The State Department on Thursday named Iran and Cuba as serial human rights abusers, but cautioned that even the United States needs to show “humility” about these issues given its own human rights failings.
State said the purpose of its annual human rights report is “to provide a voice for the voiceless,” the department said on its blog. “And as we issue these reports, we recognize that American history, too, has been marked by human rights failings. The United States does not speak from a position of arrogance or self-righteousness. As President Obama explained last week, ‘America never makes a claim about being perfect.'”
Kerry echoed that sentiment in his own remarks, saying that the U.S. issues these reports from a place of “humility.”
“My advice to any leader who is upset by these findings [in the reports] is really to examine them, to look at the practices of their country, and to recognize that the way to alter what the world thinks … is to alter what is happening in those countries,” said Kerry. “That is the advice that we also give to ourselves. … We couldn’t help but have humility when we have seen what we have seen in the last year in terms of racial discord and unrest. So we approach this with great self-awareness.”
Kerry added that the U.S. realizes that some countries “may take issue” with these reports, including “some governments with whom we work closely” he added, without naming Iran. “The discomfort that these reports sometimes cause does more to reinforce than to undermine the value and credibility of these reports,” he said.
State’s 2014 Human Rights Report was released about four months late, which some said may have been a decision not to anger Iran just as the U.S. and other countries are hoping to conclude a nuclear agreement with that country. But Assistant Secretary of State Tom Malinowski tried to squash that rumor, and said “we very firmly believe” the report will put the United States in a “much stronger position” to stand by human rights.
He said that when it comes to Iran and Cuba, the United States’ engagement is not the same thing as endorsement. He also said the purpose of the nuclear talks is to deal with the nuclear issue and not to deal with the human rights issue, which is a separate concern, a point the State Department has had to reiterate to reporters numerous times.
American citizens held captive in Iran are not mentioned by name in the report. Malinowski claimed that State followed the same practice as last year in not using the captives’ surnames.
“It cannot be a comprehensive listing of people, of individuals” held around the world, he said, and then he rattled off the names of the four Americans being held in Iran: Rezaian, Abedini, Hekmati, and Levinson.
Malinowski summed up the report by saying that 2014 was a “tough year for human rights and human rights activists.”
He called out Turkey, China and Cuba for free speech violations and restricting their populace’s ability to access the Internet freely. As is evident in Venezuela and China, access to information is critical to fighting corruption.
Mexico was faulted in the report for significant abuses by the country’s police and military.
The report criticized governments in China, Egypt, Eritrea, Ethiopia, Iran, Russia, and Saudi Arabia, among others, for continuing “to stifle free and open media and the development of civil society through the imprisonment of journalists, bloggers, and non-violent critics.”
