UN set to adopt report that praises Libya's human-rights record

[shira]

UNITED NATIONS — The UN Human Rights Council is set to adopt a major report hailing Libya’s human rights record — despite moving to suspend the Arab country’s council membership amid an international outcry over attacks on civilians.

The report shows countries applauding and commending Libya as they note “with appreciation the country’s commitment to upholding human rights on the ground.”

------


The 23-page report was compiled as part of the council’s “Universal Periodic Review” — a process the UN bills as a rigorous scrutiny of the human rights records of each UN member state every four years.

Highlighting what it called the council’s “hypocrisy,” UN Watch, a Geneva-based monitoring group, on Monday called on the body’s president to withdraw the report. “It’s now clear that the session on Libya was largely a fraud,” said Hillel Neuer of Montreal, UN Watch executive director. “The council should schedule a new session in which members would tell the truth about the Gaddafi regime’s heinous crimes, which were committed over the four decades he’s been in power, yet ignored by the UN.”

more...
http://www.nationalpost.com/news/adopt+report+that+praises+Libya+human+rights+record/4362351/story.html

[shira]

1. NGO urges Hillary Clinton, EU's Ashton and UN rights chief Navi Pillay to block UNHRC resolution...

Report hailing Libya scheduled for adoption in current session

GENEVA, February 28, 2011 -- UN Watch, which heads the Global NGO Campaign to Remove Libya from the UN Human Rights Council, today called on US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, EU foreign minister Catherine Ashton and UN rights chief Navi Pillay to urge the council president to cancel a planned resolution praising Libya's human rights record, scheduled to be adopted in the current session.

Despite having just voted to suspend Libya from its ranks (to be finalized by the UNGA tomorrow), the UN Human Rights Council, according to the agenda of its current session, is planning to "consider and adopt the final outcome of the review of the Libyan Arab Jamahiriya." According to the council's timetable, the lengthy report hailing Libya's human rights record will be presented on March 18, and then adopted by the council at the end of the month. The report, which the UN has published on the council website, is the outcome of a recent session that was meant to review Libya's human rights record.

http://www.unwatch.org/site/apps/nlnet/content2.aspx?c=bdKKISNqEmG&b=1316871&ct=9142899


---------


Here is the actual report from November 2010...
http://www2.ohchr.org/english/bodies/hrcouncil/docs/16session/A-HRC-16-15.pdf

[shira]

2. HRW’S SARAH LEAH WHITSON MUST RESIGN OVER LIBYA COVER-UP

MidEast Division Director Misled Public about Libyan Regime and Qaddafi’s Son

JERUSALEM – Following Human Rights Watch’s (HRW) neglect of brutal human rights violations in Libya and false claims and cover-ups about prospects for reforms there, NGO Monitor today called for the immediate resignation of Sarah Leah Whitson, HRW’s director of its Middle East and North Africa (MENA) division. HRW’s MENA division failed to devote the necessary resources to speaking out against human rights violations by oppressive Middle East regimes, including Saudi Arabia, Hamas, Lebanon, and most notably, Libya. Recent statements by Whitson regarding Seif Islam, a son of Moammar Qaddafi, demonstrate that she consistently whitewashed the reality in Libya and further embarrassed her organization.

“Human Rights Watch, and specifically MENA director Sarah Leah Whitson, has soft-peddled Qaddafi’s oppressive acts and offered no help to the Libyan people,” says Anne Herzberg, legal advisor for NGO Monitor, a research institution that tracks NGOs. “Whitson was well aware of the atrocities committed by the Qaddafi regime, but she chose to present the façade that Qaddafi’s son was prepared to implement ‘reforms.’ The events in Libya over the past weeks reveal Whitson’s gross incompetence. She has failed to retract her previously misleading statements. She cannot continue to head the MENA division, and we call for her immediate resignation.”

NGO Monitor notes that Whitson held a press conference last year in Libya that was abruptly halted and ended in “pandemonium.” Yet, Whitson spun her trip and the event in a positive light in her 2010 “Postcard from Tripoli,” in which she said that Libya had a “moment of opportunity.” Even more egregious is Whitson’s enthusiastic marketing of the Qaddafi regime from 2009’s Tripoli Spring (published in Foreign Policy):

"For the first time in memory, change is in the air in Libya. The brittle atmosphere of repression has started to fracture, giving way to expanded space for discussion and debate, proposals for legislative reform, and even financial compensation for families of the hundreds of men killed in a prison riot a decade ago.

Many Libyans say the changes were unavoidable in the face of the open satellite and Internet access of the past decade."

These assessments differ sharply from the Libya Whitson now admits she saw, as part of her attempts to rewrite the record. In contrast to the earlier fiction, she recently wrote, “most Libyans we spoke with never had much faith that Moammar Qaddafi would learn new tricks, or that the announced reforms were anything more than an endless loop of promises made and broken.”

more...
http://www.ngo-monitor.org/article.php?id=3283

It gets worse.

[LARED]

3. The report comes with a prize

A bronzed jack boot on the neck of a Libyian.

[azurnoir]

4. UN Suspends Libya From Human Rights Council

The United Nations General Assembly on Tuesday suspended Libya from the U.N. Human Rights Council because of Col. Moammar Gadhafi's violent crackdown on anti-government protestors.

The decision was taken by consensus in the 192-seat assembly. The vote came after the Human Rights Council last week recommended the suspension.

"This vote is a harsh rebuke, but one that Libya's leaders have brought down on themselves" said Susan Rice, U.S. ambassador to the U.N. "The U.S. continues to be appalled by the situation in Libya. This action sends another clear warning to Mr. Gadhafi and those who stand by him: they must stop the killing."

Libya's controversial election to the council last May was strongly condemned by human rights groups at the time. In a joint statement, 37 rights organizations said: "Col. Gaddafi belongs in jail, not on the world's highest human rights body." Their statement called his government "one of the world's most brutal and longest-running tyrannies."

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703559604576174843798774416.html?mod=googlenews_wsj