EU accused of subordinating human rights

The European Union continued to subordinate human rights in its relationships with other countries deemed useful in the fight against terrorism, such as Russia, China and Saudi Arabia, Human Rights Watch said today.

In its annual report, the group said a lack of human rights leadership toward these countries that stymied common action was also visible in bilateral relations.

“The EU position on Russia in 2005 made the US defence of human rights seem vigorous,” the group said.

Business, energy and other political interests dominated EU concerns, the group said, abetted by an unseemly competition among British Prime Minister Tony Blair, French President Jacques Chirac and former German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder to proclaim the closeness of their relationship with Russian President Vladimir Putin.

For example, Germany was preoccupied with negotiating the construction of a gas pipeline from Russia, which was agreed to in September, and sought Russia’s support for a permanent seat on the UN Security Council.

It said at the EU summit in October leaders issued “an embarrassingly positive statement” on Chechnya that contained no hint that the central problem in Chechnya was Russia’s refusal to end atrocities by its forces.

Human Rights Watch said that on China, business and other political interests again dominated.

For example, France and Germany pressed to lift the arms embargo toward China that had been imposed to protest the Tiananmen Square massacre.

“No progress has been made in holding accountable those officials who ordered the killing, “ the group said, “and the Chinese government refused to provide information about the number killed, injured or arrested.”

Germany, under its new chancellor, Angela Merkel, came out in favour of continuing the embargo, leaving little prospect for it to be lifted in the foreseeable future.

As for Saudi Arabia, the group said, Schroeder visited it without mention of political forms and Blair conducted his visit secretly.

“The British government pressed hard for Saudi Arabia to buy arms from British manufacturers while remaining silent on the kingdom’s abysmal human rights record,” the group said.

In trans-Atlantic relations, Human Rights Watch said the EU was eager to repair the damage caused by disagreement over the war in Iraq but its strategy seemed to include largely ignoring US rights transgressions.

“For most of the year, The EU collectively utterly failed to raise about the US practice of ’disappearing’ terrorist suspects.

The report said the sole exceptions were national investigations opened in Italy, Germany and Sweden into the CIA’s role in seizing or luring suspects from their soil and sending them to Egypt or Afghanistan.

“The EU became more assertive only in the face of broad public outrage triggered by evidence that was made public in November suggesting the United State had maintained secret detention facilities near airports in Poland and Romania,” the report said.

Both countries denied they did.

Closer to home, the report said, the EU threatened to flout human rights standards in its own treatment of refugees and migrants.

Instead of assessing claims of refugees or asylum seekers, Human Rights Watch said, EU governments pursued policies that would shift the responsibility to neighbouring countries such as Libya or Ukraine.