US defying international law: Amnesty

THE United States is shirking its duty to provide the world with moral leadership and China is letting its business interests trump human rights concerns in Myanmar and Sudan, a human rights group said Wednesday, The New York Times reports quoting an American news agency.

Amnesty International's annual report on the state of the world's human rights accused the U.S. of failing to provide a moral compass for its international peers, a long-standing complaint the London-based group has against the North American superpower.

"As the world's most powerful state, the USA sets the standard for government behaviour globally," the report said. It charged that the US "had distinguished itself in recent years through its defiance of international law."

As in the past, the US detention centre at Guantanamo Bay came in for criticism. Irene Khan, Amnesty's Secretary-General, appealed for the American President elected in November to announce the jail's closure on Dec 10, 2008, the 60th anniversary of the Declaration of Human Rights.

The State Department had no immediate comment on the report, but said the US was justified in detaining enemy combatants at Guantanamo to prevent them from returning to the battlefield.

The European Union came in for criticism for "complicity" with the US-led rendition programme of "secret and unlawful detentions", while Russia was attacked for being "increasingly intolerant of dissent or criticism".

Emerging power China came in for a few punches, too. The report said China had continued shipping weapons to Sudan in defiance of a UN arms embargo and traded with abusive governments like Myanmar and Zimbabwe. It said that China's media censorship remains in place and that the government continues to persecute rights activists.

The report also accused China of expanding its "re-education through labour" programme, which allows the government to arrest people and sentence them to a manual labour without trial.

But Amnesty said it detected a shift in China's position: In 2007, China persuaded the Sudanese government to allow UN peacekeepers into the Darfur region and pressured Myanmar to accept the visit of a UN special envoy.

Irene Khan told the American news agency that it was much easier to grapple with human rights problems when the West and China worked together.

"China has the leverage to work with certain governments," she said ahead of the report's release. But she said China needed to use that leverage responsibly.

"China is clearly a global power. With that comes global responsibility for human rights. It needs to recognize that economic growth is not enough," Irene said.

Amnesty International said people are still tortured or ill-treated in at least 81 countries, face unfair trials in at least 54 and are denied free speech in at least 77. But the report also highlighted an increase in mass demonstrations around the world, citing that as a positive sign of a growing willingness by people to fight for their rights.

Pressing issues for 2008 were Darfur, Zimbabwe, Gaza, Iraq and Myanmar, she added, calling on governments to recommit to the founding principles of the UN treaty forged in the aftermath of bitter conflict in World War II.

"The powerful must lead by example," she added.

And emerging economic powers like India, Mexico, South Africa and Brazil, need to become role models, it added.

The Amnesty decried what it called a "wave of racism" against immigrants in Italy, which the human rights group alleged has been encouraged by politicians.

"We are facing a wave of racism affecting all immigrants in Italy, including those who are documented and those who are not," said Daniela Carboni, an official of Amnesty's Italian section.