Human Rights

Millions of dollars in aid to fight Mexican drug trafficking could be delayed as a result of a disagreement between a key lawmaker and the State Department regarding the status of Mexico's human rights prosecutions. Sen. Patrick J. Leahy (D-Vt.), chairman of the Senate Appropriations subcommittee on foreign operations, released a statement Wednesday suggesting that it was "premature" to declare that Mexico had met the requirements needed to earn conditional U.S.

When President Obama goes to Guadalajara, Mexico, this weekend for the North American Leaders Summit, he will surely praise Mexican President Felipe Calderon for the courage he has displayed fighting the war on drugs. The applause is well deserved. Calderon has turned the crackdown on drug traffickers into the centerpiece of his administration and has pursued organized crime with undeniable zeal.

The Obama administration downplayed international fears about the safety of Iranian dissidents living at a camp in Iraq as recently as mid-July, days before a raid by Iraqi security forces killed 11 of the exiles and left scores wounded. The deadly clash has sparked public protests in Washington and around the world, with dozens taking part in hunger strikes to emphasize demands that the Obama administration provide better protection for the exiles. It also underscored some of the challenges of the administration's plan to wind down U.S. military involvement in Iraq and cede control to a government in Baghdad that may not adhere to U.S. commitments.

The Australian government breached international obligations on human and indigenous rights by imposing radical restrictions on Aborigines during a crackdown on child abuse in Outback communities, a United Nations expert said Thursday. The U.N. special rapporteur on indigenous human rights, James Anaya, said his 12-day fact-finding tour of Australia revealed that the Aboriginal minority still suffers from "entrenched racism." Anaya's comments came as Australia launched its latest bid to address inequality, ill-health and poverty among the country's 500,000 indigenous people, issues that have dogged the country since white settlers arrived more than 200 years ago. The government said Thursday it would set up a new national representative body this year to advise it on policies relating to Aborigines.

The Obama administration has agreed to direct talks with the government of Iran, along with the other permanent members of the U.N. Security Council and Germany, at a meeting scheduled for Oct. 1. Now the question is: What will they talk about? The United States and its allies want to discuss the Islamic Republic's nuclear program, of course; that's why they're meeting. Tehran has proposed a sweeping agenda of global affairs that seems to include everything but its uranium enrichment activities.

A Moscow court handed a moral victory to Chechen strongman Ramzan Kadyrov today, ruling that the head of one of Russia's most respected human rights organizations had smeared his reputation. Oleg Orlov, chair of Memorial rights group, was ordered to pay Kadyrov about $2,300 in damages for blaming him for the shooting death of a Chechnya-based colleague. Orlov was also ordered to retract his statement. The lawsuit stemmed from this summer's death of Memorial's Chechnya-based rights activist, Natalya Estemirova, who had been one of the few remaining voices willing to speak about repression, murder and disappearances in Kadyrov's Chechnya.

Lawmakers honored the Dalai Lama with a human rights award Tuesday as President Obama faced criticism for delaying a meeting with the exiled Tibetan Buddhist spiritual leader. The Dalai Lama and the president will not meet until after Obama visits Chinese President Hu Jintao in Beijing in November. China reviles the Dalai Lama as a separatist and pressures foreign governments not to meet with him. The administration, which needs Chinese support for crucial foreign policy, economic and environmental goals, wants to establish friendly ties between Hu and Obama.

West African leaders said Saturday that they are imposing an arms embargo on Guinea over the killing of pro-democracy demonstrators by soldiers and will try to stop Guinea's military ruler from running in January's presidential election. Regional leaders attended an emergency meeting Saturday of ECOWAS, the Economic Community of West African States, and said at a news conference afterward that they would step up pressure on members of the military government, which took power in a coup in December, not to seek office.

Two of Russia 's most prominent human rights organizations say their work has been thrown into jeopardy by municipal efforts to evict them from their offices. For Human Rights and the Moscow Helsinki Group say they will fight to remain in their respective downtown offices. Both groups have occupied the same spaces for more than a decade at cut-rate rents brokered in a burst of liberalism following the collapse of the Soviet Union. The threat of eviction looms at a time when a dwindling community of human rights workers, locked in perpetual battle over grievances ranging from state violence in the restive Caucasus region to dismal conditions in Russian prisons, say they face increasing pressure and harassment.

President-elect Barack Obama should put human rights at the center of U.S. foreign, domestic and security policy to undo "the enormous damage" of the Bush years, Human Rights Watch said in its survey of conditions in more than 90 countries. The group said the Bush administration decided to combat terrorism "without regard to such basic rights as not to be subjected to torture, enforced disappearance or detention without trial." State Department spokesman Sean McCormack rejected the criticism.