US Govt Lashes Burma, Encourages Indonesia on Human Rights

Jakarta Globe, April 09, 2011

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The United States has singled out Burma for criticism in a new human rights report and aired concern over Vietnam, Cambodia and the Philippines, while adding a rare note of praise for Indonesia's recent record.

Burma had far more to do to improve human rights even after freeing Aung San Suu Kyi, the US State Department said in an annual survey on human rights released on Friday, pointing to "severe" abuses including frequent killings, rapes and forced labor of ethnic minorities at the hands of the country's powerful army.

Burma freed pro-democracy icon Suu Kyi in November. The military leaders have officially ceded to civilians as part of a political transition, although outside observers consider the step cosmetic.

"We continue to be very concerned about the situation in Burma, especially, I would say, the continued detention of more than 2,000 political prisoners," said Michael Posner, assistant secretary of state for democracy, human rights and labor. "We continue to call for their release, but also (to end) the very harsh and unreasonable restrictions on Aung San Suu Kyi and her party. So we have a long way to go."

In common with previous editions, the survey pointed to concerns in Indonesia, this year including accounts of unlawful killings in violence-torn Papua along with interference against freedom of religion.

But Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, presenting the mammoth, 7,000-page global report, pointed to Indonesia as a success story. "Indonesia boasts a vibrant free media and a flourishing civil society at the same time as it faces up to challenges in preventing abuses by its security forces and acting against religious intolerance," she told reporters.

The survey covers the period before Islamic fanatics brutally killed three members of the Ahmadiyah movement in early February, drawing concern around the world and questions over Indonesia's commitment to safeguarding minority rights.

The concern over Papua is primarily a reference to the torture of two civilians there in October last year by soldiers. They were subsequently court-martialed in January but given sentences of less than a year, decried by the influential group Human Rights Watch as far too lenient to send a message that abuse was unacceptable.

However, the report does echo progress noted by Human Rights Watch in its own annual review of human rights practices around the globe, released in January. Then it noted that while serious human rights concerns remained, Indonesia had over the past 12 years made great strides in becoming a stable, democratic country with a strong civil society and independent media.

The State Department report also points to human rights concerns elsewhere in Southeast Asia — particularly Vietnam, where it noted that at least 25 political activists were arrested. "The government increased its suppression of dissent," the report said. "Police commonly mistreated suspects during arrest or detention."

It said historic discrimination persisted against ethnic minorities, although it also pointed to efforts by Vietnam to address grievances in the Central Highlands by improving education and infrastructure. Human Rights Watch, a private US watchdog, in a recent report said Vietnam was stepping up repression of the Montagnard people, forcing hundreds to renounce their religion.

It also raised concerns about Cambodia, saying that security forces "committed arbitrary killings and acted with impunity," often abusing detainees to extract confessions, and that authorities restricted freedom of speech and press and often acted to weaken NGOs in the country to help its recovery from civil war in the days of the Khmer Rouge.

In the Philippines, the report said, extrajudicial killings were a "serious problems" along with harassment of leftist and human rights activists and arbitrary arrests. "Members of the security services physically and psychologically abused suspects and detainees, and there were instances of torture," the report said.

Among countries alongside Indonesia seen as improving their respect for human rights, Clinton cited Colombia and Guinea. She said the US "will stand with those who exercise their fundamental freedoms of expression and assembly in a peaceful way, whether in person, in print or in pixels on the Internet."

More broadly, the report also paints a worrying picture of governments around the world extending repression to the Internet, seeking to cut off their citizens' access to websites and other means of communication to stave off the types of revolutions that have recently wracked the Middle East, saying many countries are "spending more time, money and attention in efforts to curtail access to these new communications outlets."

More than 40 governments now block their citizens' access to the Internet, and the firewalls, regulatory restrictions and technologies are all "designed to repress speech and infringe on the personal privacy of those who use these rapidly evolving technologies."

Clinton said curtailing Internet freedom meant violating the fundamental rights of expression, assembly and association. "Democracy and human rights activists and independent bloggers found their emails hacked or their computers infected with spyware that reported back on their every keystroke," Clinton said. "Digital activists have been tortured so they would reveal their passwords and implicate their colleagues."

She singled out Myanmar and Cuba for government policies that seek to preempt any online dissent by keeping almost their entire populations off the Internet.

But the report also criticizes Saudi Arabia, a vital US ally but one opposing the Obama administration's push for democratic reforms in the Arab world, for spying on e-mail and chat rooms, and blocking sites about religions such as Hinduism, Judaism and Christianity.

The conservative Sunni kingdom also prevented people from reaching webpages about forms of Islam deemed incompatible with Sharia law and national regulations, according to the report.

Posner said the US has trained 5,000 people around the world to leave less of a trace on the Internet in an attempt to help repressed peoples access and spread information. "In a lot of cases, people who are using the Internet in these societies aren't sufficiently mindful either of what their possibilities are technically to protect themselves, or what the risks are," he said.

AP, AFP

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