Arms Exports Cause Repression Amnesty International Report Assails U.S. Policies

Amnesty International accused the United States on Wednesday of abetting human rights abuses abroad by exporting weapons to repressive governments and easing trade restrictions against China.

“The hands of the United States are far from clean when it comes to human rights,” said William Schultz, executive director of Amnesty International USA, the U.S. affiliate of the London-based human rights organization, which released its annual global report Wednesday.

Schultz described as a “dismal failure” the administration’s policy of trying to entice China to improve its human rights record by promoting free trade.

Since 1994, the United States has twice renewed a trade clause granting favorable treatment of China’s exports to the United States, despite widespread criticisms of Beijing’s persecution of dissidents. The administration explained the move by saying that free trade would influence Beijing to clean up its image.

But China’s human rights abuses have steadily worsened over the past year, Schultz said.

If the United States has had little impact on an adversarial government such as China’s, it also has been unsuccessful in exerting pressure on Turkey - “an allied government utilizing U.S.-supplied arms to commit human rights against its own people,” Schultz noted.

Thousands have died in a decadelong conflict between Turkish security forces and Kurdish rebels fighting for self-rule in the country’s eastern regions.

Given the State Department’s acknowledgment that U.S. weapons were being used to suppress the uprising, Schultz called on the administration to prevent further weapons deliveries.

“But this is not the first time that the United States has been sullied by its association with thugs and murderers,” he commented.

U.S. citizens have been killed by CIA agents in Latin America, and U.S. intelligence services have been engaged in torture, deaths and disappearances on the continent, he said.

Holding up a garden trowel, Schultz said Amnesty International would send such utensils to all members of Congress and the administration to remind them “of their obligation to dig up and bring to light the whole truth about CIA-inspired human rights violations throughout the Americas.”

In its annual report, the human rights group also took issue with the United States’ use of the death penalty, saying 13 states executed 31 inmates last year - including a man in Georgia who was borderline retarded.

Amnesty International, which has long campaigned against capital punishment, noted that the death penalty was extended in the United States to cover 60 new crimes.