The American government of Joe Biden, which claims to put human rights at the heart of its foreign policy, noted on Tuesday the observation of their persistent “regression” around the world, illustrated according to him by the war in Ukraine.
• Read also: Biden evokes a “genocide” in Ukraine
“For many years, we have witnessed an alarming decline in democracy, the rule of law, respect for human rights in many places in the world,” declared the head of American diplomacy Antony Blinken, presenting to the press the State Department’s annual report on human rights.
“Since the publication of our previous report” a year ago, “this decline has, unfortunately, continued”, he added.
He referred to the situation in Ukraine since the Russian invasion as the “most glaring” illustration of the “human consequences of this decline”, again accusing Moscow forces of “widespread atrocities” in the areas they have occupied.
“The bodies left in the streets with their hands tied; theaters, stations, buildings reduced to ruins with civilians inside”; “the testimonies of women and girls who have been raped, and civilians besieged, dying of hunger and cold”, he listed.
Above all, the Secretary of State denounced human rights violations in countries adversary to the United States, again accusing China of perpetrating a “genocide” against Uighur Muslims, and the Taliban of increasing the “arbitrary arrests of women, demonstrators and journalists” since taking power in August in Afghanistan.
But he also criticized the abuses of Washington’s partner countries, such as Egypt, for which he blamed the imprisonment of lawyer and human rights defender Mohamed al-Baqer, or Ethiopia where, he said , “all belligerents” have “committed atrocities” and where “thousands of Ethiopians are unjustly detained in life-threatening conditions”.
Antony Blinken dismissed criticism from human rights organizations who rightly deplore that the Biden administration does not put enough pressure on certain allied countries of the United States.
“Whether it’s a friendly country or a country with which we have real differences, our unit of measurement is the same”, because human rights “are universal”, he insisted.