In a symbolic rebuke to the Bush administration, the member nations of the Organization of American States (OAS) have for the first time voted to exclude the US from representation on the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights, considered the most prestigious human rights monitoring body in the Western Hemisphere.
The decision came at the end of the three-day annual assembly of the OAS, held this year in Santiago, Chile, and attended by Secretary of State Colin Powell. Addressing the conference on Monday, Powell sharply condemned a recent wave of executions and imprisonments in Cuba and urged the 34-member regional group to help "hasten the inevitable democratic transition in Cuba."
Lou Fintor, a spokesman for the State Department, said on Wednesday that "The US is disappointed that our candidate was not elected to the Inter-American Human Rights Commission," but "we remain strong supporters of the commission and the Inter-American human rights system in general."
Created in 1959, the commission is an arm of the OAS that observes and investigates human rights conditions throughout the Western Hemisphere and has processed 12,000 complaints or petitions of specific violations in member states. It consists of seven members elected to four-year terms, who are supposed to demonstrate "recognized competence in the field of human rights."
In private, several nations were critical of what they characterized as Powell's excessive and narrow focus on Cuba at the expense of other issues. The theme of this year's assembly, which ended Tuesday, was "Democratic Governability in the Americas," which most delegations saw as an opportunity to express concern about growing social inequities and flagging economic growth in the region.
"There is a readiness among member states to talk about Cuba, but in a balanced way, and not only about human rights," a senior OAS official said in a meeting with reporters Monday in Santiago. "Many states, some of Latin America and all of the Caribbean," he added, also "want to talk about the isolation of Cuba, the embargo, and all of that."
"That is the problem," the official added. The Bush administration, he said, "has a very strong position, so there really is some difficulty in dealing with the issue of Cuba only in relation to human rights."
But the negative vote also reflected widespread doubts about the qualifications of the American candidate, Rafael "Ralph" Martinez.
"Clearly, the person they put forward, whatever his merits, did not have a very impressive background in human rights," said Michael Shifter, vice president for policy at Inter-American Dialogue, a research group in Washington.
Martinez's nomination, he added "showed not just a sort of indifference to a major regional political organization on the part of the administration, but also the growing distrust on the other side about what the US agenda and motives are."
‘UNUSUAL EVENT’: The Australian defense minister said that the Chinese navy task group was entitled to be where it was, but Australia would be watching it closely The Australian and New Zealand militaries were monitoring three Chinese warships moving unusually far south along Australia’s east coast on an unknown mission, officials said yesterday. The Australian government a week ago said that the warships had traveled through Southeast Asia and the Coral Sea, and were approaching northeast Australia. Australian Minister for Defence Richard Marles yesterday said that the Chinese ships — the Hengyang naval frigate, the Zunyi cruiser and the Weishanhu replenishment vessel — were “off the east coast of Australia.” Defense officials did not respond to a request for comment on a Financial Times report that the task group from
Asian perspectives of the US have shifted from a country once perceived as a force of “moral legitimacy” to something akin to “a landlord seeking rent,” Singaporean Minister for Defence Ng Eng Hen (黃永宏) said on the sidelines of an international security meeting. Ng said in a round-table discussion at the Munich Security Conference in Germany that assumptions undertaken in the years after the end of World War II have fundamentally changed. One example is that from the time of former US president John F. Kennedy’s inaugural address more than 60 years ago, the image of the US was of a country
BLIND COST CUTTING: A DOGE push to lay off 2,000 energy department workers resulted in hundreds of staff at a nuclear security agency being fired — then ‘unfired’ US President Donald Trump’s administration has halted the firings of hundreds of federal employees who were tasked with working on the nation’s nuclear weapons programs, in an about-face that has left workers confused and experts cautioning that the Department of Government Efficiency’s (DOGE’s) blind cost cutting would put communities at risk. Three US officials who spoke to The Associated Press said up to 350 employees at the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) were abruptly laid off late on Thursday, with some losing access to e-mail before they’d learned they were fired, only to try to enter their offices on Friday morning
DEFENSE UPHEAVAL: Trump was also to remove the first woman to lead a military service, as well as the judge advocates general for the army, navy and air force US President Donald Trump on Friday fired the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Air Force General C.Q. Brown, and pushed out five other admirals and generals in an unprecedented shake-up of US military leadership. Trump wrote in a post on Truth Social that he would nominate former lieutenant general Dan “Razin” Caine to succeed Brown, breaking with tradition by pulling someone out of retirement for the first time to become the top military officer. The president would also replace the head of the US Navy, a position held by Admiral Lisa Franchetti, the first woman to lead a military service,
RSS