Human Rights
Watch: Creating the Pretext for U.S. Intervention
by
Heather Cottin
The ruling class has never had
much trouble with hypocrisy. Thomas Jefferson wrote the Declaration of Independence
extolling the 18th century Enlightenment doctrine of natural rights of "Life,
liberty and happiness" while he owned scores of slaves and defended the institution
of slavery.
Today, George Soros's Human Rights
Watch upholds Jefferson's legacy of deceit, murder and plunder for the ruling
class of the 21st century.
In 1975, "Helsinki
Watch" was created to monitor what it termed "human rights abuses." It was the
main institution that spread anti-Soviet propaganda. With the support of financier
George Soros, the organization grew into what is now called Human Rights Watch.
Soros
established the Open Society Institute in New York City with the money he had
made in investment exploits. His company, the Quantum Group, was the most successful
financial fund in the world in its over 30 years of investment history. Soros
has operated "hedge funds," which create nothing but produce superprofits for
himself and his fellow investors.
Working with
Soros on the Human Rights Watch's Europe Committee are former Assistant Secretary
of State for Intelligence and Research Morton Abramowitz, who was in the Reagan
and Bush administrations, and Paul Goble, a commentator on Radio Free Europe -
a major Cold War enterprise funded by the U.S. Congress and the CIA.
According
to the group's own Web site, Ken Roth, the Director of HRW, "criticizes the United
States for not opposing China more in relation to its alleged human rights abuses."
Roth's record includes the creation of the Tibetan Freedom Concert, a traveling
propaganda project that toured the U.S. with major rock musicians, urging young
people to support Tibet against China.
AGAINST
CHINA AND YUGOSLAVIA
Roth has recently pressed
for opposition to Chinese control over its oil-rich western province of Xinjiang.
With the colonialist "divide and conquer" approach, Roth tries to convince some
of the Uighur national minority in Xinjiang that the U.S./NATO intervention in
Kosovo holds promise for them.
Roth was also
a major supporter of the B92 radio station in Belgrade that backed the Oct. 5,
2000, coup that overthrew Slobodan Milosevic.
Human
Rights Watch leaders operate on the belief that the United States may restructure
any society, and calls this its "civilizing mission." They write in their propaganda,
"The Soros Foundation network supports civil society" in any number of nations.
But
what do they mean by "civil society"? Career diplomat Herbert Okun, on the Europe
Committee of Human Rights Watch, is connected to a bunch of State Department-linked
institutions, from USAID to the Rockefeller-funded Trilateral Commission.
From
1990 to 1997 Okun was executive director of something called the Financial Services
Volunteer Corps, part of USAID, "to help establish free market financial systems
in former communist countries." So civil society, to the Soros Foundation and
to Human Rights Watch, must include this sine qua non of capitalism: a free market
financial system.
Warren Zimmerman, U.S. Ambassador
to Yugoslavia during the destabilization and war, is another honcho in Human Rights
Watch. Now a professor of diplomacy at Columbia University training future U.S.
diplomats to view the world as he does, Zimmerman is on the Carnegie Council on
Ethics and International Affairs.
In Zimmerman's
Contemporary Diplomacy Course at Columbia, students have to be ready to write
about "dealing with NATO expansion, raising the American profile in sub-Saharan
Africa, forging an American approach to Central Asia and its energy wealth, and
increasing interest in and support for U.S. foreign policy among the American
people."
A PROPAGANDA MACHINE
Human
Rights Watch bolsters the interventionism of U.S. foreign policy with an aggressive
association of government departments, NGOs, academics, and foreign policy institutions
connected to the CIA and the U.S. State Department. But Human Rights Watch has
a specialized mission. It creates propaganda, which helps do what Zimmerman's
students must learn: to create support at home for U.S. foreign policy.
There
is barely a story in the Western press about "human rights abuses" in any nation
that does not include some mention of a report from Human Rights Watch. Reports
of such "abuses" then back up State Department policy claims that the U.S. intervenes
for "humanitarian" purposes.
The Soros Foundation
oversees a network called "Defending Human Rights Worldwide," and has affiliates
writing and investigating conditions in Africa, the Americas, Asia, Europe/ Central
Asia, the Middle East/North Africa, and the United States.
SIDING
WITH THE OPPRESSOR
In Africa, HRW's first concern
is with Zimbabwe's rich farmers of European origin, who own on the average 20,000
acres of land. African liberation war veterans there have squatted on these lands,
prodding Robert Mugabe's government to turn some of them over to the Africans.
Zimbabwean farmers average less than three acres and the population's average
income is $200, but HRW ignores these problems.
Human
Rights Watch doesn't see food and the right to a decent life for every individual
on earth as a basic human right.
Colombia certainly
does have human rights problems. The Colombian army and its paramilitary units--also
known as death squads--commit murder, bombing and the forced removal of tens of
thousands of Colombians with the support of the U.S. military. The crimes are
so obvious that HRW admits that the Colombian military commits 80 percent of the
human rights violations--though even that is an underestimation.
But
then HRW lauds President Andres Pastrana and his Armed Forces chiefs, claiming
they "have made strong statements against paramilitaries."
HRW
saves the brunt of its criticism for the rebel army FARC- EP, charging those who
fight for the oppressed with human rights crimes.
In
the Middle East, Human Rights Watch calls for "observers to monitor Israeli and
Palestinian human rights violations," putting an equal sign between the militarist
actions of the Israeli oppressors and the self-defense of occupied Palestine.
BEHIND
IT ALL, CAPITALIST HATRED OF SOCIALISM
After
seeing how HRW reacts toward the oppressed of the Third World, especially those
involved in revolutionary struggle, it's easier to see HRW's anti-communism against
China and in Eastern Europe as the clear expression of the capitalist class it
represents.
Human Rights Watch on July 13 said
that the selection of Beijing for the 2008 Olympics would call for "corporations,
computer telecommunications, and media companies" to work for the promotion of
what HRW calls "full freedom of expression." Of course this means expression that
undermines socialism, "anywhere in China."
"In
China," said Sidney Jones, Asia Director of Human Rights Watch, "the private sector
is going to have to get engaged."
In early
July, Human Rights Watch justified the abduction of Slobodan Milosevic, which
they called "an historic precedent with a sound basis in international law," though
no such legal justification existed for this act of international kidnapping.
The
Lukashenko government of Belarus in 1997 closed down the Soros Foundation because
of its opposition to socialist-era institutions there. But Soros continues to
fund "grassroots organizing, education . . . with support going to individuals
with the potential to become leaders."
Human
Rights Watch funds the Croatian Helsinki Committee for Human Rights, founded in
1993 "to promote human rights in Croatia." In 1995, Croatia and the U.S. government
cooperated on Operation Storm, which involved the ethnic cleansing of 300,000
Serbs from the Krajina region where they had been living for over 600 years.
The
Croatian Helsinki Committee was mum on this outrage. All it did to offer support
for the Roma people, who had also been strategically cleansed from Croatia, was
distribute t- shirts with "I am a gypsy" inscribed upon them.
Human
Rights Watch reports are quoted everywhere, in every organ of the capitalist media.
HRW "experts" give "testimony" in Congress and its members teach in major universities.
HRW
spokespeople give each other awards all over the world. They proudly proclaim
the right of the United States to restructure any society. They affirm that U.S.
society is superior, and Washington has the right to intervene in military, cultural
and political arenas.
Human Rights Watch is
the propaganda organ of globalism and recolonization.
HRW
recognizes no ethical values other than its own, and it opposes any seizure of
property from the rich and redistribution to the poor as a violation of its idea
of human rights. In Soros's view, equality is not a human right. And his view
is the State Department and the CIA's view; it reflects the foreign policy of
both Democratic and Republican parties.
Soros
pays his piper to play his tunes, justifying the role of the U.S. as the world's
only super power. But other major supporters of this insidiously powerful propaganda
tool include leading liberal philanthropic agents such as OXFAM, the Mac Arthur
Foundation, the Dr. Seuss Foun dation, Norman Lear, the Plough shares Fund and
the Guggenheim Foundation.
Human Rights Watch
is filling the strategic needs of the international ruling class, but it is a
sham, as anyone observing its role of protecting the rich growing richer as the
poor grow poorer can clearly see.
- END -
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