By Christopher Cook Human rights are a concern of the organization Human Rights Watch....just not the their main concern.
Like nearly every organization and activist on the left, their main concern is the left itself. More power. More influence. More money. And especially...more victories against any who would oppose them. In many cases, this is reflexive, an automated behavior pattern that accompanies adherence to the ideology of the left.
Read the following excerpt from an article that appeared in yesterday's Washington Post: (HT: Captain Ed)
If you're thinking you haven't heard much about this transformation in a major oil-producing country two hours by air from Miami, you're right. U.S. media and human rights groups have basically ignored Chávez's latest power grab. Human Rights Watch, which has been conducting a campaign about what it says is the "human rights crisis" in neighboring, democratic Colombia in close cooperation with congressional Democrats, has issued no statement on the Venezuelan violence -- including the shooting of the students by government-backed paramilitaries on Nov. 7 -- and objected to only one of the 69 new constitutional articles.
Why is it that Human Rights Watch and other human rights NGOs, the media, and the Democrats are strikingly uninterested in the complete collapse of freedom and severe erosion of human rights in Venezuela, but they seem fascinated by—and oh so very concerned about—the human rights situation in Colombia? Simple.
Colombia's government is center-right. This makes it an enemy of the left.1
Venezuela's government is hard left. This makes it an ally of the left. It doesn't matter how authoritarian the government is. It doesn't matter if it's slightly left or far left. An ally is an ally.2
For a more detailed exegesis of this pattern, along with some striking examples, see Selective Outrage: How the left's agenda trumps genuine concern for human suffering.
You will find that HRW (and its ilk) do have some concerns that don't fit into this pattern. Similarly, you will find that the ACLU occasionally takes a case that doesn't fit into its normal left-wing agenda. Nonetheless, nearly all organizations of this type that are left-aligned follow general trends wherein their concerns and approaches are selective—there will be a human rights component (or whatever their issue is), but it will first be run through a filter to determine what is in the best interests of the left.3
The case of Venezuela vs. Colombia is a salient and demonstrative one. For reinforcement of the idea, read the headlines on HRW's home page. You will see some concerns that do not fit this pattern, but you will undoubtedly also perceive the pattern. Here's what they're showing today:
Colombia: New Killings of Labor Leaders
Canada: Protect Citizens Facing Death Penalty in US
Mexico: US Aid Should Include Human Rights Conditions
Georgia: Police Beat Peaceful Protesters
Russia: Drug Addiction Treatment Requires Reform
Roma Children Denied Equal Education
Is There a Humane Way to Put Someone to Death?
Guantanamo Judge Allows Military Commissions to Proceed
US: Sex Offender Laws May Do More Harm Than Good
What's evident on that partial list?
Center-right governments
The United States
U.S. allies in the GWOT
Israel (read: the Jews)
Defense of sex offenders
Opposition to the death penalty
These are all boilerplate left-aligned positions, causes, tendencies, and targeted enemies.
Granted, there are more articles on the page, but very few of them deal with criticism of governments on the left. In fact, there are only two, and both are directed at China:
China: Stop HIV, Not People Living With HIV
China: Tibetan Faces Baseless Subversion Charges
The left's criticism of China has been muted or non-existent since it became a Communist country. The left was silent in spite of the fact that Communist China was the site of the greatest mass murder in human history (over 60 million people). Lately, the left has gotten a little more vocal about China, but this just happens to coincide with two things:
--China's rapid abandonment of leftist economic principles, and
--Protectionism becoming the flavor of the month on the American left.
So now, for the left, a little bit of criticism for China is okay. Of course, you still see a lot of Mao-chic on the left, but that is wistfulness for the old Communist China—the mass-murdering one that inspires a whiff of nostalgia for lefties who used to hand out Mao's little Red Book.
In HRW's defense, there are a couple of articles dealing with Islamic nations:
Tunisia: Allow Rights Activists to Attend US Conference
Egypt: Allow Citizens to List Actual Religion on ID Cards
Iran: Suspend Heavy Sentence for WomenÂ’s Rights Activist
Given the appalling record on human rights in most Islamic countries, this is the very least they could do. And notice that there are five articles dealing with "human rights abuses" in the United States, and three tepid complaints about microcosmic issues in three countries out of the entire Islamic world.
From a human rights standpoint, that it a serious imbalance unsupported by the facts surrounding real human rights abuses in the world. Looking at it that way, it makes no sense.
If, however, you look at it the way HRW does—through a filter of the left's best interests—then it makes perfect sense.
Il n'y a aucun ennemi du côté gauche.
1 It is important to note that there are human rights abuses taking place in Colombia, but the center-right government is only one of the players. It does have proxy paramilitary militias...but as has been the case in so many places throughout the world, the other players in this drama are both leftist insurgent groups, in this case, the narco-terrorist/Marxist FARC and ELN.
HRW and others are mostly just concerned with the pro-government militias; they have little to say about FARC and ELN. If you have read this article, and the links within it (especially this one), then you already know why this is.
2 One of the reasons this is true is because the whole left is a part of one ideological phenomenon. Once you get to the left of Morton Kondrake, politics becomes a simple continuum. The only question is the distance the individual adherent is from the core ideology of leftism.
This is not true on the right. The right is a multifarious amalgam of different interests. Social conservatives. Fiscal conservatives. National security conservatives. People who reflexively know that the left is dangerous, and thus join the side best configured to oppose it. The left has a single core ideology from which it has sprung, and upon which most of its agenda continues to be based: Marxism-Leninism. There is no single ideological wellspring for the right. Sure, there are core ideas, but the right really exists in the location where the various circles of its ideological Venn diagram meet.
3 This is no different than the fact that most "feminists" lost their minds in defense of Anita Hill against that dastardly Clarence Thomas, but were virtually silent about Bill Clinton's serial abuse of women. Thomas was an enemy, Clinton was an ally. Political alignment trumped feminist concerns. For the left, it always will.
