The official student newspaper of University of Wisconsin-Eau Claire since 1923.

The Spectator

The official student newspaper of University of Wisconsin-Eau Claire since 1923.

The Spectator

The official student newspaper of University of Wisconsin-Eau Claire since 1923.

The Spectator

U.N. Commission on human rights a farce without U.S. help

In one of the strangest twists of fate, last Thursday saw the United States voted off of the U.N. Human Rights Commission.

Since the commission’s founding in 1947 through the insight of former First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt, the United States has been not only a member of the commission, but in a leadership role.

In the United States’ place are known human rights abusers such as Sudan, China, Cuba, Syria, Togo, Algeria, Libya and Vietnam. I’m sure for an encore, they could name Saddam Hussein as the vice chair and a reincarnated Hitler as the chairman of this little group.

Here’s how bad it is having these guys even discussing the subject of human rights.

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Sudan runs a centuries-old slave trade where Muslims in the northern part of the country capture Christians in the southern part of the country. For $200, you can buy about six human beings.

Syria and Libya run terrorist organizations, most with the intention of compromising the Israeli state and holds political prisoners until they most likely are executed.

Cuba also holds political prisoners. Some are executed and some are sent into work camps where they make President Fidel Castro’s personal brand of cigars. It also forced quarantine on AIDS victims, denying them drugs and proper health care to take care of this horrible affliction.

Then there is China.

The Communist Chinese government wrongfully has detained foreigners claiming they are spies, sometimes detaining them for 20 to 30 years. They have grabbed their own citizens right from the street, imprisoning them as political prisoners, often leading to their execution for doing absolutely nothing – all in the name of maintaining the Communist regime.

Add into it the slaughter of hundreds of people in 1989 during the Tiananmen Square massacre. Also, the oppression going on against the Fulan Gong, a religious sect, and Catholic missionaries, who both only want one thing: to worship as they choose. It should be noted that the national religion of China is atheism, so no religion is safe within Chinese borders.

Most in the media have played out every possible reason for our European allies not continuing to support us in this very important international body. It’s been everything from the Bush administration’s dropping of the Kyoto protocols to the recently announced Missile Defense Shield. Or the United States’ vocal outrage at the United Nations wanting to blame the violence in the Middle East on longtime ally Israel and not Yasser Arafat’s Palestinian Liberation Organization.

If anything, the reason we’re out and looking in is that the human rights abusers of the world finally realized that banding together would accomplish more in their efforts to get the United States off their collective back on human rights.

But this does show something that many in Congress have felt has been going on for years in the United Nations – that the international body has become a forum for world-wide bashing of the United States; some with merit, most without.

So now the tyrants are in charge of the areas they spread tyranny. If this isn’t a situation where the inmates control the asylum, I wouldn’t know what is.

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U.N. Commission on human rights a farce without U.S. help