You know — well, I hope you know — that a vast amount of my blogging energy is expended on pointing out hypocrisy amongst our governmental officials; so today’s little tidbit is really gonna put the dot on the exclamation point. Really.
Take a look at the U.S. Department of State’s new report on Human Rights:
The Country Reports on Human Rights Practices cover internationally recognized individual, civil, political and worker rights, as set forth in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. These rights include freedom from torture or other cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment, from prolonged detention without charges, from disappearance or clandestine detention, and from other flagrant violations of the right to life, liberty and the security of the person.
Well, they’ve got us covered already, and that’s just the overview.
In the introduction, they complain about Russia:
The Russian approach centered on use of controlling ownership of broadcast media to limit access to information on sensitive issues, such as Chechnya. Government pressure also increased self-censorship of journalists.
Sound familiar?
Glenn Kessler in the Washington Post points out more hypocrisy in the report.
The State Department’s annual human rights report released yesterday criticized countries for a range of interrogation practices it labeled as torture, including sleep deprivation for detainees, confining prisoners in contorted positions, stripping and blindfolding them and threatening them with dogs — methods similar to those approved at times by the Bush administration for use on detainees in U.S. custody.
… The State Department report also harshly attacked the treatment of prisoners in such countries as Syria and Egypt, where the United States has shipped terrorism suspects under a practice known as “rendition.” An Australian citizen has alleged that under Egyptian detention he was hung by his arms from hooks, repeatedly shocked, nearly drowned and brutally beaten. Most of his fingernails were missing when he later arrived at Guantanamo Bay.
