THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Sunday, November 5, 1995 TAG: 9511040430
SECTION: COMMENTARY PAGE: J1 EDITION: FINAL
LENGTH: Long : 185 lines
As the world approaches a new millennium, the superpower conflict that defined the last half-century is over. But is mankind any freer from shackles, deprivation and bloodshed? Sadly, no.
That discouraging word comes from William Schulz, executive director of Amnesty International USA, the Nobel Prize-winning organization that monitors the cause of human rights worldwide.
Schulz will be in Norfolk Thursday as part of the President's Lecture Series at Old Dominion University. In an interview with Virginian-Pilot staff writer Bill Sizemore, he discussed the extent of human rights violations today and made the case for human rights as a central determinant of U.S. foreign policy.
An ordained Unitarian Universalist minister, Schulz directs the daily operations of Amnesty's 400,000-member U.S. branch. Earlier, as president of the Unitarian Universalist Association of Congregations, he led campaigns against the persecution of religious and ethnic minorities; for the rights of women, indigenous people, and gays and lesbians; and against the death penalty.
Has the breakup of the communist bloc ushered in a new era of respect for human rights? Or, with the ethnic and nationalist conflicts that have erupted in communism's wake, have we just traded one brand of misery for another?
There certainly was considerable expectation in 1989 that the end of the Cold War would bring a new era of respect for human rights. In many respects the very opposite has happened. The East-West tensions seemed to exert a kind of centrifugal force on many nations, which left unresolved many of the ethnic and nationalistic tensions bubbling under the surface. And as we've seen most dramatically in Bosnia and Rwanda, those tensions erupt easily when they are triggered by politicians and others who have an interest in doing so.
The result is that the number of countries, for example, in which torture is practiced, as documented by Amnesty, has grown from 96 to 112 in these five years. And the same is also true with the number of countries in which political killings are taking place. That number, too, has grown.
Should the United States be leaning harder on human rights violators in its international dealings?
Yes. From our point of view there's no question about that. The United States has tremendous influence.
Let's just take China for an example. A number of months ago there was considerable concern about what was called intellectual piracy in China. The United States was very strong in its expression of concern because that, of course, is a major trade issue for American corporations. And the Chinese buckled under when the United States held firm.
Similarly, when the United States demanded that Harry Wu be released in, perhaps, a quid pro quo for Mrs. Clinton's attending the women's human rights conference in Beijing, the Chinese released Harry Wu.
But in other instances, the United States has not held firm at all. The decision a little more than a year ago to de-link trade and human rights with China, to grant most favored nation trade status, has been disastrous in terms of the increased action against those advocating freedom in China: the detention of Wei Jing Sheng, who is probably the best known of the Chinese dissidents. That's just one example of instances in which we believe that if the United States took a firmer stand about human rights violations, it would be able to exert considerably more influence.
The same is true in relation to Indonesia, where the Indonesian government, particularly in East Timor, is still practicing very repressive policies, violating the human rights of those in East Timor who seek independence for that former Portuguese colony. The United States continues to exert only the most minimal kinds of influence there.
Turkey is another good example, where the U.S. is even trading arms to Turkey, and there is good reason to believe that some of those arms may be being used by the Turkish government to commit abuses against the Kurds in southeast Turkey.
In regard to the negotiations (over a peace accord in the former Yugoslavia, slated to begin next week) in Dayton, we're concerned that the United States not agree to any kind of arrangement that would allow the leaders of the Bosnian Serbs, particularly Radovan Karadzic and Gen. Ratko Mladic, who have both been indicted by the international war crimes tribunal, to evade prosecution.
What happens when the push for human rights conflicts with market forces, as in China? Doesn't economic reality inevitably win out?
Well, the interesting thing here is that in the long run, economic interests and human rights interests are parallel, and the reason is simple. A country which is guilty of severe human rights repression of its own people and its own labor force will eventually and inevitably become a politically unstable country. If that happens, then no one's economic interests are served.
South Africa is a very good example. South Africa had a capitalist economy throughout its history. It was virtually founded by the Dutch West Indies Co. It had a great deal of investment, but it was investment in a country that eventually became very politically unstable. And it was only as a result of many of the investor countries deciding that the political instability was too great to permit them to continue investing in that country that was one of the major factors in the change which took place in South Africa. Had that not happened, I think we all know that South Africa would be the scene of considerable bloodshed - if not today, then a short time from now.
That almost inevitably happens everywhere human rights abuses are taking place. What this means is that companies which invest in these countries are taking a tremendous risk. They are taking a risk that they will find themselves in the midst of immense labor unrest. They are taking a risk that they will be subject to all sorts of corruption. They are taking a risk that their own interests will not be defended by a court system that is respectable and meets international standards. They are taking a risk of violent upheaval in a country which is repressing part of its population.
So in the long run, any company that has a longer-term interest than just a year or two will recognize that human rights and economic interests are coherent with one another.
What about U.S. military allies with unsavory human rights records, such as Turkey and Indonesia? How do you deal with them?
Much the same argument applies there. Let's take Turkey; that's a good example. The United States believes that its strategic interests require a stable Turkey, a Turkey which in its view is able to guard against an encroachment of fundamentalist and extremist views, whether Islamic or other kinds of fundamentalist views in that part of the world. That is one reason the United States is supplying military equipment to Turkey.
But when Turkey utilizes that equipment to kill and alienate a huge segment of its own population, as well as when Turkey practices other human rights abuses that result in the imprisonment and often torture of some of its major intellectual fixtures, some of its major journalists and other figures of great respect in the country, it inevitably leads to further instability.
So ironically enough, once again, in our view, the best interests of the United States - militarily, strategically, as well as economically - are almost always served by attending to and being firmly committed to urging its allies to respect human rights.
Many people see a rising tide of isolationism in the United States today. What does this mean for the cause of human rights?
It's very bad news for human rights. That's certainly one of the issues that I'll be addressing in my remarks at Old Dominion. There's no question that what you say is true: that with the end of the Cold War, the American public has largely turned its attention to domestic issues, to concerns about crime and taxes and drugs and jobs.
All of these are, of course, important and very legitimate concerns. But what I'm afraid is missing is the recognition that we are living in a growingly interdependent world and that in the future, American jobs are going to depend upon our economic relationships with other countries, and those in turn, as I've just described, are affected by the human rights records there.
In addition to that, I think Americans have concerns about how our tax dollars are used overseas, and if they see American money flowing to regimes which are practicing human rights abuses, I think that's a very direct concern to people if they understood what was happening.
There's no question but what our attention is focused inward, and we think that's very short-sighted.
Capital punishment is on the rise again in the United States. Virginia, as you know, is becoming one of the leading practitioners. Why do you think this is, at a time when so many other countries have abolished it?
Interestingly enough, just this summer, the little country of Mauritius abolished capital punishment, thus making one more country in the world that does not have capital punishment than the numbers that do: 98 have abolished capital punishment; 96 still retain the death penalty. . . .
I suspect that in the United States, with the loss of the ``evil empire'' in the form of the communist threat, people are looking for a new form of the demonic and have found it in our own midst in the face of prisoners and those who have been convicted of capital crimes and feel a need to erase them from the earth.
In the first place, in our view, it is in violation of international human rights standards and covenants. It is in violation of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, which the United States has sworn to uphold. . .
Given that there is absolutely no consistent evidence that either those states or those countries which practice the death penalty have lower rates of crime than those which do not - in fact there is considerable evidence of the opposite - our concern is that we are adding an element of officially sanctioned brutality to a society which is already rife with violence and brutality. And this, in our view, is simply again a very short-sighted and inhumane way to go about the very legitimate business of apprehending, putting on trial, convicting and punishing those who are guilty of murder. ILLUSTRATION: Graphic
JOHN CORBITT/Staff
No place in today's world is totally free of human rights abuses,
Amnesty International's U.S. director says. But these are some of
the countries where the Nobel Prize-winning organization has raised
serious concerns recently.
[For complete graphic, please see microfilm]
Color photo
William Schulz will address ``Human Rights: A Global Update'' at 8
p.m. Thursday as part of the President's Lecture Series at Old
Dominion University. The lecture, in the Mills Godwin Jr. Building
auditorium, is free and open to the public.
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