Links
Obama criticized for falling short on human rights
America's leading human rights organization has said that Barack Obama is falling far short of his rhetoric by continuing some of the abuses of George Bush's war on terror and by shielding foreign allies responsible for an assault on human rights activists not seen since the end of the cold war.
The New York-based Human Rights Watch praised Obama for setting a different tone to President Bush, and for ending some of the practices of the previous administration including torture and abduction to secret CIA prisons. But its director, Kenneth Roth, told the Guardian that Obama had failed to end other abuses, such as holding suspected terrorists indefinitely without trial and retaining military commissions.
Roth also criticized Obama for undermining human rights by failing to challenge key allies, such as Pakistan and Egypt, who are at the forefront of a renewed crackdown on activists, and for protecting Israel from accountability for war crimes in Gaza.