day, October 1, 2008. Photo: Flickr user poeloq

Approximately 5,727 executions were carried out worldwide in 2008, down from 5,851 the year before. China carried out the death penalty over 5,000 times last year, according to a report by Italian human rights group Hands Off Cain. This figure is an estimate put together based on media and human rights group reports, since the actual total is a state secret. Amnesty International reported a much lower estimate of 1,718 executions.

According to Harry Wu, a human rights expert who spent 19 years in Chinese labor camps before coming to the United States:

The truth is, nobody really knows how many people are executed every year in China. We have classified documents that state that as many as 24,000 people were killed in an eleven month period between 1983 and 1984 during the government’s ‘strike hard’ campaign. But the number could be as high as 8,000 a year now.

Use of the death penalty in China has dropped dramatically since 2001, when China began readying for the Beijing Olympics.

State-run newspaper China Daily reported Wednesday on the pledge by Zhang Jun, vice president of the Supreme People’s Court, who said that China will continue to use the death penalty in serious cases where social stability was threatened:

As it is impossible for the country to abolish capital punishment under current realities and social security conditions, it is an important effort to strictly control the application of the penalty by judicial organs.

In 2008, the Chinese courts sentenced 159,020 people either to death, life imprisonment, or more than five years in prison.

Currently, China uses the death penalty for 60 different offenses, including tax evasion and drug trafficking.

Just days ago, in an unprecedented move, Sichuan province put to death a company executive who had killed four people while drunk driving.

The government is expected to announce soon how many citizens will be executed for their participation in the recent riots in the northwestern Xinjiang province.

Since 2006, many of China’s executions are carried out in 40 “mobile execution units,” vans manufactured by a Chonqing-based company in which lethal injection is locally administered. This saves the government from sending death penalty criminals to Beijing, which costs around $250. But about half of Chinese executions reportedly are still by firing squad.

Of the 45 other countries that still use the death penalty, Iran and Saudi Arabia had the highest per capita death penalty rates in 2008, with 346 and 102 executions, respectively. Also, Amnesty International reports that the Iranians and Saudis still use stoning and beheading, respectively, as means of capital punishment. Both nations continue to execute minors.

The United States executed 37 people last year, continuing a downward trend that began in 1999, when 98 people were put to death.

According to Amnesty International, Japan carried out 15 executions last year, the highest number since 1975.

- Ben Piven

On Thursday, mourners gathered to remember Natalya Estemirova. She had worked in Chechnya for a decade, focusing on killings and kidnappings she believed were carried out under the authority of Chechnya’s president, who is backed by the Kremlin.

Estemirova had been working with Human Rights Watch on a report. Rachel Denber, deputy director of Human Rights Watch’s Europe and Central Asia division, joins Martin Savidge to discuss the killing and the state of human rights in Russia.

Statelessness could mean you are trapped in the country you were born — with no birth certificate, no passport and no right to vote. You many not be able to own land ownership, access to health care and legal employment. Twelve to 15 million people live in limbo without the benefits of nationality.

Below is an audio slideshow with excerpts from our online radio show on statelessness with Dawn Calabia of Refugees International and journalist Bill Berkeley.

The feature explains statelessness with photos of the following stateless groups: Palestinians at the Iraq-Syria border, the Bidoon in Kuwait, the Rohingyas in Bangladesh, the Haitians in the Dominican Republic and the Eritreans in Ethiopia.

(View full post to see video)

Worldfocus.org’s weekly radio show explores tensions in South Sudan, the site of a two-decade civil war between the Muslim north and mostly Christian south that killed more than 1.5 million people. The south is also home to 80 percent of Sudan’s oil.

The war came to an end in 2005 with the signing of a peace agreement that exempted the south from Islamic Sharia law and established a regional southern government as well as a system of shared oil revenues. But with increasingly deadly tribal violence in South Sudan and a humanitarian crisis that could soon eclipse that in Darfur, trouble is brewing once more.

In a conference on Sudan in Washington last week, leaders from the north and south pledged to avoid a return to war.

South Sudan is set for a referendum on independence in 2011 and many in the region hope that the vote will allow a break from Khartoum once and for all, creating a new African nation. Others remain wary, pointing to corruption and incompetence on the part of South Sudan’s government and accusing leaders of squandering oil revenues.

Worldfocus anchor Martin Savidge hosted the following guests:

Jen Marlowe is a filmmaker, writer and human rights activist. She traveled to South Sudan for the forthcoming documentary “Rebuilding Hope,” funded in part by the Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting.

Eric Reeves is a professor at Smith College and has spent the past 10 years researching Sudan. He has testified several times before the Congress and served as a consultant to human rights and humanitarian organizations in Sudan. He is the author of “A Long Day’s Dying,” a book about Darfur. He contributes to the blog Making Sense of Darfur.

Sunday Taabu left South Sudan at the height of the civil war in 1991. She is the founder of the South Sudan Institute for Women’s Education and Leadership and previously worked for the Government of Southern Sudan’s Mission to the U.S.

The show also includes audio clips from:

A Worldfocus interview with Scott Gration, the U.S. envoy to Sudan, on the importance of the region to the United States.

Peter Wankomo, who fled Sudan during the civil war and now lives in Canada. He’s the editor of a website, “South Sudan Nation,” which lobbies for the south’s independence.

A clip from Jen Marlowe’s forthcoming film, “Rebuilding Hope,” featuring a minister in the government of South Sudan and a woman living in the rural village of Akon. Both comment on what’s changed since the peace agreement and the end of the war.

Credits:
Host: Martin Savidge
Producers: Lisa Biagiotti, Katie Combs and Ben Piven

Many Haitians migrate to the Dominican Republic for employment and are subsequently subjected to discrimination.

Up to one million people of Haitian origin currently live in the Dominican Republic, and many are subjected to discrimination and violence.

Many impoverished Haitians cross the border into the Dominican Republic looking for arable land, fuel and work. Often, they face racial prejudice and their Dominican-born children are refused citizenship because they are considered “in transit.” These children are left stateless.

In May of this year, a Haitian migrant was beheaded in the Dominican Republic. The incident sparked renewed outrage over treatment of Haitians in the country. Roger Leduc of “Upside Down World,” a Worldfocus contributor, describes the escalating human rights concerns.

Recent incidents involving Haitian workers in the Dominican Republic should alert even the most jaded observers that an already very serious human rights problem is getting worse.

A confluence of factors — a rapid succession of executions in the last few months, arrogance and defiance from Dominican government officials, institutions and citizenry vis-a-vis the plight of Haitian workers, the shameful indifference of the Haitian government, and the relatively superior economic and military position of the Dominican Republic — has created a pre-genocidal atmosphere that raises the specter of the 1937 mass murder of tens of thousands of Haitian immigrants.

What is alarming about these events is the rapidity, spontaneity, anger and brutality with which Dominican mobs react to rumored misdeeds of Haitians. This points to a deep well of prejudice and hatred, fed by a negative, stereotyped view of Haitians. It also denotes the distorted self-image and misconceptions some Dominicans have about their cultural and racial differences with their island brothers. Some of these opinions are typical anti-immigrant resentments: Haitians are stealing jobs, depressing the price of labor, etc.. Other sentiments, evoking fears of the proverbial “barbarians at the gates” and of Haitians changing the DR’s supposedly European and Christian culture, stem from century-old events and a misunderstood history. They are emotional and even visceral - and therefore more explosive and dangerous. Haitians are considered as the “enemy” who deserve their lot and who should be punished whenever Dominicans deem it appropriate.

Dominican government pronouncements feed this xenophobia. They not only deny any mistreatment of Haitians but accuse Haitians of fomenting violence. Haitians, they say, should then be thankful that Dominicans, more than any other nation, give them aid and succor, a Dominican version of Rudyard Kipling’s “white man’s burden.”

In 2005, the Dominican government reacted rabidly to the decision of the Inter-American Court of Human Rights that children born to Haitian parents in the Dominican Republic should be given full citizenship rights as Dominican law prescribes. It claimed that there was an international conspiracy against the Dominican Republic. Similarly, Haitian Prime Minister Michelle Pierre-Louis’ mild protest over Nérilus’ decapitation received vigorous rebukes from both President Leonel Fernandez and the archbishop —  the DR’s putative moral leaders. The Dominican police and judicial authorities are not only conspicuously silent but also take part in massive abuse and repression.

One of the reactions to Pierre-Louis’ whiny protest was that she should have toed the line set by President René Préval, who refused to denounce the beheading and stated that the case should be left to the Dominican authorities. There could be no better signal to Dominicans that they can do as they please with Haitians. [...]

Many petit-bourgeois Haitians ignore the plight of Haitian sugarcane cutters, who come from either the poor peasantry or the slums. In the feudal caste system in Haiti, such working-class people are considered disposable sub-humans. Some well-to-do Haitians are proud to trumpet how often they go on vacation in the Dominican Republic and spend their money, oblivious to the abject situation of our compatriots and enthralled by the great “development” of our neighbor. Haiti’s moneyed class feels no remorse in taking profits reaped in Haiti and investing them in the DR, claiming that the situation is too unstable at home — an instability and precariousness many of them helped create.

To read more, see the original post.

The views expressed by contributing bloggers do not reflect the views of Worldfocus or its partners.

Photo courtesy of Flickr user elmarto under a Creative Commons license.

Imagine you have no birth certificate, no passport and no legal rights. You’re trapped in the country where you were born, but no document indicates that you even exist. The state doesn’t recognize you, so you can’t vote, you can’t access education and you can’t obtain formal employment.

This is a worst-case situation, but across the globe, between 12 and 15 million people live in various stages of statelessness, which means they lack citizenship in any country.

Some of the most notably stateless people include the Palestinians of the Middle East, the ethnic Tutsis of Central Africa, some Roma in Europe and Haitian children in the Dominican Republic.

Worldfocus.org’s weekly radio show explored the common themes that surface among stateless people — economic discrimination, social exclusion, identity and the feeling of invisibility.

Read a full transcript.

Martin Savidge hosted the following guests:

Bill Berkeley, previously an investigative reporter and editorial writer at The New York Times, teaches journalism at Columbia University. He is the author of The Graves Are Not Yet Full: Race, Tribe and Power in the Heart of Africa and a forthcoming book on statelessness.

Dawn Calabia is a senior adviser for Refugees International. She has 30 years of experience with foreign policy analysis, human rights issues and public advocacy. She has handled governmental and non-governmental relations in the U.S. and the Caribbean for the UN High Commissioner for Refugees and has led numerous fact-finding missions to Central America, Southeast Asia, South Asia and Africa.

The show also includes audio clips from:

Julia Harrington, a senior legal officer at the Open Society Justice Initiative, who explains how her organization uses legal channels to advocate for stateless people. Julia has brought cases before the African Commission on Human and Peoples’ Rights, the European Court of Human Rights, and the Inter-American Court of Human Rights.

Adam Hussein, who was born stateless as a Nubian in Kenya, and is currently the project coordinator of the Open Society East Africa Initiative.

Samira Trad, the director of Beirut-based Frontiers-Ruwad, a human rights NGO.

Credits:
Host: Martin Savidge
Producers: Lisa Biagiotti, Katie Combs and Ben Piven

A historic day in Tiananmen Square.

Today is shaping up to be a big and strange day on the human rights front. Between the 20th anniversary of the June 4 massacre at Tiananmen Square in China, President Obama’s speech in Cairo and the trial of the two Americans detained in North Korea, we have a showcase of the complexity of promoting human rights, democracy and the rule of law.

The pursuit of American values in foreign policy has always been half-assed compromised, at best. Other national interests, like security or financial gain, have pushed our better angels aside on a regular basis.

We want cheap oil and assistance with regional crises, so we look past the fact that Saudi Arabia, where President Obama was yesterday, offers no guarantee for freedom of religion, greatly restricts the media, tolerates widespread violence against women and doesn’t allow them to drive cars or go out in public without being completely covered. Egypt, a staunch U.S. ally that President Obama visits today, is a democracy in name only, and houses thousands of political prisoners.

I could go on. America does act on principle, but generally when other interests are not skewered by our doing so (though, in my book, that is better than never acting on principle).

The globalization of threats exacerbates this dynamic. Some of the same countries that brutalize their citizens and reject pluralism are our necessary partners on global challenges that daily affect our security
and prosperity.

China is the poster child for this quandry, as I recently wrote about with Bill Schulz, who headed Amnesty International for 12 years.  Figuring out how to improve human rights there from the outside, while never easy or effective, has only gotten more vexing since the pro-democracy protesters were quashed in Tiananmen Square.

China holds keys to many of the foreign policy challenges facing the Obama administration and, indeed, the world. For evidence, look at the recent travel schedules of high-level U.S. officials. Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner was in China this week, because the size of China’s stimulus package and the pace of its evolution to a domestic-led growth model are critical factors in getting the global economy back on its feet. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi traveled to China last week to discuss climate — China is now the largest emitter of greenhouse gases in the world; together, the U.S. and China account for 40 percent of emissions.   We can’t lick global warming without China’s serious engagement.  Yesterday, Deputy Secretary of State Jim Steinberg discussed North Korea’s nuclear program with leaders in Beijing. China is North Korea’s major trading partner, controlling some 70 to 90 percent of North Korea’s fuel supply; if anyone can drag Pyongyang back to the negotiating table, it is China. 

In the last twenty years, while standards of living in China have risen dramatically, political reform has stalled out and dissidents continue to live in terror. This is kind of like knowing your fellow firefighter, a generally competent professional, goes home and beats his wife.  That is gut-wrenching, but are you going to turn down his help holding the hose when a fire threatens your town?

It is not that we have less leverage now because of our interdependency — interdependency works both ways, after all.  The fact is that we have never have had much traction to influence the internal political workings of a large, proud and complex country. And now, we have many more areas in which our fates are intertwined. As Secretary of State Hillary Clinton pointed out early on, we cannot let our dialogue on human rights prevent progress on other fronts.

There are steps we can take to continue to support incremental progress on rights and pluralism in China, as Bill and I discuss in our article and that he explores in a recent report. In addition to those, which include making common cause with other nations who share our concerns, it is also important to continue to articulate our values. It gives succor to those brave souls on the ground who are trying to fight oppression and, more importantly, it reminds us that if we want our words to be taken seriously, we need to keep our own record on human rights and democracy as clean as they can be.

- Nina Hachigian

President Obama spoke about values and foreign policy on Thursday. Photo: White House

President Obama gave a powerful speech yesterday about the value of values in foreign policy, and if you didn’t catch it, I recommend you do. Ideology-based national security got a bad name over the past eight years, and indeed, the problem is that one person’s freedom march is another’s delusional misadventure.

Nevertheless, values have always informed American foreign policy, and progressive voices have often been the loudest ones calling for justice, fairness, equality and respect for human dignity to inform U.S. actions abroad.

A critical question to me has always been one of methodology. How do we choose to spread our values of human rights and democracy? And second, how do we balance our values against our security?

In terms of the first question, one of the most powerful ways we spread our values is to act as a good example.  As the most powerful country in the world, whose people enjoy fairly high living standards, others have naturally looked to us to guide their own behavior.  

That is one of the many reasons President Obama gave yesterday for why the decision to use torture to interrogate suspects was so misguided. I noticed a clear example of this dynamic a few years back. China had been for years refusing to allow the U.N. rapporteur on torture into their country. The leadership finally relented, and in November 2005, the rapporteur was there, conducting an investigation into Chinese prisons.

President Bush happened to be in Beijing then, and what a great moment it would have been to celebrate this small step and push the Chinese to do more — but Abu Ghraib made it impossible for President Bush to exercise any moral leadership.

Anyway, yesterday President Obama listed many other reasons why torture is a bad idea and let me, for the record, summarize them and add some of my own:

1. According to seasoned interrogators, it doesn’t work, either in general, or in the specific case of Abu Zubaydah that Dick Cheney keeps talking about;

2. It puts our troops in harm’s way by making it less likely that enemies will surrender and more likely that Americans will be harmed if they are caught;

3. It gives our terrorist enemies compelling fodder for their recruiting pitches; 

4. It helps despotic regimes justify their own, far more brutal, tactics.

But the real meat of the speech was about the difficult balance of security and values when it comes to closing Guantanamo and the releasing the photos of detainees. What’s amazing is that the Bush administration got it wrong both ways — they went to war in Iraq for ideological reasons (among others), sacrificing our security for our values. And then when it came to prosecuting that war, like using torture on prisoners, they did the opposite, sacrificing our values in the name of security.

As President Obama explained yesterday, we need to avoid both those extremes and do the hard, “surgical” work of finding a constitutional path in between. That will mean that some of these Guantanamo prisoners will end up in U.S. prisons.  Why they cant be housed in maximum security prisons along with the worst serial killers and child sex-offenders, I don’t understand.  Ask Congress. 

- Nina Hachigian

China has announced plans to expand health care clinics, a source of some discontent.

Though China’s growth rate is sluggish compared to recent years, the country will likely play a major role as the globe tries to recover from the financial crisis — media reports have even referred to China as a ”knight” who will rescue the world.

Ali Wyne is a researcher in Washington who writes at World Politics Review to assess how China is changing its strategies to plan for a more sustainable rise as a global power.

Signs of Strategic Recalibration in China

Several analysts have noted that China is leveraging the global financial crisis to increase its economic clout — for example, by going on a commodities “shopping spree,” contributing $40 billion to the International Monetary Fund at the G-20 summit, and pushing for a greater voice in reforming international economic institutions.

Recent developments, however, suggest that it is going further. China is using the crisis to step back and consider how it can rise in a more sustainable manner. That move is borne not only of its desire to be a world power, but also of its recognition that its strategy of roughly the past three decades — grow rapidly, worry about the socioeconomic consequences later — is no longer viable. Three developments merit particular attention:

1. China has decided to scale back its investments in Congo and Guinea in response to political instability there. Sino-African relations in recent years have followed a simple pattern: in exchange for building infrastructure in a given African country, China would receive commodities — minerals and oil, in particular — that it needed for its burgeoning economy. China would set up shop in even highly unstable countries if lucrative investment opportunities presented themselves.

Its change of course, then, is significant. Although China’s recalibration does not imply that it will invest less in Africa, it does suggest that China will factor future risks in its current investment decisions. Do not expect that shift in mentality to show up in the numbers — as Christian Hennemeyer recently noted, “despite the global slump, China-Africa ties have never run so deep.” Sino-African trade grew 30 percent annually between 2000 and 2008, going from $10.6 billion to $106.8 billion. Although that figure will likely continue to climb, where China invests will display increasing responsiveness to Africa’s politics.

Whether, as part of this reassessment, China changes its policy of arming Sudan and Zimbabwe remains to be seen. Going forward, the key for it will be to avoid the perception that it is a neocolonial power, following in the footsteps of Western countries from a century before.

2. China has announced a $125 billion plan to install a medical clinic in every Chinese village and a hospital in every Chinese city by 2011. The government has acknowledged that the country’s health care system is in urgent need of reform. The dismantling of state-owned enterprises and rural collectives during the 1980s and 1990s left much of the population without medical coverage. A November 2007 survey of 101,000 Chinese households by the National Bureau of Statistics found that Chinese ranked the cost of health care as their top concern.

The government’s plan leaves much to be desired. It does not, for example, address the incentives that doctors receive to sell drugs instead of administer treatment to their patients; consider the conflicts of interest of hospital owners who are concurrently entrusted with maximizing hospital revenue and implementing costly hospital reforms; or explain how the government intends to staff the newly proposed facilities with competent health care professionals given that medical education in China is still in its nascent stages.

Its deficiencies notwithstanding, the plan represents a serious response to a longstanding grievance of the Chinese people and a potential source of instability.

3. China has announced its first-ever “action plan” for protecting human rights. One could argue that it did so to deflect attention away from its restrictions on political freedoms at home — for example, closing down YouTube — and preempt the criticisms that it will doubtless receive when the anniversary of Tiananmen Square occurs less than two months from now. That China released a plan at all, though, and admitted that it “has a long road ahead in its efforts to improve its human rights situation,” is noteworthy.

To read more, see the original post.

The views expressed by contributing bloggers do not reflect the views of Worldfocus or its partners.

Photo courtesy of Flickr user yuan2003 under a Creative Commons license.

Last month, Michael J. Kavanagh of the Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting went back to eastern Congo to find out what happened. Together with Lisa Biagiotti and Taylor Krauss, he produced the story of Pascal and Vestine.

Read Michael’s post on what he saw in Congo’s most remote areas: War still rages on in corners of eastern Congo.

A woman displaced by the fighting between Rwanda and FDLR, outside Pinga, North Kivu. Photo: Michael J. Kavanagh

PARECO rebel soldier at an integration ceremony where all rebel groups are joining the Congolese Army. Photo: Michael J. Kavanagh

A boy in Pinga, former FDLR stronghold. Photo: Michael J. Kavanagh

Michael J. Kavanagh of the Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting returned to eastern Congo last month to understand the conflicting news coming out of the region. Below he explains what he saw in some of the most remote areas of Congo. Along the way, he reconnects with Pascal and Vestine Bumbari. He reported on the signature story: Pascal and Vestine are alive in Congo, but still not home.

“Michel, we are suffering so much.” Those were the first words Pascal said to me over the phone in February, when he called out of the blue.

Pascal and his wife Vestine live on non-arable lava rocks in their new camp; his clothes are all torn; they don’t have enough food; the rain seeps through the tarp that covers their hut. Until the day we arrived, Pascal had done nothing - nothing - with his days for four months. Internally Displaced Person (IDP) camps are not really the place you’d go to look for work.

There is a misconception right now that peace is spreading throughout eastern Congo. Tutsi rebel-leader Laurent Nkunda is under house arrest in Rwanda. There’s a new peace agreement between his rebel group (the CNDP) and the government. Joint-military operations between erstwhile enemies Congo and Rwanda continue against the Rwandan Hutu rebel group hiding in eastern Congo (the FDLR). It all seems like hopeful stuff.

But this new development, this surprising volte-face, is only a beginning. The main issues that caused the war in the first place - land, resources, tribalism, refugees and the continued presence of the FDLR in Congo - have not gone away.

To use the example of our own story: Pascal is Hutu, and he still doesn’t feel safe enough to return to his home, which is still - for the most part - under control of soldiers once loyal to Nkunda. And while 350,000 Congolese in North Kivu have returned home in the last few months (mainly to land formerly occupied by Nkunda’s troops), another 160,000 have been displaced since January as the FDLR takes its revenge on the villages where (they allege) people collaborated with the Rwando-Congolese joint operation.   It makes your head spin.

This new fighting is taking place in very remote regions - I spent days on the back of a motorbike to get there - and what I found was just as devastating as anything I’ve seen in my previous five years of reporting in Congo: Massacres, executions by gun and machete, kidnappings, sex slaves, torture victims.

So while the conflict in some parts of eastern Congo is settling down, there are other corners where the war rages on. This seemingly-endless string of local battles is often what makes people give up on the region - new place names to learn, new rebel groups to figure out.

But don’t give up just yet.

The new collaboration between Rwanda and Congo is the most important development in the conflict in years, and one of the main reasons the countries are now working together is because of pressure from the international community that intensified after last fall’s humanitarian disaster.  Sustaining that pressure is the only way to make sure this conflict truly turns a corner towards peace, so that good, hardworking people like Pascal and Vestine can finally return home.

- Michael J. Kavanagh

However, China never approved a single one of those applications. In fact, some of the citizens who had tried to apply for the permits were harassed or detained.

Minky Worden of Human Rights Watch, who edited a book about the Olympics and human rights in China, joins Martin Savidge to discuss the international community’s pressure on China, human rights in China since the Olympics and how the economic downturn is impacting the country’s human rights.

They discuss political protests and violence in Pakistan that has threatened to distract the government from its fight against al-Qaeda and Taliban militants. They also assess developments in Iran, which moved closer to starting its first nuclear reactor, and discuss China’s war of words with the U.S. over human rights.

Seal of the U.S. Department of State.

This week, the U.S. State Department released its extensive 2008 country reports on human rights practices, a country-by-country evaluation of worker rights, free movement, privacy and other basic expectations of the State Department.

The report covers often-criticized China, whose authorities claim that the U.S. evaluations — including reports of state persecution of ethnic minorities and dissidents — willfully ignored and distorted basic facts.

Blogger Akhila Kolisetty at “Justice for All” disapproves of U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s recent statement that “our pressing on those issues can’t interfere with the global economic crisis.”

I’m shocked that Clinton chose to prioritize economic issues over human rights — not that those issues aren’t important, but simply because she’s denying that human rights is important. By choosing to separate human rights from all these other issues, Clinton also fails to understand that all these problems are interrelated. How can you progress on climate change or security when human rights at home are being violated?

The State Department also cited instances of political imprisonment and media control, among other charges, in Cuba. Despite such charges, Marvin Kalb of GlobalPost wonders if Cuba is the site of a “golden opportunity“ that President Obama may be missing in terms of engagement.

Raul Castro has launched a program of “reform,” but it appears to be successful only in generating demands for more reform. What had once been taken for granted in Cuba — unmistakable advances in education, health care and pensions — are now under a spreading cloud of doubt. I’m told the average state wage is $18 a month, clearly no longer adequate, if it ever was. And ration cards can provide no more than half the monthly food needs of a family.

Optimists exist, and they catch glimpses of a promising tomorrow. Oil, for instance: Cuba controls a corner of the Gulf of Mexico that has oil reserves estimated at 10 to 15 billion barrels, just waiting to be developed. Would it not be better for the U.S. to be moderately dependent on Cuba for its oil than on Saudi Arabia?

And, buried deep in the State Department, but ready for rapid excavation after the Bush years, are numerous policy briefs for a considerable expansion of Cuban-American relations, including joint operations against drugs and organized crime and a lifting of the embargo in all communications and travel. Cuba could quickly become a very attractive market.

For more, listen to our online radio show on Cuba and the U.S. In other human rights news, Serbia’s arrest of accused war criminals who operated under Slobodan Milosevic led to five convictions involving 22-year sentences.

Balkan blogger “Grey Falcon” finds the acquittal of ex-Serbian president Milan Milutinovic bigger news, more atypical that the story of the convictions.  Falcon sees political motivations behind the acquittal:

The purpose of today’s verdict was threefold: to legitimize the NATO aggression from 1999 (i.e. NATO action was necessary and appropriate because the Serbs were engaging in a criminal conspiracy to murder and expel Albanians); to buttress the “Independent State of Kosovo,” proclaimed last February but so far recognized by only 55 governments; and to brand Serbia as the aggressor and criminal, rather than the victim of NATO’s aggression, occupation of Kosovo and the ethnic cleansing of its citizens that followed.

The UK has admitted complicity in the American practice of extraordinary rendition, which they had previously denied.

British blogger Stephen Linlithgow mocks Tony Blair’s previous denial of collusion:

To be fair to Tony Blair it now appears that collusion is indeed the wrong way to describe it. The Labour government appear to have actively handed over suspects to them to catch these flights. Far more than even Sir Menzies Campbell hinted at on that particular Wednesday when it was only assumed that our airspace or airfields were being used.

Venezeula is just one of several countries that responded negatively to the State Department report.  ”VIO News Blog” reports on the Venezuelan condemnation of the findings, which claim that the country  has a partial judiciary and harasses the media:

Venezuela on Thursday condemned the report and categorically rejected what it says are false allegations and a clear example of political meddling in its internal affairs. Contrary to the impression given by the report, Venezuela’s opposition parties enjoy all the political freedoms that are found in other democratic countries and have in fact made significant gains in recent elections.  Meanwhile, freedom of speech is fully respected, as is demonstrated by the fact that a majority of private media outlets remain ardent and vocal critics of the government.

The report offers no evaluation of U.S. human rights practices.