BY CLAUDIA ROSETT
Wednesday, January 22, 2003 12:01 a.m. EST
Among those who value liberty and justice, the United Nations' choice of Libya to chair this year's session of the U.N. Commission on Human Rights has been widely described as a defeat. By some lights it's a defeat for the U.S.--which protested giving this post to an emissary of terror-sponsoring tyrant Moammar Gadhafi. By U.S. standards it's a defeat for the Human Rights Commission and the entire system of international justice the U.N. pretends to promote. All of which sounds bad, but comfortably abstract; just one more round of folly at the U.N.
It's much worse than that. Putting Libya in a spot to set the U.N. agenda on human rights is not simply a defeat of justice and human dignity. It is a betrayal.
It is a betrayal of all those brave souls, world-wide, who don't just talk about human rights but put their lives on the line to fight for them in countries where the price can be prison, exile or death. It is a betrayal of dissident Riad al-Seif, a former "parliamentarian" in Damascus, Syria, who dared to advocate democracy and has now become one of the more prominent opposition figures rotting in the dungeons of a nation that sits on the 53-member Human Rights Commission.
It is a betrayal of human rights defender Nguyen Khac Toan, a former soldier, teacher and businessman now serving a 12-year sentence in the prisons of Vietnam, which also enjoys a seat on the Human Rights Commission.
It is a betrayal of Chinese supporters of pluralism, such as Wang Youcai and Qin Yongmin, who helped found the opposition China Democracy Party, and are now serving long sentences in the laogai, the gulag of China--yet another member of Gadhafi's constituency at the U.N.
Lofting Libya to chair the Human Rights Commission is a gesture of contempt toward Nobel Peace laureate Aung San Suu Kyi, who for the past 15 years has sacrificed her own liberty and dedicated her life to the struggle for freedom in Burma. It is a note of almost casual scorn toward thousands upon thousands of courageous people in the world's darkest places, unknown soldiers in the long, human struggle for justice, who have chosen to stand up for principles evidently too demanding for most of the folks who are supposed to be defending them at the U.N.
It is a betrayal of millions upon millions of people living under governments so brutal--from North Korea to Turkmenistan to Iraq--that most citizens do not dare to demand the freedoms that belong by right to all human beings.
It is absurd, in fact, to describe the exaltation on Monday of Libya's Ambassador Najat al-Hajjaji to head of the Human Rights Commission as the product of a "vote." That implies there was some sort of democratic process at work. In the secret balloting among the 53 nations that currently sit on the Human Rights Commission, only three--the U.S., Canada and, reportedly, Guatemala--voted against Libya. Among the 33 governments that voted in favor of Libya were almost certainly the rulers of such civic sinkholes as Saudi Arabia, Sudan, Cuba and Zimbabwe. Like the despots in Syria, Vietnam and China, these are folks who do not have the guts to face a genuine system of democracy back home, They wield their votes at the U.N. not as legitimate representatives of their own fellow citizens, but as two-faced members of the global club of tyrants, who hold sway through force and fear.
Then there are the 17 nations that abstained from the balloting, including such moral beacons of the European Union as France and Germany. Their thinking seems to be that they were simply complying with U.N. etiquette, which, as it happens, operates with lots of ritual but no regard for the actual needs of the oppressed. When the Human Rights Commission was founded, back in 1947, the U.S. chaired its sessions not only for the first year but for the next five. Maybe that bothered such rivals as Stalin's U.S.S.R., but back then the idea was to help ordinary people, not tyrants.
Since then, it has become the custom that the chairmanship of the U.N. Commission on Human Rights rotates yearly among five geographic groups of member nations. This year was Africa's turn. The African members nominated Libya which has been liberally dispensing funds to curry influence among African rulers. Rather than take a stand on this outrage, the European Union took a coffee break. Thus did Libya take its seat on the throne of this erstwhile human-rights outfit, which we should perhaps start describing as the U.N. Commission on Rotating Chairs--a label that would better reflect its priorities.
All this has created a whole series of awkward moments for the office of the U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights, where a permanent U.N. staff works with the 53-nation commission to carry out the agenda that will now be guided by Libya. Trying to make the best of what I can only assume is a bit of an ordeal for any civilized man, the new U.N. High Commissioner, Sergio Vieira de Mello, a Brazilian, told me in a telephone interview Monday that he trusts the professionalism of his new Libyan colleague, Najat al-Hajjaji, and feels he "must give her more than the benefit of the doubt." Mr. de Mello noted that with Ms. Al-Hajjaji's ascension, she ceases to represent Libya, and now stands for the interests of all citizens of all U.N. member countries.
Oh really? Then why were Ms. Al-Hajjaji's origins the decisive factor, when Africa's turn came round, in securing her this new job? And why is Libya's state press right now celebrating Ms. Al-Hajjaji's new credentials as a sign of high international regard for the regime of Gadhafi? Beyond that, there's room to wonder if Ms. Al-Hajjaji really plans to abandon her stock scripts, in which, despite all the world's many problems, a big order of business has been the trashing of Israel. Here's a sample of Ms. Al-Hajjaji's rhetoric, from a 1999 U.N. press release: "With support and conniving by the United States, Israel continued to commit aggressive and massive human-rights violations, to take everything and give nothing."
Not that the Human Rights Commission is any stranger to the rants and demands of assorted dictatorships. But for a sample of the real cost of turning the show over to Libyan leadership, consider the case of a group of opposition politicians from Zimbabwe, who visited New York last fall. They were desperately seeking help for the horrors unfolding in their country under the dictatorship of Robert Mugabe, whose government also sits on the U.N. Human Rights Commission, and who, despite recent quarrels over oil deals, has been a longtime chum of Gadhafi.
These Zimbabweans described the encroaching famine back home, directed by Mr. Mugabe at his opponents. They talked about the confiscations, beatings and torture Mr. Mugabe let loose on those who stood up for human rights. Only one of this group, by the way, was white. The other three, like most of the millions Mr. Mugabe has sent forth his mobs to threaten, starve, beat and in some cases murder--were black.
These Zimbabweans said they hoped to get help from the U.N., which they saw as their only possible protector. They were hoping that somehow the U.N. would take the lead in ending Mugabe's monstrous rule by securing, somehow, free and fair elections in Zimbabwe. I mentioned to them that at the U.N. the fix was already in; that Libya--as has now happened--would be chairing the Commission on Human Rights.
Their reaction was not remotely to proclaim the vaunted "African solidarity," which the EU seems to believe is personified by deals between tyrants like Mugabe and Gadhafi. No, their concern was with the ordinary people of Africa, those who endure the rule of these despots. Their response to Libya's impending new role at the U.N. was shock and disgust. One of these Zimbabweans, a young black politician, blurted out: "It's outrageous, totally outrageous and revolting."
He then ticked off some of Gadhafi's history, including the Lockerbie bombing, which he described as "criminal" and said that if Libya were to be appointed to the chair, "it's an alarming message which we are receiving in Africa."
That's the truth about Libya's victory at the U.N. It's not just a defeat for the U.S. It's a horrifying message for all those for who, in the fight for human rights, man the front lines. Were Ms. Al-Hajjaji indeed worthy of the high office with which the U.N. has now entrusted her, the first item on her agenda when the Commission opens its meetings this March in Geneva should be to call for free and fair elections in Libya itself. If Gadhafi, ruler since 1969 of the state he calls the Great Socialist People's Libyan Arab Jamahiriya, says no, yet again, to human rights in his own home, Ms. Al-Hajjaji's next order of business should be to resign. That would do more for the global cause of human rights than anything now on the agenda of this gang we call the U.N. Human Rights Commission.
Ms. Rosett is a columnist for OpinionJournal.com and The Wall Street Journal Europe. Her column appears alternate Wednesdays.
