Rash: Trump administration report whitewashes human rights abuses

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Forget those dystopian images of the infamous prison in El Salvador where the Trump administration has extradited detainees. And never mind that El Salvador’s president calls himself the “world’s coolest dictator.” Because according to the State Department’s recently released annual report on the subject, “There were no credible reports of significant human rights abuses” in the Central American nation.

Human rights organizations found that statement — and the State Department’s overall report — flawed.

“Rights report mixes facts, deception, political spin” headlined Human Rights Watch’s analysis of a document it says “puts human rights defenders at risk, weakens protections for asylum-seekers, and undercuts the global fight against authoritarianism.” Amnesty International unflinchingly stated: “Never before have the reports gone this far in prioritizing an administration’s political agenda over a consistent and truthful accounting of human rights violations around the world — softening criticism in some countries while ignoring violations in others.”

Beyond whitewashing some of Washington’s currently favored countries while leveling outsized criticism against others it’s on the outs with, the report omits categories concerning “women, LGBT people, persons with disabilities, corruption in government, and freedom of peaceful assembly,” according to HRW.

The changes may accelerate, according to State Department spokeswoman Tammy Bruce. Next year’s version of the report, she said, may have “a much more distinctive and clear framework of what matters to the Trump administration.”

“These reports operate on a macro, geopolitical level to guide our foreign policy, to guide sanctions, to guide where foreign aid may be sent, as well as to guide very microlevel implications on individuals’ lives,” said Ellen Kennedy, executive director of World Without Genocide, one of several Minnesota-based, globally focused organizations at the vanguard of human rights.

Organizations like the Center for Victims of Torture, whose president and CEO Simon Adams said that this year’s report “represents a massive and significant shift.” Regardless of Republican or Democratic administration, Adams said, “the idea is you would look at all the countries in the world with a discerning eye and that you should criticize your friends and your enemies alike on the basis of how they are upholding and protecting universal human rights.”

While past reports have been “imperfect,” they were an “exemplar for the principles of rule of law, of political participation, of democracy” and had been “consistent” and “largely authoritative,” said Eric Schwartz, chair of the Humphrey School’s global policy area.

The report’s reliability, said Adams, “could sometimes act as a shield for human rights defenders in those countries, so undermining its credibility endangers them, and I think it endangers, in some ways, the rights of all of us because we’re now back to a situation where the U.S. government is sort of saying, ‘Look, you pretend you’re not abusing human rights and we’ll pretend we don’t know.’ It’s sort of a conspiracy of silence.”

A conspiracy on a country level, to be sure. But silence can be even more insidious on an individual level.

“And maybe we can’t completely fix your situation right now, but we’re trying to expose what’s happening in order to provide some limited protection to you. And so to make this just an exercise in political convenience is really debasing the whole purpose of these reports by the State Department.”

And changing how we characterize other countries may also change how the world views our character, and even how we view it ourselves.

“That’s part of the bigger conversation,” said Schwartz. “What do we stand for?”

America indeed must ask that fundamental, even foundational, question. Individuals and institutions may ask it too — and might answer differently from the administration.

World Without Genocide, for instance, has produced a “shadow report” that details “the U.S. abridgment of human rights of people living within the country’s borders,” said Kennedy, who with the backing of five other NGOs will present the report at a U.N. meeting in November.

And yet, concluded Adams, there’s a “sadness” to this because bearing witness comes with a different potential cost for the country, which he said is “pretty low.” But for “an individual human-rights defender, of a journalist who dares to speak truth to power in one of these countries, the cost is potentially very high indeed.”