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Human rights and human wrongs

by W. E. GUTMAN

Losing the largely symbolic seat on the United Nations Human Rights Commission may be an affront to America's inflated self-view but objections to the ouster from the world body are as disingenuous as they are subdued.

Indeed, by its own admission, the US human rights record is less than spotless. Nowhere is this tainted reputation more in evidence than in Latin America, where successive administrations have eagerly installed, coddled and bolstered dynasties of military thugs, assassins, torturers, drug runners and money launderers — Augusto Pinochet (Chile), Fulgencio Batista (Cuba), Efrain Rios Montt (Guatemala), Anastasio Somoza (Nicaragua), Manuel Noriega (Panama), and Alberto Fujimori (Peru), to name a few.

And in its inventory of dirty "operations" in Central America, none is more heinous than the one the US waged in Guatemala in the name of national security.

Made public last year, the report of the independent Historical Clarification Commission acknowledges that the US funded and trained the Guatemalan military during that country's 36-year genocidal war against the Maya.

The report challenges years of vehement denial by the US that it advocated and abetted wholesale torture, kidnappings and executions of thousands of civilians. It confirms the CIA's participation in a blood

bath that resulted in the death and "disappearance" of at least 200,000 people — a role the agency had heretofore zealously, if vainly refuted. The report concludes that US support for right-wing governments and the training of Central American military cadres played a pivotal role in "aggressive, racist and extremely cruel violations that resulted in the massive extermination of defenseless people."

Sadly, while the Commission perfunctorily blames the incestuous relationship between the US and bellicose Central American governments for a decade of illegal detentions, torture, and extra-judicial executions, it fails to name the guilty or argue in favor of justice.

It is perhaps for that reason that, acting on a last-minute decision by former President Bill Clinton, the US signed a treaty creating the world's first permanent international war crimes tribunal to bring to justice people accused of crimes against humanity. Some have expressed concern, however, that approval of such a court might subject American citizens to politically motivated prosecutions. The most vocal opponent of a world court is Senator Jesse Helms. Predictably, now that a carefully erected wall of secrecy is developing incriminating cracks, El Salvador, Guatemala and Nicaragua, which could sing volumes about US complicity, declined to sign.

So much for sanctimony.

Nor is the expulsion of the US from the Human Rights Commission the political calamity some claim it to be. Let's face it, the UN is a bloated bureaucracy with a history of anti-western and anti-Semitic agendas. In the name of "cultural relativism," it has steadfastly candy-coated aberrant behavior and degenerate customs. Its "conciliatory" policies continue to indulge gangsters and feral warlords immersed in orgies of ethnocentric violence.

Having said that, arguing for "human rights" in the abstract while shielding the guilty, adds villainy to deception. Implicit in this artifice is that for the good of society, victims of barbarism should not only abstain from revisiting the past, they should in fact pretend that it never took place. Asking survivors of violence to look the other way while their tormentors are still free is an insult to justice.

There is no statute of limitation on human rights violations. War criminals ARE prosecutable and punishable. So should [be] the intellectual authors who sanction or orchestrate atrocities from the safety of their political office.

Silence does not bring absolution. It only promotes collective amnesia. It also keeps the flames of hatred smoldering while granting amnesiacs and hypocrites alike further respite.