Xinhua News Agency, Beijing, December 27. The Chinese Society for Human Rights Research released on the 27th a research report on "U.S. Human Rights Politicization Acts Destroy the Foundation of Good Governance of Human Rights". The full text is as follows:
The politicization of human rights in the U.S. destroys the foundation of good governance of human rights
China Human Rights Research Society
December 2021
The global human rights practice since the end of World War II has repeatedly proved that getting rid of politicized thinking and discussing and advancing human rights in an equal and rational manner is an important foundation for the international community to properly handle human rights issues and carry out human rights exchanges and cooperation; and the adoption of human rights politicization measures, It is bound to cause fatal harm to the global good governance of human rights.
This has become a basic consensus in the field of international human rights.
"Politicization of human rights" refers to the fact that international relations actors deal with human rights in a politically pragmatic attitude out of a certain political motivation, and regard human rights as a tendency and process to realize certain political benefits.
The manifestations of the politicization of human rights mainly include: (1) Treating human rights issues in a selective rather than universal way; (2) Evaluating the human rights situation with double standards rather than objective standards; (3) Treating human rights in a confrontational rather than dialogue manner Differences in human rights issues; (4) To deal with differences in human rights through unilateral coercion rather than multilateral cooperation, and so on.
The UN human rights agency clearly advocates the depoliticization of human rights, requires a universal and objective attitude on human rights issues, adheres to multilateralism, promotes constructive dialogue, international solidarity and cooperation, and eliminates the politicization of human rights.
The United Nations General Assembly Resolution 60/251 requires “to ensure universality, objectivity and non-selectivity when considering human rights issues, and to eliminate double standards and politicization”.
Resolution 5/1 of the Human Rights Council stipulates that the universal periodic review mechanism for human rights should be “objective, transparent, non-selective, constructive, non-confrontational, and non-political”, and should “apply objectivity, non-selectivity, and eliminate double Standards and the principle of politicization”, incoming communications should “have no obvious political motives” and “not take positions that contain political motives and violate the provisions of the UN Charter”.
Resolution 47/9 of the Human Rights Council emphasized that “human rights dialogue should be constructive and based on the principles of universality, indivisibility, objectivity, non-selectivity, non-politicization, mutual respect, and equal treatment.”
However, in order to maintain its own political interests and global hegemony, the United States has politicized human rights in the field of international human rights. It has adopted selectivity, double standards, and unilateral coercion, which has severely eroded the importance of global human rights governance for its support and operation. The foundation poses a major threat to the development of the global human rights cause, and has produced extremely bad and destructive consequences.
1. The historical process of the politicization of human rights in the United States
On the whole, the politicization of human rights in the United States can be divided into three stages: before the 1970s, it was reluctant, indifferent or even repelling international human rights standards; from the 1970s to the end of the Cold War, it promoted "human rights". Diplomacy” used human rights as a political tool to combat the former Soviet Union; after the end of the Cold War, he unscrupulously imposed his own human rights values as “soft power” on other countries, suppressing countries with different political systems from his own, in order to maintain his global hegemony.
(1) A period of ignorance and rejection of international human rights
During the formulation of the "Universal Declaration of Human Rights," the U.S. government expressed verbal support on the one hand, while on the other hand it tried its best to emphasize that this is only a non-binding and encouraging document.
The United States insists on writing the human rights clauses in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights as vaguely as possible, and strives to resist the initiatives of some countries and organizations to refine the human rights clauses and specify the obligations that countries should undertake.
After the adoption of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, U.S. representatives attending the United Nations Conference on Human Rights immediately declared that there is only one article in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, that is, Article 22 applies to the United States; and in Article 22, there is only one sentence of value, namely The realization of the "Universal Declaration of Human Rights" depends on "the organization and resources of various countries."
After 1953, the United States turned from reluctant participation and reluctant support to public disregard for internationally recognized human rights.
The Eisenhower administration immediately announced its distance from the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, claiming that it would not be subject to human rights obligations in terms of its internal and external policies.
In the "Decolonization Declaration" adopted by the United Nations in 1960 and other measures to support anti-colonial forces with moral and political legitimacy, the US government either voted against or abstained.
Many other human rights treaties have also received the same indifference.
The United States’ response to the United Nations’ efforts to oppose the apartheid system in South Africa in the 1960s was ambiguous because it was clearly in contradiction with the United States’ long-term strategic interests in South Africa.
In the early days of the Cold War, the United States considered the democratizing Abens government in Guatemala for national security considerations as the expansion of Soviet communist forces in the country, and through two secret operations, it adopted a combination of diplomatic pressure and psychological warfare. The method eventually overthrew the democratically elected government of Guatemala.
This became a common pattern for the United States to interfere in the internal affairs of other countries in Latin America.
(2) "Human rights diplomacy" merged into the political strategy period
Since the mid-1970s, the U.S. Congress has made human rights an important part of multilateral foreign policy, linking human rights with security assistance, economic assistance, and its voting preferences in international financial institutions.
After Carter was elected as the President of the United States in 1977, he formally put forward the slogan "Human Rights Diplomacy". Human rights are said to be the "cornerstone" and "soul" of US foreign policy.
American historian and diplomatic relations scholar James Pike argued in his book "The Perfect Illusion: How the U.S. Government Chooses Human Rights Diplomacy" that Washington is eager to find a new ideological weapon for the Cold War. Human rights are a rare weapon.
In Parker's view, the more deliberately emphasized something, the more it explained what to deliberately cover up.
The U.S. has committed appalling tyranny in Vietnam, such as destroying crops and forests, forcing people to relocate, bombing civilians, implementing the "Phoenix Project," etc., the U.S.-backed military tyranny in Chile, Guatemala, the Philippines, and Angola, and the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency. The more the Bureau's secret infiltration activities in Eurasian countries are exposed and criticized, the more American politicians must desperately promote their human rights concepts and whitewash their image.
In the 1980s, the human rights policy of the Reagan administration was based on the "exceptionalism" and Cold War policies of the United States.
Exceptionalists claim that the United States understood the true meaning of human rights during the period of enlightenment and implemented it as early as the beginning of the American Revolution.
Therefore, the obligations of the United States towards civil and political rights should be a model for other countries to learn from.
That being the case, the United States does not need any international standards for human rights.
The Reagan administration criticized the Carter administration for being "naive" on the human rights issue and demanded that human rights be completely returned to the track of the Cold War.
In the United Nations, the Reagan administration publicly attacked the communist countries for human rights violations, and unabashedly protected allies like Chile, Argentina, and Guatemala.
The Reagan administration clearly wanted to use human rights as a tool to compete with the Soviet Union and its allies, and in the United Nations called for priority to discuss the issue of human rights violations by the Communist regime, especially the human rights issue in Cuba, but ignored the human rights issues in many other countries.
The United States has always held a negative attitude towards the UN Convention against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment.
(3) The period of imposing one's own human rights views on other countries
After the end of the Cold War, the United States developed an inexplicable sense of superiority towards its own political system, and showed a kind of institutional arrogance and prejudice towards other countries with different political systems from the West. It believed that only the American political system was the only reasonable and universal. World value.
US President Bush once again put "human rights at the center of US foreign policy."
On August 29, 1996, President Clinton said in a speech at the Democratic National Convention in Chicago: "I hope to build a bridge to the 21st century, so as to ensure that we remain the country with the strongest defense capabilities in the world. Our foreign policy continues to promote American values in the international community." It is precisely based on this institutional arrogance that the United States unscrupulously promotes the "global democracy movement" all over the world, and any non-Western political system will be severely attacked by public opinion. As a result of the suppression, the relevant countries have been labeled as "undemocratic", "autocratic" and even "rogue countries".
With the outbreak of the "September 11" incident and the successive occurrences of the United States sending troops to Afghanistan and invading Iraq, the United States has become a major country that violates human rights in other countries.
In the name of counter-terrorism, the U.S. Department of Justice rejects international human rights law, and serious human rights violations such as torture and assassination have also emerged one after another, and have been widely criticized by the international community for this reason.
The U.S. National Security Agency has taken special actions against foreign intelligence targets on the grounds of national security, monitoring and collecting personal information of foreign dignitaries and U.S. citizens. There are countless incidents of infringements on citizens’ privacy, causing uproars time and time again.
2. The underlying causes and manifestations of the US politicization of human rights
The historical evolution of the United States’ attitude towards human rights shows that whether it is the early disregard and even rejection of human rights, or the later enthusiasm to wield human rights as a big stick, in essence, they regard human rights as a tool of political struggle and rely on human rights and their politics. The strategic fit relationship determines the attitude towards human rights.
(1) The underlying reasons for the politicization of human rights in the United States
The underlying reason for the politicization of human rights in the United States is that there is a fundamental conflict between international human rights standards and the United States' own human rights situation and global strategy.
First, the United States itself has serious human rights problems, including racial discrimination, the proliferation of guns, violent law enforcement, polarization, and so on.
Second, the US allies in the international community are also countries that seriously violate human rights according to the standards declared by the US itself.
Third, in order to maintain its global hegemony, the United States has continuously launched wars of aggression, illegally interfered in the internal affairs of other countries, and violated the sovereignty of other countries, all of which run counter to the principles of human rights.
Therefore, the United States cannot actually implement the human rights it has promoted, let alone align with international human rights standards.
When the international community took human rights as the common moral standard of global governance under the joint promotion of all countries, the United States had to follow the development trend of the international community in order to strengthen its "soft power", use the banner of human rights for its own use, and disguise and conceal its violation of human rights. The act.
However, the fundamental contradiction between international human rights standards and the US global strategy cannot be eliminated. This has led the US to inevitably choose to use human rights principles in a highly politicized manner.
(2) Three forms of the politicization of human rights in the United States
Faced with the conflict between its global strategy and international human rights standards, the United States has either abandoned human rights principles and nakedly defended hegemony; or selectively applied human rights principles based on its own political interests; or directly used human rights as an excuse. Countries that threaten their own political interests are labelled as "human rights violations" and put on moral cloaks for infringing on the sovereignty of other countries.
1. Attempt to abandon basic human rights concepts for political gain
The "Dulles Doctrine" put forward by the United States in the 1950s established the idea that to compete with the Soviet Union is to contribute to human rights.
Dullesism advocated the United Nations as the best forum for condemning communist opponents. The Eisenhower administration replaced the internationally recognized human rights concern with "moral anti-communism", while the Kennedy and Johnson administrations prioritized anti-communism, and only allowed human rights issues. In the third place.
Robert Gates, the former director of the US Central Intelligence Agency and Secretary of Defense, once wrote, "The Carter administration launched an ideological war against the Soviet Union with unprecedented determination and strength by any American president." The specific method was to "attack the legality of the Soviet government." Sex” and fully support the dissidents in the Soviet Union.
2. Differentiating between political enemies and friends, applying human rights standards
When pursuing human rights diplomacy and handling human rights affairs, the United States does not follow uniform international human rights standards and pay attention to human rights protection from a fair and objective perspective, but adopts double standards or even multiple standards.
First of all, it is to pursue a set of standards for human rights issues in one's own country and another set of standards for human rights issues in other countries.
Although there have been a large number of systemic human rights issues in the United States, such as unemployment, poverty, homelessness, proliferation of guns, violent crime, racial discrimination, and immigrant human rights, the United States ignores these issues in its annual national human rights report and avoids them. Not to mention, blindly criticize the so-called human rights issues of other countries.
Second, one set of standards for one’s allies or friendly countries, and another set of standards for countries with different ideologies, different political and social systems, or conflicting interests from one’s own.
The Reagan administration stipulated "positive" and "negative" human rights standards in the "Human Rights Memorandum" submitted to Congress. The "positive" human rights standards were applied to the socialist countries of the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe and the harshest punishments were imposed on their violations of human rights. ; As for the allies of the United States, even if there are violations of human rights, at best they only adopt "negative" human rights standards.
In the national human rights report issued by the United States every year, the human rights issues of developing countries, socialism and other "unfriendly" countries are exaggerated, but the human rights issues of its allies are understated or covered up.
Third, adopt different human rights standards for the same country at different times.
If a country’s policies in a certain historical period violated the interests of the U.S. government, “human rights issues” can be used to blame, threaten, and sanction the country; when the country caters to the interests of the U.S. government, “human rights issues” It may be placed in a secondary position and use incentive methods instead.
Fourth, adopt different attitudes towards human rights in different periods and on different issues.
In the period immediately after the end of the Second World War, the United States has always held a cold attitude towards human rights.
It was not until later, especially after the Hungary incident in 1956, that the UNHCR's materials showed that the establishment of an international refugee system would be a powerful weapon in the struggle between East and West, that the United States turned to a supportive stance.
Fifth, adopt different attitudes towards different types of rights.
Starting from its own economic and political system, the United States adopts different attitudes toward economic, social, and cultural rights and civil and political rights, and different attitudes toward freedom, survival, and development. It emphasizes the former while downplaying or even denying the latter.
No matter how many forms of this selectivity and double standards, its ultimate goal is to make human rights obey the needs of serving the world hegemony of the United States and to contain the development of socialist countries.
As former U.S. President Carter’s national security adviser Brzezinski publicly declared in the book "The Great Failure": human rights "is a far-sighted strategic choice that promotes the gradual transition of communist countries to democratic politics, and can accelerate communism. The process of decline".
3. Wielding a human rights stick violates the sovereignty of other countries
The United States combines economic, political, and even military means with human rights diplomacy to achieve its human rights diplomacy goals.
On the one hand, the United States links human rights with economic assistance, and countries that require U.S. assistance must also accept U.S. human rights standards.
On the other hand, for those countries that resist the United States’ human rights diplomacy, they combine force to achieve the goal of human rights diplomacy.
Successive administrations of the United States will maintain the hegemony of the United States and prevent the emergence of major powers that undermine U.S. hegemony in the Asia-Pacific region as the core of their strategy.
China has become the primary goal of US containment due to practical reasons, and "human rights" is a card used by the United States to contain China.
James Pike, a history and international relations scholar at New York University in the United States, pointed out that the faction within the US government that advocates containment of China still insists that human rights are the last ideological weapon against China and a project that prevents the Chinese Communist Party from surviving. .
"Since China cannot be counted on economically to'collapse', then use the political weapon of'human rights' to promote China's collapse from the inside." In 2000, the US Congress established the "US Congress-Executive China Committee" to focus on participation. The common interests of the House of Representatives, the government's national security agencies, business groups, and human rights organizations.
This committee monitors all aspects of the human rights situation in China.
James Pike concluded that the so-called human rights advocated by the U.S. government has almost no connection with the true concept of human rights. The U.S. government holds high the banner of human rights and its sole purpose is to use human rights to promote its global strategy.
The U.S. government has gradually turned human rights into a right to speak in the implementation of its foreign policy and a tool of U.S. ideology and public diplomacy.
3. The politicization of human rights in the United States seriously endangers good governance of global human rights
The politicization of human rights by the United States has had a catastrophic impact on global human rights governance, hindering the normal development of international human rights, causing some countries to fall into chaos, and tarnishing the concept and sacred ideals of human rights.
First, the politicization of human rights in the United States hinders the healthy development of the international human rights cause.
The U.S. uses political interests to delimit it, blocking the possibility of normal dialogue between different human rights views and turning the United Nations human rights institution into a battlefield of political confrontation.
This not only affected the development of the global human rights cause, but also prevented the United States' own human rights situation from getting the improvement it deserved for a long time.
Scholars such as Samuel Mohn, a professor at Columbia University School of Law, believe that because American politicians who are good at playing with power politics simply dismissed human rights issues, the so-called human rights revolution in the 1940s "died before it was born."
Many scholars believe that the human rights issue fell into a "dead end" in the late 1940s and early 1970s because the United States failed to actively participate in international actions on human rights issues during the Cold War politics.
Second, the United States uses human rights as an excuse to interfere in the internal affairs of other countries, create national unrest, and create new human rights disasters.
The United States infringed on the sovereignty of other countries, leading to wars and disastrous lives in the interfered and aggressed countries, and caused new human rights disasters.
American scholars Cui Shenghuan and James Patrick pointed out that there are four common policy tools for the United States to unilaterally export its human rights values to the international community: one is military intervention, such as in Iraq or Kosovo. The United States uses the deteriorating human rights status of these countries and regions as an excuse. The second is military assistance, in order to eliminate the human rights crisis, the US government provides weapons to militants of specific factions; the third is economic sanctions, the most typical is to identify the so-called "rogue country" and call on its allies to cut off together Economic exchanges with the country; the fourth is economic assistance. This tool is widely used in US foreign policy towards Latin America. While providing economic assistance, these countries are required to improve their human rights in accordance with US standards.
After comparing and analyzing the data of 144 countries in the past 30 years, the two scholars came to the conclusion: After World War II, the United States has almost all failed to export human rights based on diplomacy, whether it is military intervention in Iraq or economic assistance to Latin American countries. So far, the basic human rights there have not been guaranteed.
This shows that the United States' instrumentalization of its human rights strategy will not only fail to truly improve human rights, but will lead to new human rights disasters.
Finally, the United States uses human rights as a tool to realize its global strategy and tarnishes the noble ideals of global human rights.
The United States practices double standards, ignores and even condones real human rights violations, and even imposes economic sanctions, political pressure, or military deterrence on policies and measures to protect human rights.
This has severely tarnished the human rights ideal that mankind has pursued for a long time, and the concept of human rights has become an excuse and tool for the United States to violate human rights in other countries.
As Xu Yicong, the former Chinese ambassador to Cuba, pointed out: "The'human rights' they advocate are actually a big political stick. They are basically a tool used to interfere in other countries' internal affairs and subvert the legitimate governments of other countries. It is a kind of'political'. Means and strategies are not the essential respect for human rights. All over the world, where there is turmoil, they can hear their slogan "protect human rights". When some countries deal with traitors who endanger national sovereignty and security, they also We can see the "human rights sticks" of the Western world. In the final analysis, they are politicizing human rights and have ulterior motives. In essence, politicizing human rights issues is a manifestation of not respecting human rights in essence. ."
The politicization of human rights in the United States has eroded and destroyed the foundation of good global human rights governance and brought disastrous consequences to the global human rights cause. It has been widely condemned and widely condemned by the justice forces of the international community.
On October 7, 2021, Zhang Jun, Permanent Representative of China to the United Nations, spoke at the General Debate of the Third Committee of the 76th UN General Assembly and pointed out that the United States and a few other countries insisted on provoking confrontation in the Third Committee of the UN General Assembly and criticized the human rights of other developing countries by name. Under the circumstances, all kinds of hats are flying all over the sky, but they turn a blind eye to the human rights abuses of themselves and their allies.
The United States and a few other countries ignore facts, fabricate lies, make unreasonable accusations against China, and use human rights to interfere in China's internal affairs.
In this regard, the Chinese government and people resolutely oppose and solemnly refuse.
Egypt, Algeria, Chad, Turkmenistan, Belarus, Venezuela and other countries emphasized in their speeches that the people of all countries have the right to independently choose the path of human rights development according to their national conditions and firmly oppose the politicization of human rights issues, double standards, and interference in internal affairs.
The negative consequences of the politicization of human rights in the United States have made people increasingly realize that the depoliticization of human rights is the basis and prerequisite for the smooth progress of global human rights governance. Preventing and curbing the politicization of human rights is an important guarantee for the healthy development of the cause of human rights in the world. .
In order to safeguard its own interests, the United States has moved against the trend of history, intensified the politicization of human rights, undermined the healthy body of the global human rights cause, and pushed one country after another into the vortex of social turmoil.
People around the world are increasingly recognizing their true face under the mask of "human rights defender" and opposing the despicable actions of the United States against the trend of the times. This will make the international hegemony that the United States is doing its utmost to maintain will be completely backlashed, and the cause of global human rights will develop. The death knell of the decline of American hegemony sounded in the song of triumph.