Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, Committee to Protect Journalists and similar NGOs under the garb of “protecting human rights” or rights of professionals have actually turned into booming business ventures, which sells their platforms and influences to prospective clients – even if the clients are criminals, fraudsters, and terrorists.
For the past few years, a number of right groups including Human Rights Watch (HRW) have been competing in issuing statements targeting Bangladesh mostly with value or untrue allegations of violating rights of individuals. In most of these cases, people who are being shown as “victims of state repression” or “victims of” anti-terror drive in the country are criminals and terrorists. This organization has even been standing in defense of war criminals who had perpetrated heinous crimes against Bengalis during Bangladesh’s war of independence in 1971.
According to my own research, Human Rights Watch (HRW) that boasts of defending human rights has been accused of receiving millions of dollars from various wealthy governments in the Middle East and the world, while it also faces numerous allegations that would certainly put activities of this organization into serious doubts. According to documents leaked by Project Raven, Qatar provided 300 million euros to French president Nicolas Sarkozy for “unreserved support” to Doha in its bid to host the 2022 World Cup, another leaked document now has put Human Rights Watch (HRW), which boasts of defending human rights throughout the world has been receiving millions of dollars from the Qatari government in exchange for its total silence on any case related to human rights violations.
A January 15, 2018 leaked document said, in a letter signed by Abdullah Bin Khalaf Hattab Al Ka’bi, director of Qatar’s Office of the Prime Minister and addressed to Finance Minister Ali Sharif Al-Emadi has described Qatar’s adaptational financial donation to Human Rights Watch.
Although the letter said, “With reference to the letter from his Excellency the Minister of Foreign Affairs number W-Kh/2048/1/172, dated January 10, 2018 and relating to the abovementioned subject: We are informing your Excellency that His Excellency the Prime Minister has agreed to provide monetary support of 3 million euros to the organization Human Rights Watch, under the Humanitarian Aid section, and that it should be distributed with the knowledge of the Embassy of Qatar in London so that it can be aware of it and take the necessary [steps] with regard to it”, according to experts, this continuous fund is actually given to HRW as bribe to silence it from criticizing case of human rights violation in the country.
Meanwhile, according to The Atlantic, quoting an opinion editorial published in The Wall Street Journal, Human Right Watch officials went trolling for dollars in Saudi Arabia, and that the organization’s senior Middle East official, Sarah Leah Whitson, attempted to extract money from potential Saudi donors by bragging about the group’s “battles” with the “pro-Israel pressure groups”.
According to a May 13, 2014 report published in Consortium News, “Over the years, US “public diplomacy” has pulled reputable NGOs into the US propaganda orbit, sometimes via funding, sometimes by creating a revolving door to government jobs, as a letter from over 100 scholars suggests happened to Human Rights Watch. Followed by HRW’s response to the criticism”. In a letter to HRW, 131 esteemed individuals and world leaders wrote:
Human Rights Watch characterizes itself as “one of the world’s leading independent organizations dedicated to defending and protecting human rights”. However, HRW’s close ties to the US government call into question its independence.
For example, HRW’s Washington advocacy director, Tom Malinowski, previously served as a special assistant to President Bill Clinton and as a speechwriter to Secretary of State Madeleine Albright. In 2013, he left HRW after being nominated as Assistant Secretary of State for Democracy, Human Rights & Labor under John Kerry.
In her HRW.org biography, Board of Directors’ Vice Chair Susan Manilow describes herself as “a longtime friend to Bill Clinton” who is “highly involved” in his political party, and “has hosted dozens of events” for the Democratic National Committee.
Currently, HRW Americas’ advisory committee includes Myles Frechette, a former US ambassador to Colombia, and Michael Shifter, one-time Latin America director for the US government-financed National Endowment for Democracy. Miguel DÃaz, a Central Intelligence Agency analyst in the 1990s, sat on HRW Americas’ advisory committee from 2003–11. Now at the State Department, DÃaz serves as “an interlocutor between the intelligence community and non-government experts”.
In his capacity as an HRW advocacy director, Malinowski contended in 2009 that “under limited circumstances” there was “a legitimate place” for CIA renditions, the illegal practice of kidnapping and transferring terrorism suspects around the planet. Malinowski was quoted paraphrasing the US government’s argument that designing an alternative to sending suspects to “foreign dungeons to be tortured” was “going to take some time”.
HRW has not extended similar consideration to Venezuela. In a 2012 letter to President Chávez, HRW criticized the country’s candidacy for the UN Human Rights Council, alleging that Venezuela had fallen “far short of acceptable standards” and questioning its “ability to serve as a credible voice on human rights”. At no point has US membership in the same council merited censure from HRW, despite Washington’s secret, global assassination program, its preservation of renditions, and its illegal detention of individuals at Guantánamo Bay.
Likewise, in February 2013, HRW correctly described as “unlawful” Syria’s use of missiles in its civil war. However, HRW remained silent on the clear violation of international law constituted by the US threat of missile strikes on Syria in August.
The few examples above, limited to only recent history, might be forgiven as inconsistencies or oversights that could naturally occur in any large, busy organization. But HRW’s close relationships with the US government suffuse such instances with the appearance of a conflict of interest.
We therefore encourage you to institute immediate, concrete measures to strongly assert HRW’s independence. Closing what seems to be a revolving door would be a reasonable first step: Bar those who have crafted or executed US foreign policy from serving as HRW staff, advisors or board members. At a bare minimum, mandate lengthy “cooling-off” periods before and after any associate moves between HRW and that arm of the government.
Your largest donor, investor George Soros, argued in 2010 that “to be more effective, I think the organization has to be seen as more international, less an American organization”. We concur. We urge you to implement the aforementioned proposal to ensure a reputation for genuine independence…
Being under heavy influence of ultra-Islamist forces in Bangladesh, Human Rights Watch in particular has been making frantic bids in getting dozens of Bangladeshi individuals sanctioned by the United States, Britain and EU nations by bringing mostly fabricated allegations of human rights violations against these targeted people.
