The Foreign Service Journal, June 2011

J U N E 2 0 1 1 / F O R E I G N S E R V I C E J O U R N A L 9 Is Turnabout Fair Play? On April 8, Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton and Assistant Secretary Michael Posner of the Bu- reau of Democracy, Human Rights and Labor released the department’s 2010 Country Reports on Human Rights Practices . In her remarks, Secretary Clinton also announced the launch of Humanrights.gov, a new Web site in- tended to serve as “one-stop shopping for information about global human rights from across the United States government.” (See the box below for more details.) The 2010 report, totaling more than 7,000 pages, covers 194 countries in painstaking detail. Several govern- ments have issued statements on the annual report, with perhaps the most energetic response coming from the People’s Republic of China. Attempt- ing to rebut the report’s criticism of Beijing’s crackdown on dissidents and restrictions on the Internet, the Chi- nese government issued its own human rights report on the United States via the state-owned Xinhua news agency. The document attacks the State De- partment report as part of America’s “malicious design to pursue hegemony under the pretext of human rights” and accuses the U.S. of hypocrisy for cam- paigning for Internet freedom overseas while targeting WikiLeaks. The Chinese report focuses on so- cial and economic issues in the U.S. and cites statistics on violent crime, gun ownership and poverty. But in an Apr. 11 article titled “China Accuses U.S. of Double Standards,” Tania Branigan of the Guardian points out that the PRC rebuttal draws on a “mish- mash” of sources, including Human Rights Watch — whose Web site is blocked in China by government cen- sors. Russia’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs also took aim at the U.S. report, telling the press that its diplomats “would be interested to know how the State De- partment that likes lecturing others about the issues of human rights would comment [on] torture and inhumane treatment that take place in the U.S.” Moscow lodged a similar complaint the following week about the British Foreign and Commonwealth Office’s 2010 Report on Human Rights and C YBERNOTES Site of the Month: www.humanrights.gov The Department of State has been posting each year’s set of new country human rights reports on its Web site for decades now. But this year it has gone a step fur- ther, setting up a brand-new site, www.humanrights.gov , tha t not only offers the new reports but a wealth of other resources. These include a glossary of frequently-used terms; official comments on break- ing developments; references (documents, speeches and a chronology of U.S. human rights events); and hot topics, each with its own set of links. (Current listings in- clude China, civil society, Cote d’Ivoire, Cuba, Egypt, Internet freedom, Pakistan and Russia.) While the site does not, alas, offer past volumes of State human rights re- ports, those documents are available all the way back to 1999 at www.state.gov . A particularly laudable resource on the site is “2011 Hours Against Hate,” a cam- paign to stop bigotry and promote respect across lines of culture, religion, tradition, class and gender. U.S. Special Representative to Muslim Communities Farah Pan- dith and Special Envoy to Monitor and Combat Anti-Semitism Hannah Rosenthal are asking young people around the world “to pledge their time to stop hate — to do something for someone who doesn’t look like you, pray like you or live like you. We are asking the next generation to work together to build a stronger, more prosperous world. No one group can do it alone.” Pandith and Rosenthal officially launched the campaign—whose motto is “Stand Up and Speak Out. Hate Is Hate, No Matter Who the Target Is” — at the Organiza- tion for Security and Cooperation in Europe on Feb. 17 in Vienna. Participants can join the campaign via Facebook and Twitter, as well. — Steven Alan Honley, Editor