On the US’ Independence Day, US Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton challenged what she called a global crackdown on human rights, lamenting a “steel vise” squeezing the life out social activism.
Clinton arrived in the Caspian Sea nation of Azerbaijan yesterday after declaring in Poland that intolerant governments around the world are undercutting rights groups whose work is vital to the development of democracy. She said the trend is apparent, and growing worse, even in countries that call themselves democracies.
At the palatial residence of Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev overlooking the vast, glimmering Caspian, Aliyev and Clinton spoke briefly before reporters and TV cameras.
Aliyev wished her a happy Fourth of July and then stressed the urgency of his country’s territorial dispute with neighboring Armenia. The two nations are in conflict over Nagorno-Karabakh, an enclave in Azerbaijan that has been under control of Armenian troops and ethnic Armenian forces since a 1994 ceasefire.
Clinton said yesterday that Washington was ready to help Azerbaijan and Armenia reach a peace deal on the breakaway Nagorno Karabakh region and that the issue was a “high priority.”
“We stand ready to help both Azerbaijan and Armenia to achieve and implement a lasting peace settlement. The final steps toward peace are often the most difficult. But we see peace as a possibility ... and a prerequisite,” she said at a news conference with her Azerbaijani counterpart, Elmar Mammadyarov.
“We believe there has been progress. This is a high priority for the US,” Clinton said.
On Saturday, addressing an international conference in Poland on democracy and human rights, Clinton recalled former British prime minister Winston Churchill’s warning 60 years ago that an iron curtain was descending across Europe. She said that with the collapse of the Soviet Union that curtain no longer remains.
“But we must be wary of the steel vise in which governments around the world are slowly crushing civil society and the human spirit,” she said.
Among the offenders she cited: Zimbabwe, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Ethiopia, Cuba, Belarus, Egypt, Iran, Venezuela, China and Russia.
Clinton said her current trip, which began in Ukraine on Thursday and is to include stops in the former Soviet states of Armenia and Georgia, is intended to demonstrate US President Barack Obama’s administration’s commitment to democracy and human rights.
She said her Baku itinerary would include a meeting with youth activists to discuss Internet freedom. And she said that in Armenia and Georgia she would meet with leaders from women’s groups and other non-governmental organizations.
In Krakow, Poland, on Saturday, Clinton cited a broad range of countries where “the walls are closing in” on civic organizations like unions, religious groups, rights advocates and other non-governmental organizations that press for social change and shine a light on governments’ shortcomings.
“Some of the countries engaging in these behaviors still claim to be democracies,” Clinton said. “Democracies don’t fear their own people. They recognize that citizens must be free to come together, to advocate and agitate.”
Clinton spoke at the opening of a 10th-anniversary celebration of the founding of the Community of Democracies.
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