(China Daily)
Updated: 2008-03-13 07:23

Every government in the world, be it big or small, is supposed to respect the human rights of its people. It is also supposed to respect the human rights of people in other countries.

The United States, however, is an exception.

The US State Department was, once again, trying to set a good example to others by releasing the 2007 Human Rights Report yesterday.

It remade a list of the world's top 10 human rights offenders. Our country was removed from that list though the self-appointed evaluator remained unsatisfied with what we have done. So we received a poor score in the evaluation conducted by the US State Department on every country in the world - except of course, its own country.

The report, as US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said, was for a future where "citizens who sacrifice for their dignity and their rights will prevail".

However, it missed a big point. And ostensibly, it was a selective omission.

Pointing its finger at the rest of the world, the report turned a blind eye to the abuses the US has subjected to people in other countries and its own citizens.

Such a double standard is hypocritical.

Last weekend, the Bush administration vetoed a bill that would have ruled out methods such as simulated drowning (water-boarding), sensory deprivation, mock executions, hypothermia, beating, burning, electric shocks and sexual abuse. It would have specified what CIA interrogation techniques can legitimately be used against suspected terrorists. The intelligence bill would have limited CIA interrogators to the 19 techniques allowed in the 2006 Army Field manual. The administration is pretty much alone in believing that the methods the bill would have ruled out do not constitute "torture".

Actually, the administration has facilitated torture with its disgracefully relaxed attitude to constraining interrogators. It is a sure-fire way to produce gross prisoner abuses of the sort we have seen in Iraq and Afghanistan. This veto was another example of disregard for the international rule of law and an indifference to how the US is viewed by the rest of the world.

The self-declared human rights fighter has undermined in recent years the values it claims to stand for and asks the rest of the world to follow.

Obviously, the US shows no understanding of the damage its disrespect for others does to its reputation in the world.

(China Daily 03/13/2008 page9)