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Tagged ‘Human Rights Watch‘

How Human Rights Watch Covers for Companies in Colombia

Down Where the Death Squads Live

Counterpunch

October 29, 2013

by Daniel Kovalik

ColumbiaHuman-Rights-Watch

On the CounterPunch masthead are these words proudly written, “Tells the Facts, Names the Names.” It’s because CounterPunch lives up to these words that I happily write for it and proudly donate to it.

Human Rights Watch (HRW), on the other hand, fails to name the names in its recent report on Colombia entitled, “The Risk of Returning Home, Violence and Threats against Displaced People Reclaiming Land in Colombia.” [1] And, this is much to HRW’s discredit.

Before diving into the report and its grave shortcomings, some general comments about HRW are in order. For years, I have been concerned about what appears to be HRW’s penchant for helping lay the groundwork for U.S. and NATO strikes against claimed enemies of the West. Most recently, HRW’s Executive Director, Kenneth Roth, has been fulminating on his Twitter account against anyone, including the EU, who refuses to acknowledge what has yet to be proven as fact – that the Syrian government was allegedly responsible for the chemical attack of August 21, 2013.

“Doctors” Behind Syrian Chemical Weapons Claims are Aiding Terrorists

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Land Destroyer

August 25, 2013

by Tony Cartalucci

The “evidence” upon which the West is propping up its narrative of the Syrian government using chemical weapons against large numbers of civilians hinges so far entirely on claims made by “Doctors Without Borders.” In the New York Times article, “Signs of Chemical Attack Detailed by Aid Group,” it is reported:

An international aid group said Saturday that medical centers it supported near the site of a suspected chemical weapons attack near Damascus received more than 3,000 patients showing symptoms consistent with exposure to toxic nerve agents on the morning of the reported attack.

Of those, 355 died, said the group, Doctors Without Borders.

The statement is the first issued by an international organization working in Syria about the attack on Wednesday in the suburbs northeast of Damascus, the capital.

While it is often described by the Western media as “independent,” nothing could be further from the truth.

To begin with, Doctors Without Borders is fully funded by the very same corporate financier interests behind Wall Street and London’s collective foreign policy, including regime change in Syria and neighboring Iran. Doctors Without Borders’ own annual report (2010 report can be accessed here), includes as financial donors, Goldman Sachs, Wells Fargo, Citigroup, Google, Microsoft, Bloomberg, Mitt Romney’s Bain Capital, and a myriad of other corporate-financier interests.

Racist Amnesty International Trying to Incite Terror Against Eritrea

AI

TesfaNews | Eritrea

May 12, 2013

By Amanuel Biedemariam

Amnesty International is a warmonger

Amnesty International is a warmonger

 

It has been a while since the international community has been assaulted by the criminal entity Amnesty International (AI) using human rights as excuse to demonize nations and leaders of specific nations targeted for destabilization in pursuit of US and Western hegemony. The reality however, Amnesty International has taken the amnesty out of humanity and became a killing tool by using criminals they call dissidents, political opposition and human rights activists to do their dirty jobs of terrorizing people, religious and national institutions in countries of interest. 

Oddly, the spokespersons that AI, Human Rights Watch and other Western pseudo-rights groups assign to speak on behalf of Africans are almost always Caucasian, with absolutely no connection to the countries they speak against on human rights matters. Not much is required from these players that are misleading Americans and the world about the issues they research and present. And there are no regulations or laws that govern their activities.

For the most part, all they do is establish expertise in the area of interest by researching these countries based on safety of their homes from schools and universities of the West. And when they go to other countries for research, it is normally a Western puppet country that they use to buttress their credentials. Then, all their work is considered credible and solid. Furthermore, when the so called researchers or employees of AI, HRW, Reporters Without Borders and ilk present their report, it gets special attention from the “mainstream” media.

The Deeply Distorted ‘Syria Deeply’

“Sites like Syria Deeply & Storyful need to be exposed for what they are –minions of an imperial mindset that act as the propaganda arm for the military industrial complex and profit on war & suffering. Any aid group that aligns with this is either deeply delusional or capitalising on obscene atrocities.”

SyriaDeeply2

SyriaDeeply1

April 11, 2013,

Lisa Inti, Wrong Kind of Green Critical Thinking Collective

Syria Deeply launched on March 12, 2012. It describes itself as “an independent digital media project led by journalists and technologists, exploring a new model of storytelling around a global crisis.” The word ‘independent’ appears to be a loose and vague term these days. Various members of the Syria Deeply team have been involved in ABC News, Bloomberg Television, the International Herald Tribune, the Business Insider, Monocle Magazine, The Wall Street Journal, TIME Magazine, The New York Times, Foreign Policy, ABC and PBS. Deborah Amos, the senior editorial advisor is a member of The Council on Foreign Relations.

Human Rights Watch Lies about Chavez and Venezuela

Human Rights Watch Lies about Chavez and Venezuela

Answering the slanders

LiberationNews.org

March 21, 2013

Chávez had a broad mandate from the masses of people not only to create social programs but to transform society.

Venezuela’s President Hugo Chávez Frias has died, and true to form, the vultures are circling. The establishment press and so-called “human rights” organizations are dusting off all the old slanders and lies in new articles and reports. In this alternative version of history, Chávez was an incorrigible, populist autocrat, whose sunny-sounding vision of uplifting the poor was nothing but a façade covering a corrupt, decaying dictatorship offering only the opposite of its promises.

While a few pundits have the decency to obliquely mention a few of the achievements of the Chávez government, others have absolutely no shame. Human Rights Watch, for instance, self-appointed defender of all that is right and good, has truly outdone itself—publishing a denunciation of Chávez that, paying no attention to context, ignores all signals that point to social progress and speeds right past good taste.

In fact, despite the name, HRW has written a report that will be warmly welcomed in the camp of the serial violators of human dignity banded together in the Venezuelan opposition movement as well as in Western imperialist capitals. 

Human Rights Watch Official Website & Twitter Accounts Hacked by Syrian Electronic Army

Human Rights Watch Official Website & Twitter Accounts Hacked by Syrian Electronic Army

March 18, 2013

A Better People – Shedding light on Human Rights, Government, and Politics

Human-right-watch-twitter-account-hacked-by-Syrian-Electronic-Army-1

The hackers from Syrian Electronic Army have hacked and defaced the official website of Human Rights Watch (HRW) (www.hrw.org) along with 3 of its Twitter accounts. Syrian Electronic Army known as hardcore supporters of Syrian president Bashar ul Assad, defaced the site an hour ago, leaving their deface page which redirects the sites to army’s official forum. While three of Human Rights Watch Twitter accounts were also taken over, one of the accounts is verified account of HRW with 568,467 followers. Other two accounts belong to Hanan Salah, Libyan researcher at Human Rights Watch and third account belongs to HRW Indonesia. Human Rights Watch’s website and Twitter account (https://twitter.com/hrw) were regained a while ago with an apology on earlier Tweets against USA and Saudi Arabia by Syrian Electronic Army.
Human Trafficking and the Human Rights Agenda Against Eritrea

Human Trafficking and the Human Rights Agenda Against Eritrea

Above image: Independent Eritrea Eritrean soldiers march during the country’s Independence Day in Asmara. May 24, 2007.

Eritrea952105

Photo: Saba (Saba shoe factory), Independence Day carnival, BDHO Avenue Asmara Eritrea.

A Better People | Shedding light on Human Rights, Government, and Politics

by Simon Tesfamariam |  Red Sea Fisher

 March 16, 2013

“Africom has some sort of military “partnership”–bilateral agreements–with most of Africa’s 53 countries” but “the exceptions: Ivory Coast, Sudan, Eritrea and Libya. Ivory Coast is now in the bag. So is South Sudan. Libya may be next. The only ones left to be incorporated to Africom will be Eritrea and Zimbabwe.” Thus, Eritreans must be ready for any eventuality as the external forces that seek regime change in Eritrea–for simply not following their rules or refusing to kneel down–are left with no choice but to pull the human rights card.

Amnesty International: A Criminal Organisation in the Service of Western Imperialism

libyan-rebelsBenghazi, Libya, June 24, 2011. (Hassan Ammar/AP Photo)

August 28, 2012

by Metro Gael

Last year the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation launched a brutal war of aggression on Libya killing thousands of civilians and replacing an independent, responsible government with gangs of hooligans, Wahabite terrorists and outright criminals. What was once Africa’s richest and most successful state was bombed into oblivion, its impressive infrastructure destroyed, its thousands of people’s committees and people’s assemblies closed.

Universities, schools, and hospitals were bombed by French, British and American jets. Thousands of Libyans were blown to bits. Libya’s revolutionary leader, Muammar Al Gaffafi, was presented to the ignorant readers of the Western press as a brutal dictator, in spite of the fact that he had held no official position in Libya since the mid 1970s.

Human Rights Watch in Democratic Republic of the Congo … Watchdog or Master Puppeteer?

The New Times | Rwanda’s First Daily

by Albert Rudatsimburwa

September 14, 2012

Anneke Van Woudenberg is a researcher for Human Rights Watch.

HERE we go again… Human Rights Watch, true to its mantra of “Hating Rwanda Much” has come up with yet another damning report accusing Rwanda, alongside the M23 mutineers, of a “horrific trail of new atrocities in Eastern Congo” defined as large-scale war crimes. This, of course, reeks of déjà vu… an ‘encore’ of some sort! We have indeed already witnessed the same methodology and media relays with the UN Group of Experts (GoE) report on the matter. Interestingly enough, the author of the HRW report and Senior Researcher in its Africa Division, Anneke Van Woudenberg, was omnipresent in mainstream media, vouching for a report she didn’t author… or did she? The similarities are too striking to ignore.

Editorial: Partners in Crime


Intercontinental Cry

Jan 24, 2013

By Jay Taber

 

With the scandalous abuses of power by US, EU and UN humanitarian agencies over the last dozen years, little attention has been paid to the creation, co-optation and corruption of human rights NGOs that help lay the groundwork for humanitarian intervention using the militaries of NATO to subdue states resistant to US control. Yet, as an increasingly vital element of justifying military aggression for allegedly humanitarian purposes, NGOs like Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International have become what the Centre for the Study of Interventionism terms partners of the UN Human Rights Council that are in reality, “para-governmental organisations whose goal is to introduce the concept of interventionism in those regions where NATO and its allies want to intervene to pursue their geo-strategic interests.”