EU and US said to favour elections over human rights

Listing countries where elections have been mixed with violence and repression, Human Rights Watch said western powers, especially the United States and European Union, have accepted elections in countries that don’t respect human rights, for political reasons and benefit.

The group said the west has continued to prop up fragile democracies, or those that purport to be, such as Kenya, where waves of killings have followed a disputed election, and Pakistan, where elections are coming up after the assassination of opposition leader Benazir Bhutto. The group also said that countries including Bahrain, Jordan, Nigeria, Russia and Thailand have taken on the belief that elections are equal to democracy. In its annual report, the group said that Washington, Brussels and European capitals “play along” with the notion that a country can have democracy simply by holding elections. “It’s now easy for autocrats to get away with mounting a sham democracy,” said Kenneth Roth, the group’s executive director. “That’s because too many Western governments insist on elections and leave it at that.” “They don’t press governments on the key human rights issues that make democracy function - a free press, peaceful assembly, and a functioning civil society that can really challenge power,” Roth said. The report said grave human rights abuses have fueled humanitarian crises in Somalia and the Ogaden region in Eastern Ethiopia, where millions of people are suffering.

The report documented manipulations of elections. It said Chad, Kazakhstan, Nigeria and Uzbekistan committed “outright fraud,” while governments controlled the electoral machinery in Azerbaijan, Bahrain, Malaysia, Thailand and Zimbabwe. Belarus, Egypt, Cuba, Iran and Israel in the occupied Palestinian territories blocked or discouraged opposition candidates. Russia and Tunisia were cited for stifling the media, and China and Pakistan undermined the rule of law, the report said. “Many of these tactics are illegal under domestic and international law, but rarely do outside powers call governments to account for it,” the report said.

“Established democracies are often unwilling to do so for fear of losing access to resources or commercial opportunities, or because of the perceived requirements of fighting terrorism.” “It seems Washington and European governments will accept even the most dubious election so long as the ‘victor’ is a strategic or commercial ally,” it said. In Kenya, rival political sides halted talks over disputed elections and vicious ethnic clashes after the killing of an opposition legislator, but said they would keep talking while would keep killing each other.

The country remained tense and volatile and violence continued to reign while political parties have battled for more than a month over who won the presidential elections. Nasser Ega-Musa, a United Nations spokesman, said both parties had “a general desire to continue the negotiations and a willingness not to be distracted and derailed,” by the shooting death of David Too.

The human rights report also said China has clamped down on the media as it is preparing to hold the Summer Olympics Games in August. Foreign journalists who were given the right to interview Chinese have been harassed, detained or intimidated to prevent them from doing reports on the country’s poor human rights records. It said the construction boom to prepare for the Olympic Games has involved an estimated one million construction workers under harsh and unsafe labour conditions, but that trade with China is more important to the US and the EU than human rights.

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