Looking back at human rights developments in 2013, several themes stand out. The unchecked slaughter of civilians in Syria elicited global horror and outrage, but not enough to convince world leaders to exert the pressure needed to stop it. That has led some to lament the demise of the much-vaunted Responsibility to Protect doctrine, which world governments adopted less than a decade ago to protect people facing mass atrocities. Yet it turned out to be too soon to draft the epitaph for R2P, as it is known, because toward the end of the year it showed renewed vitality in several African countries facing the threat of large-scale atrocities: Central African Republic, South Sudan, and the Democratic Republic of Congo.
Democracy took a battering in several countries, but not because those in power openly abandoned it. Many leaders still feel great pressure to pay lip service to democratic rule. But a number of relatively new governments, including in Egypt and Burma, settled for the most superficial formsonly elections, or their own divining of majoritarian preferenceswithout regard to the limits on majorities that are essential to any real democracy. This abusive majoritarianism lay behind governmental efforts to suppress peaceful dissent, restrict minorities, and enforce narrow visions of cultural propriety. Yet in none of these cases did the public take this abuse of democracy sitting down.
Since September 11, 2001, efforts to combat terrorism have also spawned human rights abuses. The past year saw intensified public discussion about two particular counterterrorism programs used by the United States: global mass electronic surveillance and targeted killings by aerial drones. For years, Washington had avoided giving clear legal justifications for these programs by hiding behind the asserted needs of secrecy. That strategy was undermined by whistleblower Edward Snowdens revelations about the surveillance program, as well as by on-the-ground reporting of civilian casualties in the targeted-killing program. Both now face intense public scrutiny.
In the midst of all this upheaval, there were also important advances in the international machinery that helps to defend human rights. After a slow and disappointing start, the United Nations Human Rights Council seemed to come onto its own, most recently with significant pressure applied to North Korea and Sri Lanka. And two new multinational treaties give hope for some of the worlds most marginalized people: domestic workers and artisanal miners poisoned by the unregulated use of mercury.
Responsibility to Protect: Pummeled but Still Potent
In 2005, the worlds governments made an historic pledge that if a national government failed to stop mass atrocities, they would step in. The international community has since invoked the R2P doctrine successfully to spare lives, most notably in Kenya in 2007-2008 and Côte dIvoire in 2011. However, many governments criticized the doctrine after NATOs 2011 military intervention in Libya, where NATO was widely perceived to have moved beyond the protection of civilians to regime change. The reaction poisoned the global debate about how to respond to mass atrocities in Syria. The utter failure to stop the slaughter of Syrian civilians has raised concerns that the doctrine is now unraveling. Yet that damning shortcoming should not obscure several cases in 2013 in which R2P showed considerable vibrancy. In the Central African Republic and South Sudan, the African Union (AU) and UN Security Council moved quickly to deploy peacekeeping troops in an effort to prevent the slaughter of civilians on religious and ethnic grounds. And in eastern Democratic Republic of Congo, international pressure succeeded in convincing Rwanda to stop its military support for the latest in a succession of rebel groups committing atrocities in this long-suffering region.
Syria
Syria was by far the deadliest armed conflict of 2013. Now in its third year, the uprising-turned-civil war stood out for the ruthlessness of the governments military strategy. Rather than targeting only opposing combatants, as international humanitarian law requires, the government indiscriminately attacked civilians in areas held by the armed opposition. One of its apparent aims appeared to be to drive away as many civilians as possible so rebel forces would not deploy among them or live off a functioning economy. It also used collective punishment to turn people against the opposition and to send a message to all Syrians that life will be miserable if they let the opposition prevail where they live.
The most outrageous example of this strategy was the August 21 sarin attack on Ghouta, an opposition-held suburb of Damascus, which evidence strongly suggests was carried out by government forces. Hundreds of civilians were killed that night, including many children in their pajamas. Local monitoring groups report that roughly 5,000 individuals are being killed by conventional weapons each month, many the result of laws-of-war violations, with civilians constituting some 35 percent of the deaths. Opposition forces have also been responsible for atrocities, and concern about their conduct has grown as Islamist extremists, some linked to Al-Qaeda, gain ascendancy in their ranks. But the vast majority of civilian deaths result from government attacks. Syrian troops have used ballistic missiles, rockets, artillery shells, cluster bombs, incendiary weapons, fuel-air explosives, barrel bombs, and regular aerial bombardment, as well as chemical weapons to indiscriminately attack populated areas in opposition-held territory and sometimes to target functioning bakeries, medical facilities, schools, and other civilian structures.
Government forces have also massacred civilians and fighters in their custody, and horror stories have emerged about the fate of the countless individuals who have been arbitrarily detained, tortured, and in some cases killed in Syrian detention facilities. As Syrias population has become increasingly displaced (approximately 2.3 million outside Syria and 6.5 million within) and needy (an estimated 10 million depend on humanitarian aid), the government has erected countless obstacles to delivering humanitarian supplies to civilians in opposition-held territory, despite a UN Security Council presidential statement in October that urged these barriers be lifted.
The international communitys response to this slaughter and suffering has been painfully narrow. Amid questions about whether US President Barack Obama would enforce his declared red line over the use of chemical weapons and his threat to use military force, the United States and Russia brokered an agreement in September according to which Syria is to surrender those weapons. Reports indicate Syria is largely cooperating. But the accord addresses the method responsible for a small fraction of the civilians killed in the conflict. Insufficient pressure is being put on Syria to stop killing civilians by conventional means, and to permit humanitarian access to besieged towns and cross-border humanitarian assistance as the easiest and surest way to reach many of those in need in opposition-held areas.
In recent months, international efforts to address the Syria conflict have focused mainly on peace talks known as Geneva II. But while the likelihood of reaching a political accommodation among the warring factions anytime soon is remote, the fear of doing anything that might dissuade Damascus from participating in Geneva II has become the latest excuse for not putting real pressure on Syria to stop killing civilians by conventional means and to permit the free flow of humanitarian aid. The US has also been reluctant to pressure Russiaas Syrias primary backer, the government with the greatest influence over Damascusbecause of other priorities, most recently ensuring its help in implementing the chemical-weapons deal to avoid renewed calls for the military action that President Obama was so eager to avoid. Irans support for Syrian President Bashar al-Assad has been overshadowed by negotiations over its nuclear capacity. The consequence is diplomatic complacency about the Syrian governments largely unimpeded, murderous strategy for Syrian civilians.
What pressure might help to curb the slaughter? Western and Arab governments so far have been unwilling to deploy more aggressive banking sanctions of the sort that have proven so powerful elsewhere. Russia has been unwilling to countenance the UN Security Council referring Syria to the International Criminal Court (ICC), imposing an arms embargo, or even condemning government atrocities. In the case of the ICC, Washington also has not publicly backed a role for the court, apparently guided partly by a desire to avoid the unlikely possibility that Israeli officials would be prosecuted for transferring people to the relatively static settlements on the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights. (The expanding West Bank settlements are a different matter, but a Syrian referral would not confer ICC jurisdiction there).
Governments in the region have also been unhelpful. Lebanon, Iraq, and Egypt have reportedly refused to enforce Arab League sanctions, sending oil to keep Syrias killing machine running. Gulf countries, including Saudi Arabia and Qatar, have reportedly armed and funded extremist groups that have been responsible for repeated atrocities, and along with Kuwait, have closed their eyes to funding by their citizens. Iran and Hezbollah continue to back the Syrian government.
The international community seems all too willing to let the killing of Syrian civilians continue. Some governments reinforce their apathy by promoting the narrative of ruthless combatants killing each other, whether the Syrian military, Hezbollah, or jihadists. Arab governments, particularly in the Gulf, see the conflict mainly through the prism of Sunni-Shia relations, and a simmering conflict between Saudi Arabia and Iran over regional hegemony. But to a horrifyingly large extent, this is a war on civilians. Urgency, rather than complacency, should be the order of the day.
Central African Republic and South Sudan
Despite this failure in Syria, the final months of 2013 showed that the R2P doctrine still retained considerable force. When mass slaughter on religious grounds broke out in the Central African Republic, France and the AU sent troops to reinforce overwhelmed AU peacekeepers, the US contributed more than US$100 million, and the UN began preparing for its own, much-needed peacekeeping mission. Much more remains to be done to pull the country back from the brink, but the international community has demonstrated a greater acceptance of its responsibility to act.
In mid-December, in neighboring South Sudan, hundreds were killed as a political conflict degenerated into the ethnic targeting of civilians and a wider civil war. Within days, the UN Security Council approved an additional 5,500 peacekeepers for the country. That may not be enough to stop the mass killing or stabilize the dire situation, but the swift response suggests that, at least in the right circumstances, the R2P doctrine is still a force to be reckoned with.
Notably, the intervention in each case was as much about stopping the slaughter of civilians by government troops and militias as by rebel forcesone of the most controversial challenges for the R2P doctrine.
Rwanda and the Democratic Republic of Congo
The international community also mounted an effective international response in eastern Congo, where Rwanda has long supported a succession of abusive rebel groups, contributing to the massive loss of life over the past two decades. President Paul Kagame typically got away with this because of a combination of the international communitys guilt at not having stopped the 1994 genocide in Rwanda and admiration for the economic progress that the country has made under his leadership.
Things began to change in June 2012, when Human Rights Watch and a group of UN experts uncovered compelling evidence that Rwanda was providing extensive military support to the M23 rebel group in eastern Congo despite its record of atrocities. For the first time, Western powers, including Rwandas most important backers, the US and Britain, began to publicly criticize the government and even suspended some assistance. Rwanda flatly denied supporting the M23, undermining the governments credibility and reconfirming the importance of pressuring it to stop.
At first the pressure succeeded in forcing the M23 to pull back from Goma, the areas largest city, but this was not enough to stop the M23 from preying on the people of the region. The UN Security Council responded by significantly bolstering the military capacity of peacekeeping troops deployed in eastern Congo. Then, when the M23 launched an offensive in October 2013 with ongoing Rwandan military support, US Secretary of State John Kerry and British Foreign Secretary William Hague phoned Kagame and told him to stop. This time, the combination of pressure and firepower seemed to work. Deprived of Rwandan military support and facing intensified pressure from the reinforced UN peacekeeping force, the M23 crumbled within days. Other armed groups, as well as the Congolese army, are still responsible for attacks on civilians, but eastern Congo is at the time of writing apparently free of the predations of a Rwandan-backed armed group for the first time in years.
Abusive Majoritarianism
Democracy has three essential components: periodic elections, the rule of law, and respect for the human rights of all. Many dictatorships fear allowing anything like free and fair elections. But authoritarian governments have also learned that it is possible to adopt the form but not the substance of democracy, permitting elections, often controlled, but nothing more. This feigned democracy rejects basic principles, such as that governments must be accountable under the rule of the law, limited by the human rights that protect minorities, and committed to allowing free and continuous public debate.
In the past year, many relatively new governments pursued this abusive majoritarianism, showing more enthusiasm for representing a majoritysometimes determined by elections, sometimes by their own convenient assessmentthan for respecting the basic rights within which a democracy is supposed to function. Some leaders also seemed to adopt a conveniently narrow vision of democracy in which all that matters is a vote on election day, not public debate the rest of the year. Resenting the give and take of ordinary politics, they tried to suppress the public protests and criticism in the press and on social media that are also a staple of any meaningful democracy.
The most glaring example was in Egypt. First, the Muslim Brotherhood government of President Mohammed Morsy ruled in a manner that left secular and minority groups fearing exclusion in an Islamist-dominated government. Then, in the wake of Morsys ouster by the army in July, the military-dominated government of Gen. Abdel Fattah al-Sisi launched the worst repression that Egypt has known in decades, including by killing hundreds of Muslim Brotherhood protesters.
Despite Morsys narrow win in the 2012 presidential contesta 25 percent plurality in the first round, and a bare majority of 51.7 percent in the secondhe governed as if the rights of the minority were of little concern. He convened a constituent assembly that many felt gave an inadequate role to non-Brotherhood representatives, and rammed through a constitution, endorsed by referendum, which many feared would privilege an Islamist interpretation to the detriment of basic rights, especially for women and religious minorities. He temporarily gave himself exceptional powers to stand above judicial review on sovereign matters. And in a misguided effort to buy good will, he made little effort to end the impunity that the security forces enjoyed, despite their long record of killing, torture, and arbitrary detention. Indeed, the military was granted even greater autonomy under Morsy than it ever enjoyed under President Hosni Mubarak, a former general.
When millions of Egyptians took to the streets in June 2013 to demand new elections, the military read the protests as license to overthrow Morsy, claiming to speak for the majority without even the benefit of an election. It then proceeded to disregard basic rights far more blatantly than Morsy ever dared. It drafted a constitution that, while promising some greater protection for the rights of women and religious minorities, retained military trials for civilians and expanded the shield protecting the military from civilian oversight. And despite this constitutional exercise, the military acted as if unconstrained by any rights at all.
The military-dominated authorities used excessive lethal force to break up Muslim Brotherhood sit-in protests in Cairo, indiscriminately and in some cases deliberately killing up to 1,000 people. They rounded up thousands of Muslim Brotherhood leaders and rank-and-file members and detained them, sometimes without acknowledging their detention, frequently on trumped-up or no charges. They officially designated the Muslim Brotherhood a terrorist organization, exposing its members to criminal sanctions and even the death penalty, and seizing its assets. They also froze the assets of affiliated medical centers and threatened to take over Brotherhood mosques and replace their preachers.
The government adopted a law banning demonstrations without official permission, which it showed no inclination to grant. It deepened the militarys autonomy beyond anything Mubarak had ever allowed and worse even than Morsys permissive approach. And despite many liberals misguidedly backing these measures, it began turning its repressive attention to the secular activists who had been at the forefront of the original Tahrir Square movement three years earlier. For the second time since the fall of Mubarak in February 2011, a government is in power with little apparent inclination to limit itself by respecting basic rights.
Tunisia offered proof that Egypt could have taken a different path. In 2011 elections to the National Constituent Assembly, Tunisias first free elections, the Islamist Nahdha party won a plurality of the vote, well ahead of others. Despite a stalled economy and political polarization, the major political parties across the spectrum negotiated compromises that preserve important rights. In the draft constitution, they removed provisions referring to the complementary role of women, which could undermine gender equality, and criminalizing attacks on sacred values, a vague provision that could be used to penalize peaceful expression. A draft law on immunization of the revolution was abandoned to avoid excluding people from political life who have no history of criminal conduct merely because of their past political affiliations.
The hubris of claiming to speak for a majority without regard for rights could be found in other countries as well. In Turkey, Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan has repeatedly won a parliamentary majority, but his method of ruling has seemed increasingly autocratic as he shows less willingness to listen to opponents, critics, or rivals. The tipping point was Erdogans plan to replace one of the few parks in central Istanbul with a shopping-mall complex. The polices violent dispersal of a small sit-in against the project in May triggered a much larger occupation of the park and mass protests in other cities. Erdogan treated the demonstrations as a personal affront, repeatedly deploying the police to break them up. The police used excessive force, including deliberately firing teargas canisters at protesters, leading to deaths and serious injuries. Even once the protests subsided, Erdogan and his circle continued to exert strong pressure on media organizations that they saw as too sympathetic to their political opponents. And while strongly supportive of the police in their handling of the demonstrations, Erdogan was quick to demote dozens of officers and even a prosecutor whose investigations threatened to implicate government ministers and his own son in a corruption scandal.
In Burma, the government of President Thein Sein has committed itself to reform, but major questions remain about its willingness to allow open political competition, including by letting opposition leader Aung San Sui Kyi run for president. The government has been particularly disappointing in its response to violence by Buddhist extremists against ethnic Rohingya and other Muslims, with security forces often standing aside as mobs attack and doing little to bring the perpetrators to justice. It also has done nothing to prosecute security force personnel for war crimes committed in the context of the various ethnic-based civil wars along the countrys periphery.
Aung San Suu Kyi has been disappointing as well. Aware that the army will determine her ability to run for president, she has refrained from criticizing its abuses. And because the vulnerable and stateless Rohingya are so unpopular in Burma, she has refused to come to their verbal defense as they have been violently attacked. The Nobel laureate defends her stance by saying that she was always a politician and remains so. The world was apparently mistaken to assume that as a revered victim of rights abuse she would also be a principled defender of rights.
In Thailand, the government of Prime Minister Yingluck Shinawatra took advantage of its electoral majority to seek a broad amnesty both for people involved in violent abuse and, not incidentally, her elder brother, former prime minister Thaksin Shinawatra, who has been living in exile since 2006 to avoid corruption charges. This overplaying of her parliamentary majority sparked widespread street protests. Many in the opposition, however, seemed virtually to solicit a military coup, opposing new elections out of fear that, yet again, they would lose. That appeared to breach the principle that, even though elections are no excuse to abuse rights, they are a prerequisite for democratic rule.
In Kenya, the government of President Uhuru Kenyatta and his deputy, William Ruto, has used its narrow electoral victory50.07 percent of the vote, barely avoiding a runoffto deploy all the resources of the state toward stopping their prosecution by the International Criminal Court for their alleged leadership roles in the 2007-08 post-election violence. Ruto himself, as well as Kenyattas supporters, fought efforts to create a special tribunal in Kenya to address the violence, betting that the ICC would never get involved. They bet wrong.
Now that the ICC has charged the two, they have been decrying its so-called interference in their ability to govern, particularly since the Islamist armed group Al-Shabaabs October attack on a Nairobi shopping mall, and what they portray as the ICCs exclusive focus on African suspectswhich also happens to be a focus on African victims. But the alternative they offer is not national prosecution but impunity. Their unstated and wrongful assumption is that their electoral victory is sufficient to extinguish the right to justice for the victims of the electoral violence and their families. Although its efforts failed to orchestrate a mass withdrawal of African states from the ICC, Kenya has succeeded in enlisting the African Union on behalf of its quest for impunity. One can only hope that other African leaders prioritize African victims over the powerful who prey upon them.
In Russia, President Vladimir Putin was clearly shaken in 2011 and 2012 by the large protests in opposition to his partys parliamentary victory in a reportedly fraudulent election and his own return to the Kremlin. Since then, the government has taken various steps to prevent the opposition from mounting further challenge, including limiting protests, punishing dissent, and trying to force critical nongovernmental groups (NGOs) that receive foreign funding to wear the discrediting label of foreign agent. The Kremlin has also pandered to its conservative political base through a series of abusive measures such as banning homosexual propaganda (ostensibly to protect children), and imposing punitive, disproportionate charges on activists from the punk band Pussy Riot and the environmental group Greenpeace. Apparently to avoid international criticism as February 2014s Sochi Winter Olympics approached, Putin then amnestied or pardoned many of Russias highest-profile prisoners. But the effect was largely to highlight the arbitrariness of his rule as the crackdown on government critics continued, drawing new victims into the revolving doors of Russias politicized justice system.
In Ukraine, when President Viktor Yanukovychs decision to eschew closer ties with the European Union met with mass protests in Kiev, the authorities largely let the protests proceed. But when episodes of police brutality against protesters and journalists reporting on the protests sparked wider demonstrations across Ukraine, the authorities promised to bring officials responsible for the violence to account. So far, they have mainly tried to intimidate protesters who complained about stalled investigations.
In Venezuela, after Nicolás Maduro was declared the winner of the April presidential election, the results of which were disputed by the opposition, state security forces beat and arbitrarily detained supporters of his opponent, Henrique Capriles, who staged anti-government rallies. Some of those arrested reported being asked, Who is your president? and being beaten if they did not respond Nicolás Maduro, yet public prosecutors failed to investigate credible allegations of abuse. When Capriles called for a peaceful demonstration in the capital, Maduro said he would not allow it to take place, vowing to respond to such fascism with an iron fist and attributing responsibility for all post-election violence to Capriles. Days after the election, while the opposition was calling for a recount, the president of the National Assemblywho belongs to Maduros partyrefused to give fellow legislators the right to speak until they individually recognized Maduros victory. Maduros minister of housing threatened to fire any employee critical of the government. In November, at Maduros behest, members of his party passed legislation granting him sweeping power to govern by decree. The government has continued to intimidate and sanction media outlets critical of its policies, and has impeded human rights defenders with funding restrictions and the threat of prosecution.
In China, the government will not even risk elections for senior officials but claims to speak for the majority based on the self-appointed leadership of the Communist Party. The new government of President Xi Jinping introduced some modest reformsabolishing re-education through labor but not other methods of detaining people without trial, and easing the conditions in which some Chinese couples can have a second child, but not ending altogether the use of official coercion and surveillance in such personal matters. However, the government continued its predecessors intolerance toward organized dissent, and even retaliated against journalists who work for media companies that took up such sensitive topics as the enormous unexplained wealth of Chinese leaders and their families. Nobel Laureate Liu Xiaobo remains in prison serving an 11-year sentence for advocating democracy, and his wife, Liu Xia, remains under unlawful house arrest.
China seemed most worried about the new threat to its monopoly over public conversation posed by the rise of social media. Chinas Great Firewall, built to block access to the Internet outside the country, is worthless for preventing conversation among Chinese that social media sites like Sina Weibo now permit. And with China having an estimated 400 million social media users and growing, the government is having a hard time keeping up, despite its proliferation of censors. Social media have given the Chinese people new opportunities to spotlight official misconduct, and at times the government has had no choice but to be responsive.
Beyond elections, abusive majoritarianism comes in cultural forms as well. Whether it is Saudi Arabia or Afghanistan restricting the rights of women, or Uganda or Russia undermining the rights of gays and lesbians, abusive leaders often speak in terms of a dominant or traditional culture, as if that justifies abusing those who differ from it or fomenting discrimination against them. Typically these leaders pretend that alternatives to their tradition are imposed from the outside, as if all homosexuals in their country were imported or all women who oppose discrimination are transplants. In fact, the only imposition going on is by the dominant elites of those countries against those who dare to differ or stand up for their rights. No one insists that any particular women must reject gender stereotypes or that particular gays or lesbians must abide by their own sexuality rather than the governments preconceptions. But if they choose to do so, anti-discrimination obligations make it their choice, not that of the government. The international community gets involved when a government denies that choice, not to impose any particular choice.
National Security: An Excuse for Violating Rights
Since beginning his second term in January 2013, President Obama has done little to alter his disappointing record on national security issues. To his credit, upon taking office he banned torture and closed CIA detention centers where suspects were forcibly disappeared for months or yearstwo of the most shameful practices of the Bush administration in response to the September 11, 2001 attacks. Yet he has refused to prosecute anyone for those abuses. He also has stymied efforts to investigate them and provide redress for victims.
In addition, Obama has done little to fulfill his promise to close the Guantanamo Bay detention center and has continued to try suspects before fundamentally flawed military commissions despite their dismal record. In two important areastargeted killing, often by drones, and mass government electronic surveillancehe has built on and expanded his predecessors programs.
With respect to drones, the Obama administration has not followed its own stated policies or made clear what legal framework it believes governs specific strikes. Though formally eschewing the Bush administrations global war on terrorism, the Obama administration has asserted that it is in an armed conflict with the Taliban, Al-Qaeda, and associated forces with no geographic boundaries. It has engaged in targeted killings in Pakistan, Yemen, and Somalia, saying it is at war with these armed groups or claiming national self-defense.
But given the at-most sporadic violence involving the United States in many of these places, it is far from clear that the more permissive laws of war even apply. And even if they do, civilians have been killed unlawfully under th
Bron: politics.be
Democracy took a battering in several countries, but not because those in power openly abandoned it. Many leaders still feel great pressure to pay lip service to democratic rule. But a number of relatively new governments, including in Egypt and Burma, settled for the most superficial formsonly elections, or their own divining of majoritarian preferenceswithout regard to the limits on majorities that are essential to any real democracy. This abusive majoritarianism lay behind governmental efforts to suppress peaceful dissent, restrict minorities, and enforce narrow visions of cultural propriety. Yet in none of these cases did the public take this abuse of democracy sitting down.
Since September 11, 2001, efforts to combat terrorism have also spawned human rights abuses. The past year saw intensified public discussion about two particular counterterrorism programs used by the United States: global mass electronic surveillance and targeted killings by aerial drones. For years, Washington had avoided giving clear legal justifications for these programs by hiding behind the asserted needs of secrecy. That strategy was undermined by whistleblower Edward Snowdens revelations about the surveillance program, as well as by on-the-ground reporting of civilian casualties in the targeted-killing program. Both now face intense public scrutiny.
In the midst of all this upheaval, there were also important advances in the international machinery that helps to defend human rights. After a slow and disappointing start, the United Nations Human Rights Council seemed to come onto its own, most recently with significant pressure applied to North Korea and Sri Lanka. And two new multinational treaties give hope for some of the worlds most marginalized people: domestic workers and artisanal miners poisoned by the unregulated use of mercury.
Responsibility to Protect: Pummeled but Still Potent
In 2005, the worlds governments made an historic pledge that if a national government failed to stop mass atrocities, they would step in. The international community has since invoked the R2P doctrine successfully to spare lives, most notably in Kenya in 2007-2008 and Côte dIvoire in 2011. However, many governments criticized the doctrine after NATOs 2011 military intervention in Libya, where NATO was widely perceived to have moved beyond the protection of civilians to regime change. The reaction poisoned the global debate about how to respond to mass atrocities in Syria. The utter failure to stop the slaughter of Syrian civilians has raised concerns that the doctrine is now unraveling. Yet that damning shortcoming should not obscure several cases in 2013 in which R2P showed considerable vibrancy. In the Central African Republic and South Sudan, the African Union (AU) and UN Security Council moved quickly to deploy peacekeeping troops in an effort to prevent the slaughter of civilians on religious and ethnic grounds. And in eastern Democratic Republic of Congo, international pressure succeeded in convincing Rwanda to stop its military support for the latest in a succession of rebel groups committing atrocities in this long-suffering region.
Syria
Syria was by far the deadliest armed conflict of 2013. Now in its third year, the uprising-turned-civil war stood out for the ruthlessness of the governments military strategy. Rather than targeting only opposing combatants, as international humanitarian law requires, the government indiscriminately attacked civilians in areas held by the armed opposition. One of its apparent aims appeared to be to drive away as many civilians as possible so rebel forces would not deploy among them or live off a functioning economy. It also used collective punishment to turn people against the opposition and to send a message to all Syrians that life will be miserable if they let the opposition prevail where they live.
The most outrageous example of this strategy was the August 21 sarin attack on Ghouta, an opposition-held suburb of Damascus, which evidence strongly suggests was carried out by government forces. Hundreds of civilians were killed that night, including many children in their pajamas. Local monitoring groups report that roughly 5,000 individuals are being killed by conventional weapons each month, many the result of laws-of-war violations, with civilians constituting some 35 percent of the deaths. Opposition forces have also been responsible for atrocities, and concern about their conduct has grown as Islamist extremists, some linked to Al-Qaeda, gain ascendancy in their ranks. But the vast majority of civilian deaths result from government attacks. Syrian troops have used ballistic missiles, rockets, artillery shells, cluster bombs, incendiary weapons, fuel-air explosives, barrel bombs, and regular aerial bombardment, as well as chemical weapons to indiscriminately attack populated areas in opposition-held territory and sometimes to target functioning bakeries, medical facilities, schools, and other civilian structures.
Government forces have also massacred civilians and fighters in their custody, and horror stories have emerged about the fate of the countless individuals who have been arbitrarily detained, tortured, and in some cases killed in Syrian detention facilities. As Syrias population has become increasingly displaced (approximately 2.3 million outside Syria and 6.5 million within) and needy (an estimated 10 million depend on humanitarian aid), the government has erected countless obstacles to delivering humanitarian supplies to civilians in opposition-held territory, despite a UN Security Council presidential statement in October that urged these barriers be lifted.
The international communitys response to this slaughter and suffering has been painfully narrow. Amid questions about whether US President Barack Obama would enforce his declared red line over the use of chemical weapons and his threat to use military force, the United States and Russia brokered an agreement in September according to which Syria is to surrender those weapons. Reports indicate Syria is largely cooperating. But the accord addresses the method responsible for a small fraction of the civilians killed in the conflict. Insufficient pressure is being put on Syria to stop killing civilians by conventional means, and to permit humanitarian access to besieged towns and cross-border humanitarian assistance as the easiest and surest way to reach many of those in need in opposition-held areas.
In recent months, international efforts to address the Syria conflict have focused mainly on peace talks known as Geneva II. But while the likelihood of reaching a political accommodation among the warring factions anytime soon is remote, the fear of doing anything that might dissuade Damascus from participating in Geneva II has become the latest excuse for not putting real pressure on Syria to stop killing civilians by conventional means and to permit the free flow of humanitarian aid. The US has also been reluctant to pressure Russiaas Syrias primary backer, the government with the greatest influence over Damascusbecause of other priorities, most recently ensuring its help in implementing the chemical-weapons deal to avoid renewed calls for the military action that President Obama was so eager to avoid. Irans support for Syrian President Bashar al-Assad has been overshadowed by negotiations over its nuclear capacity. The consequence is diplomatic complacency about the Syrian governments largely unimpeded, murderous strategy for Syrian civilians.
What pressure might help to curb the slaughter? Western and Arab governments so far have been unwilling to deploy more aggressive banking sanctions of the sort that have proven so powerful elsewhere. Russia has been unwilling to countenance the UN Security Council referring Syria to the International Criminal Court (ICC), imposing an arms embargo, or even condemning government atrocities. In the case of the ICC, Washington also has not publicly backed a role for the court, apparently guided partly by a desire to avoid the unlikely possibility that Israeli officials would be prosecuted for transferring people to the relatively static settlements on the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights. (The expanding West Bank settlements are a different matter, but a Syrian referral would not confer ICC jurisdiction there).
Governments in the region have also been unhelpful. Lebanon, Iraq, and Egypt have reportedly refused to enforce Arab League sanctions, sending oil to keep Syrias killing machine running. Gulf countries, including Saudi Arabia and Qatar, have reportedly armed and funded extremist groups that have been responsible for repeated atrocities, and along with Kuwait, have closed their eyes to funding by their citizens. Iran and Hezbollah continue to back the Syrian government.
The international community seems all too willing to let the killing of Syrian civilians continue. Some governments reinforce their apathy by promoting the narrative of ruthless combatants killing each other, whether the Syrian military, Hezbollah, or jihadists. Arab governments, particularly in the Gulf, see the conflict mainly through the prism of Sunni-Shia relations, and a simmering conflict between Saudi Arabia and Iran over regional hegemony. But to a horrifyingly large extent, this is a war on civilians. Urgency, rather than complacency, should be the order of the day.
Central African Republic and South Sudan
Despite this failure in Syria, the final months of 2013 showed that the R2P doctrine still retained considerable force. When mass slaughter on religious grounds broke out in the Central African Republic, France and the AU sent troops to reinforce overwhelmed AU peacekeepers, the US contributed more than US$100 million, and the UN began preparing for its own, much-needed peacekeeping mission. Much more remains to be done to pull the country back from the brink, but the international community has demonstrated a greater acceptance of its responsibility to act.
In mid-December, in neighboring South Sudan, hundreds were killed as a political conflict degenerated into the ethnic targeting of civilians and a wider civil war. Within days, the UN Security Council approved an additional 5,500 peacekeepers for the country. That may not be enough to stop the mass killing or stabilize the dire situation, but the swift response suggests that, at least in the right circumstances, the R2P doctrine is still a force to be reckoned with.
Notably, the intervention in each case was as much about stopping the slaughter of civilians by government troops and militias as by rebel forcesone of the most controversial challenges for the R2P doctrine.
Rwanda and the Democratic Republic of Congo
The international community also mounted an effective international response in eastern Congo, where Rwanda has long supported a succession of abusive rebel groups, contributing to the massive loss of life over the past two decades. President Paul Kagame typically got away with this because of a combination of the international communitys guilt at not having stopped the 1994 genocide in Rwanda and admiration for the economic progress that the country has made under his leadership.
Things began to change in June 2012, when Human Rights Watch and a group of UN experts uncovered compelling evidence that Rwanda was providing extensive military support to the M23 rebel group in eastern Congo despite its record of atrocities. For the first time, Western powers, including Rwandas most important backers, the US and Britain, began to publicly criticize the government and even suspended some assistance. Rwanda flatly denied supporting the M23, undermining the governments credibility and reconfirming the importance of pressuring it to stop.
At first the pressure succeeded in forcing the M23 to pull back from Goma, the areas largest city, but this was not enough to stop the M23 from preying on the people of the region. The UN Security Council responded by significantly bolstering the military capacity of peacekeeping troops deployed in eastern Congo. Then, when the M23 launched an offensive in October 2013 with ongoing Rwandan military support, US Secretary of State John Kerry and British Foreign Secretary William Hague phoned Kagame and told him to stop. This time, the combination of pressure and firepower seemed to work. Deprived of Rwandan military support and facing intensified pressure from the reinforced UN peacekeeping force, the M23 crumbled within days. Other armed groups, as well as the Congolese army, are still responsible for attacks on civilians, but eastern Congo is at the time of writing apparently free of the predations of a Rwandan-backed armed group for the first time in years.
Abusive Majoritarianism
Democracy has three essential components: periodic elections, the rule of law, and respect for the human rights of all. Many dictatorships fear allowing anything like free and fair elections. But authoritarian governments have also learned that it is possible to adopt the form but not the substance of democracy, permitting elections, often controlled, but nothing more. This feigned democracy rejects basic principles, such as that governments must be accountable under the rule of the law, limited by the human rights that protect minorities, and committed to allowing free and continuous public debate.
In the past year, many relatively new governments pursued this abusive majoritarianism, showing more enthusiasm for representing a majoritysometimes determined by elections, sometimes by their own convenient assessmentthan for respecting the basic rights within which a democracy is supposed to function. Some leaders also seemed to adopt a conveniently narrow vision of democracy in which all that matters is a vote on election day, not public debate the rest of the year. Resenting the give and take of ordinary politics, they tried to suppress the public protests and criticism in the press and on social media that are also a staple of any meaningful democracy.
The most glaring example was in Egypt. First, the Muslim Brotherhood government of President Mohammed Morsy ruled in a manner that left secular and minority groups fearing exclusion in an Islamist-dominated government. Then, in the wake of Morsys ouster by the army in July, the military-dominated government of Gen. Abdel Fattah al-Sisi launched the worst repression that Egypt has known in decades, including by killing hundreds of Muslim Brotherhood protesters.
Despite Morsys narrow win in the 2012 presidential contesta 25 percent plurality in the first round, and a bare majority of 51.7 percent in the secondhe governed as if the rights of the minority were of little concern. He convened a constituent assembly that many felt gave an inadequate role to non-Brotherhood representatives, and rammed through a constitution, endorsed by referendum, which many feared would privilege an Islamist interpretation to the detriment of basic rights, especially for women and religious minorities. He temporarily gave himself exceptional powers to stand above judicial review on sovereign matters. And in a misguided effort to buy good will, he made little effort to end the impunity that the security forces enjoyed, despite their long record of killing, torture, and arbitrary detention. Indeed, the military was granted even greater autonomy under Morsy than it ever enjoyed under President Hosni Mubarak, a former general.
When millions of Egyptians took to the streets in June 2013 to demand new elections, the military read the protests as license to overthrow Morsy, claiming to speak for the majority without even the benefit of an election. It then proceeded to disregard basic rights far more blatantly than Morsy ever dared. It drafted a constitution that, while promising some greater protection for the rights of women and religious minorities, retained military trials for civilians and expanded the shield protecting the military from civilian oversight. And despite this constitutional exercise, the military acted as if unconstrained by any rights at all.
The military-dominated authorities used excessive lethal force to break up Muslim Brotherhood sit-in protests in Cairo, indiscriminately and in some cases deliberately killing up to 1,000 people. They rounded up thousands of Muslim Brotherhood leaders and rank-and-file members and detained them, sometimes without acknowledging their detention, frequently on trumped-up or no charges. They officially designated the Muslim Brotherhood a terrorist organization, exposing its members to criminal sanctions and even the death penalty, and seizing its assets. They also froze the assets of affiliated medical centers and threatened to take over Brotherhood mosques and replace their preachers.
The government adopted a law banning demonstrations without official permission, which it showed no inclination to grant. It deepened the militarys autonomy beyond anything Mubarak had ever allowed and worse even than Morsys permissive approach. And despite many liberals misguidedly backing these measures, it began turning its repressive attention to the secular activists who had been at the forefront of the original Tahrir Square movement three years earlier. For the second time since the fall of Mubarak in February 2011, a government is in power with little apparent inclination to limit itself by respecting basic rights.
Tunisia offered proof that Egypt could have taken a different path. In 2011 elections to the National Constituent Assembly, Tunisias first free elections, the Islamist Nahdha party won a plurality of the vote, well ahead of others. Despite a stalled economy and political polarization, the major political parties across the spectrum negotiated compromises that preserve important rights. In the draft constitution, they removed provisions referring to the complementary role of women, which could undermine gender equality, and criminalizing attacks on sacred values, a vague provision that could be used to penalize peaceful expression. A draft law on immunization of the revolution was abandoned to avoid excluding people from political life who have no history of criminal conduct merely because of their past political affiliations.
The hubris of claiming to speak for a majority without regard for rights could be found in other countries as well. In Turkey, Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan has repeatedly won a parliamentary majority, but his method of ruling has seemed increasingly autocratic as he shows less willingness to listen to opponents, critics, or rivals. The tipping point was Erdogans plan to replace one of the few parks in central Istanbul with a shopping-mall complex. The polices violent dispersal of a small sit-in against the project in May triggered a much larger occupation of the park and mass protests in other cities. Erdogan treated the demonstrations as a personal affront, repeatedly deploying the police to break them up. The police used excessive force, including deliberately firing teargas canisters at protesters, leading to deaths and serious injuries. Even once the protests subsided, Erdogan and his circle continued to exert strong pressure on media organizations that they saw as too sympathetic to their political opponents. And while strongly supportive of the police in their handling of the demonstrations, Erdogan was quick to demote dozens of officers and even a prosecutor whose investigations threatened to implicate government ministers and his own son in a corruption scandal.
In Burma, the government of President Thein Sein has committed itself to reform, but major questions remain about its willingness to allow open political competition, including by letting opposition leader Aung San Sui Kyi run for president. The government has been particularly disappointing in its response to violence by Buddhist extremists against ethnic Rohingya and other Muslims, with security forces often standing aside as mobs attack and doing little to bring the perpetrators to justice. It also has done nothing to prosecute security force personnel for war crimes committed in the context of the various ethnic-based civil wars along the countrys periphery.
Aung San Suu Kyi has been disappointing as well. Aware that the army will determine her ability to run for president, she has refrained from criticizing its abuses. And because the vulnerable and stateless Rohingya are so unpopular in Burma, she has refused to come to their verbal defense as they have been violently attacked. The Nobel laureate defends her stance by saying that she was always a politician and remains so. The world was apparently mistaken to assume that as a revered victim of rights abuse she would also be a principled defender of rights.
In Thailand, the government of Prime Minister Yingluck Shinawatra took advantage of its electoral majority to seek a broad amnesty both for people involved in violent abuse and, not incidentally, her elder brother, former prime minister Thaksin Shinawatra, who has been living in exile since 2006 to avoid corruption charges. This overplaying of her parliamentary majority sparked widespread street protests. Many in the opposition, however, seemed virtually to solicit a military coup, opposing new elections out of fear that, yet again, they would lose. That appeared to breach the principle that, even though elections are no excuse to abuse rights, they are a prerequisite for democratic rule.
In Kenya, the government of President Uhuru Kenyatta and his deputy, William Ruto, has used its narrow electoral victory50.07 percent of the vote, barely avoiding a runoffto deploy all the resources of the state toward stopping their prosecution by the International Criminal Court for their alleged leadership roles in the 2007-08 post-election violence. Ruto himself, as well as Kenyattas supporters, fought efforts to create a special tribunal in Kenya to address the violence, betting that the ICC would never get involved. They bet wrong.
Now that the ICC has charged the two, they have been decrying its so-called interference in their ability to govern, particularly since the Islamist armed group Al-Shabaabs October attack on a Nairobi shopping mall, and what they portray as the ICCs exclusive focus on African suspectswhich also happens to be a focus on African victims. But the alternative they offer is not national prosecution but impunity. Their unstated and wrongful assumption is that their electoral victory is sufficient to extinguish the right to justice for the victims of the electoral violence and their families. Although its efforts failed to orchestrate a mass withdrawal of African states from the ICC, Kenya has succeeded in enlisting the African Union on behalf of its quest for impunity. One can only hope that other African leaders prioritize African victims over the powerful who prey upon them.
In Russia, President Vladimir Putin was clearly shaken in 2011 and 2012 by the large protests in opposition to his partys parliamentary victory in a reportedly fraudulent election and his own return to the Kremlin. Since then, the government has taken various steps to prevent the opposition from mounting further challenge, including limiting protests, punishing dissent, and trying to force critical nongovernmental groups (NGOs) that receive foreign funding to wear the discrediting label of foreign agent. The Kremlin has also pandered to its conservative political base through a series of abusive measures such as banning homosexual propaganda (ostensibly to protect children), and imposing punitive, disproportionate charges on activists from the punk band Pussy Riot and the environmental group Greenpeace. Apparently to avoid international criticism as February 2014s Sochi Winter Olympics approached, Putin then amnestied or pardoned many of Russias highest-profile prisoners. But the effect was largely to highlight the arbitrariness of his rule as the crackdown on government critics continued, drawing new victims into the revolving doors of Russias politicized justice system.
In Ukraine, when President Viktor Yanukovychs decision to eschew closer ties with the European Union met with mass protests in Kiev, the authorities largely let the protests proceed. But when episodes of police brutality against protesters and journalists reporting on the protests sparked wider demonstrations across Ukraine, the authorities promised to bring officials responsible for the violence to account. So far, they have mainly tried to intimidate protesters who complained about stalled investigations.
In Venezuela, after Nicolás Maduro was declared the winner of the April presidential election, the results of which were disputed by the opposition, state security forces beat and arbitrarily detained supporters of his opponent, Henrique Capriles, who staged anti-government rallies. Some of those arrested reported being asked, Who is your president? and being beaten if they did not respond Nicolás Maduro, yet public prosecutors failed to investigate credible allegations of abuse. When Capriles called for a peaceful demonstration in the capital, Maduro said he would not allow it to take place, vowing to respond to such fascism with an iron fist and attributing responsibility for all post-election violence to Capriles. Days after the election, while the opposition was calling for a recount, the president of the National Assemblywho belongs to Maduros partyrefused to give fellow legislators the right to speak until they individually recognized Maduros victory. Maduros minister of housing threatened to fire any employee critical of the government. In November, at Maduros behest, members of his party passed legislation granting him sweeping power to govern by decree. The government has continued to intimidate and sanction media outlets critical of its policies, and has impeded human rights defenders with funding restrictions and the threat of prosecution.
In China, the government will not even risk elections for senior officials but claims to speak for the majority based on the self-appointed leadership of the Communist Party. The new government of President Xi Jinping introduced some modest reformsabolishing re-education through labor but not other methods of detaining people without trial, and easing the conditions in which some Chinese couples can have a second child, but not ending altogether the use of official coercion and surveillance in such personal matters. However, the government continued its predecessors intolerance toward organized dissent, and even retaliated against journalists who work for media companies that took up such sensitive topics as the enormous unexplained wealth of Chinese leaders and their families. Nobel Laureate Liu Xiaobo remains in prison serving an 11-year sentence for advocating democracy, and his wife, Liu Xia, remains under unlawful house arrest.
China seemed most worried about the new threat to its monopoly over public conversation posed by the rise of social media. Chinas Great Firewall, built to block access to the Internet outside the country, is worthless for preventing conversation among Chinese that social media sites like Sina Weibo now permit. And with China having an estimated 400 million social media users and growing, the government is having a hard time keeping up, despite its proliferation of censors. Social media have given the Chinese people new opportunities to spotlight official misconduct, and at times the government has had no choice but to be responsive.
Beyond elections, abusive majoritarianism comes in cultural forms as well. Whether it is Saudi Arabia or Afghanistan restricting the rights of women, or Uganda or Russia undermining the rights of gays and lesbians, abusive leaders often speak in terms of a dominant or traditional culture, as if that justifies abusing those who differ from it or fomenting discrimination against them. Typically these leaders pretend that alternatives to their tradition are imposed from the outside, as if all homosexuals in their country were imported or all women who oppose discrimination are transplants. In fact, the only imposition going on is by the dominant elites of those countries against those who dare to differ or stand up for their rights. No one insists that any particular women must reject gender stereotypes or that particular gays or lesbians must abide by their own sexuality rather than the governments preconceptions. But if they choose to do so, anti-discrimination obligations make it their choice, not that of the government. The international community gets involved when a government denies that choice, not to impose any particular choice.
National Security: An Excuse for Violating Rights
Since beginning his second term in January 2013, President Obama has done little to alter his disappointing record on national security issues. To his credit, upon taking office he banned torture and closed CIA detention centers where suspects were forcibly disappeared for months or yearstwo of the most shameful practices of the Bush administration in response to the September 11, 2001 attacks. Yet he has refused to prosecute anyone for those abuses. He also has stymied efforts to investigate them and provide redress for victims.
In addition, Obama has done little to fulfill his promise to close the Guantanamo Bay detention center and has continued to try suspects before fundamentally flawed military commissions despite their dismal record. In two important areastargeted killing, often by drones, and mass government electronic surveillancehe has built on and expanded his predecessors programs.
With respect to drones, the Obama administration has not followed its own stated policies or made clear what legal framework it believes governs specific strikes. Though formally eschewing the Bush administrations global war on terrorism, the Obama administration has asserted that it is in an armed conflict with the Taliban, Al-Qaeda, and associated forces with no geographic boundaries. It has engaged in targeted killings in Pakistan, Yemen, and Somalia, saying it is at war with these armed groups or claiming national self-defense.
But given the at-most sporadic violence involving the United States in many of these places, it is far from clear that the more permissive laws of war even apply. And even if they do, civilians have been killed unlawfully under th
Bron: politics.be