Testimony of John Shattuck

Chief Executive Officer,

John F. Kennedy Library Foundation;

former Assistant Secretary of State for Democracy, Human Rights and Labor (1993-98); U.S. Ambassador to the Czech Republic (1998-2000)

at a hearing on

“The 2007 Country Reports on Human Rights Practices and the Promotion of Human Rights in U.S. Foreign Policy”

Committee on Foreign Affairs

U.S. House of Representatives

March 29, 2007

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I’m grateful for this opportunity to appear before you on an issue of enormous importance to our country, our national security, and the position of the United States in the world – the promotion of human rights in U.S. foreign policy. In addition to my prepared statement, I ask permission of the Committee to include for the record the attached articles I have recently written on this subject.

International “realists” from Bismarck to Rumsfeld have downplayed human rights in their choice of means by which to pursue their “realist” objectives. They are fundamentally wrong. In an age of genocide and terror, the promotion of human rights within the rule of law must be a central feature of any realist’s strategy for addressing the major threats to international security today. These include failed states, political repression, racial, ethnic, sectarian discrimination and violence, religious fanaticism, and the many other breeding grounds of instability in our contemporary world. To dismiss human rights at a time like this is to invite disaster in international relations. Only through the effective promotion of human rights in foreign policy can the United States project its values as a nation and strengthen its leadership around the world.

What does it mean to be effective in the promotion of human rights? There are three basic building blocks for an effective human rights policy.

First, we should practice what we preach. We lose our credibility as a nation when we charge others with committing human rights violations that we are committing ourselves. We undermine our ability to lead when we act precipitously without the support of other nations, or without international authority.

Second, we should adhere to the rule of law. International human rights are defined in conventions and treaties that have been ratified and incorporated into our domestic law. We must abide by these legal obligations if we are to project the U.S. as a champion of human rights around the world.

Third, we should participate in the major international institutions for promoting human rights. The U.S. should lead the way in reshaping existing institutions and creating new ones, not attacking them, acting unilaterally, or standing aside when we disagree with what they do.

With these basic rules in mind, I will attempt to answer the questions the Committee has asked me to address.

1. The 2007 Country Reports on Human Rights Practices lack credibility because the U.S. government in recent years has engaged in some of the very practices that it condemns in its reports.

Each country report covers practices such as “torture and other cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment,” “detention without charge,” “denial of fair and prompt public trial,” and “arbitrary interference with privacy, family, home, or correspondence.” It is now well documented that in recent years the U.S. itself has engaged in some of these practices. For example, detainees in U.S. custody were brutally abused at Abu Ghraib and other prisons in Iraq and Afghanistan, hundreds of prisoners have been held indefinitely without charges and without access to court review in Guantanamo, the executive branch has asserted authority to arrest U.S. citizens without charges and deny them legal counsel on the assertion that they are enemy combatants, and a vast warrantless electronic surveillance program has been conducted in apparent violation of a federal statute. In light of these actions, readers of the Country Reports are likely to conclude that the U.S. does not practice what it preaches. For example, the report on Egypt criticizes the fact that “security forces detained hundreds of individuals without charge,” that “abuse of prisoners and detainees by police, security personnel and prison guards was persistent,” and that “the [Egyptian] Emergency Law empowers the government to place wiretaps without a judicial warrant.” Unfortunately, the same criticisms could also be directed at the U.S.

2. Although the recent U.S. record on human rights undermines the overall credibility of the Country Reports, the reports provide candid assessments of several major human rights violators.

It is refreshing to note that the reports do not shy away from criticizing countries where the U.S. might be expected to downplay human rights abuses. At the top of that list are Iraq, Pakistan and Afghanistan. Despite the deep involvement of the U.S. with the governments of these countries, the reports offer tough criticisms of each of them. Similarly, the assessment of the human rights situation in Sudan is particularly condemning, and the report does not hesitate to label the crisis in Darfur as genocide, despite efforts by the U.S. to secure cooperation by the government of Sudan on counterterrorism issues.

I join with other human rights observers in welcoming the candor of these reports. I was especially impressed by the statement of Assistant Secretary Barry Lowenkron earlier this month that “we are issuing these reports at a time when our record and actions have been questioned, and we will continue to respond to the concerns of others.” I only wish Secretary Lowenkron had the authority to match the candor of the reports and his own words with actions by the government in which he serves.

3. The current efforts of the U.S. government to promote human rights are often ineffective because they are conducted outside the framework of international human rights law.

Over the last half century, the United States has scored major bipartisan victories for human rights under five presidencies – three Republican and two Democratic – by creating and working within a framework of international law.

President Gerald Ford drafted the Helsinki Accords that brought the Soviet Union and its satellite countries within the reach of human rights diplomacy. Jimmy Carter mobilized democratic governments under international human rights law to press for the release of political prisoners held by repressive regimes. Ronald Reagan invoked the Helsinki Accords to champion the cause of dissidents in the Soviet Union. George Bush Senior joined with western European governments in the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe to provide assistance to the new democracies of central and eastern Europe. And Bill Clinton worked with NATO and the U.N. to implement the Genocide Convention, bringing an end to the human rights catastrophe in Bosnia, and preventing genocide in Kosovo.

In recent years the U.S. government has shown a disregard for several basic elements of international human rights law. These include the Geneva Conventions, the Convention Against Torture, and the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, among others. The result has been the creation of a “law-free zone” in which foreign detainees in U.S. custody overseas have been brutally abused, thousands of foreign citizens have been held as “unlawful combatants” indefinitely without being accorded the status of prisoners of war, and repressive regimes around the world have claimed they have a green light to crack down on political dissidents and religious and ethnic minorities in the name of fighting terrorism. This has contributed to an increase in the number of people around the world who are convinced that America is their enemy, and stepped-up recruiting by terrorist groups throughout the Muslim world and beyond.

This breach of the framework of human rights law is exemplified by a 2002 memorandum prepared by then-White House Counsel Alberto Gonzales. The memorandum stated that “terrorism renders obsolete [the Geneva Conventions’] strict limitations on the questioning of prisoners.” Until recently, no administration had ever questioned the basic rules of international humanitarian law in times of war. This included Presidents Richard Nixon and Lyndon Johnson during the Vietnam War, and George Bush Senior during the first Gulf War. The reasons are clear. They were spelled out in 2002 by former Secretary of State Colin Powell, who warned that the White House interpretation of the Geneva Conventions would “reverse over a century of U.S. policy and practice, undermine the protections of the law for our troops, and provoke negative international reaction, with immediate adverse consequences for the conduct of our foreign policy.”

4. The U.S. decision to disengage from U.N. human rights institutions undermines its position as a human rights leader.

For more than sixty years the U.S. has been a world leader in building international institutions to promote human rights. Today, unfortunately, we seem to have renounced that leadership by withdrawing from the new U.N. Human Rights Council and by refusing to participate in efforts to shape the new International Criminal Court. In both cases the U.S. now has no influence over the future of these two flawed institutions. In the case of the Human Rights Council, the U.S. abandoned its support when it was unable to limit the Council’s membership to countries with good human rights records, despite the fact that the Council membership requirements adopted in the recent U.N. reforms are an improvement over those of the dysfunctional Human Rights Commission which it replaced. In the case of the International Criminal Court, many structural changes need to be made in order for the U.S. to become a full participant. Nevertheless, in recent years the U.S. has lost all leverage over the Court’s development by withdrawing its signature from the treaty establishing it. In addition, an active U.S. campaign to put pressure on governments not to join the Court has engendered international ill will and further undermined the capacity of the U.S. to exercise human rights leadership.

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People engaged in the struggle for freedom around the world depend on the United States not only for our military and economic power, but above all for our commitment to human rights. Their message is simple: the U.S. must practice what it preaches by supporting the struggle for human rights and civil society as the alternative to repression and terror. Theirs is a message of hope, but it is also a warning: if we continue to allow the sacrifice of human rights in the name of fighting terror, in the long run we will only have more terror.

Thank you for the opportunity to testify this morning.