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Written Submission for the Record
Testimony of Barry F. Lowenkron, Assistant Secretary of State
for Democracy, Human Rights and Labor
before The House Foreign Affairs Subcommittee on International Organizations, Human Rights and Oversight
"A Review of the State Department's 2006 Country Reports on Human Rights Practices"
May 1, 2007

Chairman Delahunt, Representative Rohrabacher, and Members of the Subcommittee: Thank you for holding this hearing on the 2006 Country Reports on Human Rights Practices. Your commitment to the Reports is very much appreciated.

I welcome this opportunity to discuss the Reports, as well as current trends and concerns about how countries across the globe are putting into practice their international commitments on human rights.

I would ask, Mr. Chairman, that the Introduction to the 2006 Reports, which provides a more detailed overview, be entered into the Record.

At the outset, I also want to thank the Committee for your strong contributions to the promotion of human rights and democracy worldwide, and for your support of the work of my bureau. Your active, bipartisan commitment to these issues reflects the fundamental values of the American people.

As Secretary Rice stated, with these Reports "we are recommitting ourselves to help new democracies deliver on their peoples' aspirations for a better life . to stand with those .who struggle for their freedom . and to call every government to account that still treats the basic rights of its citizens as options rather than, in President Bush's words, the non-negotiable demands of human dignity."

Let me begin with a few words about the production of the 2006 Reports, and then make some brief observations about their content.

For three decades, these annual reports have been used widely here and abroad as a reference document for assessing the progress made and the challenges that remain. They also have served as a foundation for cooperative action among governments, organizations and individuals.

Officers at our overseas posts go to great lengths to gather factual information for these reports. Many dedicated officers in my bureau, as well as in bureaus throughout the Department, devoted long hours and intense effort to ensure that the reports meet high standards of accuracy and objectivity. The reports are based on information we received from governments and multilateral institutions, from indigenous and international non-governmental groups, and from academics, jurists and the media.

We recognize that we are issuing this report at a time when our own record has been questioned. We will continue to respond to the concerns of others, including by means of the reports we submit to meet our obligations under various human rights treaties. As Secretary Rice said, our democratic system of government is not infallible, but it is accountable -- our robust civil society, our vibrant free media, our independent branches of government and a well established rule of law work as correctives.

As for the human rights reports, each country report speaks for itself, yet, broad patterns are discernible. Across the globe in 2006, men and women continued to press for their rights to be respected and their governments to be responsive, for their voices to be heard and their votes to count. This is a hopeful trend indeed, yet the reports also reflect a number of sobering realities:

First, the advances made in human rights and democracy were hard won and challenging to sustain. While some countries made significant progress in 2006, others regressed. When I meet with Secretary Rice, the question that comes up the most is: "What is the trajectory?" Is the country more responsive to its citizens? Is a culture of just laws taking root? Some countries may remain fragile for quite some time. Others may backslide. Democracy is not a linear process, nor is success guaranteed.

Liberia and Indonesia are examples of countries that showed a positive trajectory in 2006, though, I emphasize, both still face major human rights challenges.

Liberia's democratically elected Unity Party government, led by Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf, the first female head of state in Africa, replaced the National Transitional Government of Liberia which had served as the interim government since the end of a ruinous 14-year civil war in 2003. The government took significant steps to correct past human rights deficiencies, including working with international partners to rehabilitate the country's justice sector and establishing a public defender's office in the capital. And the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, established in 2005 to investigate human rights violations and war crimes committed during the civil war, began taking statements from witnesses.

In Indonesia, there were substantial reductions in killings by the armed forces and the police in politically sensitive areas. Fifty-four generally free and fair elections were held at the provincial, regency, district and municipal levels, most notably in December in Aceh, where a former rebel field commander won the governorship. Inter-communal religious violence generally abated, though it nonetheless persisted in some areas.

Examples of countries that showed a negative trajectory in 2006 are Russia and Venezuela.

Last year in Russia, under what President Putin's advisers call "sovereign" or "managed" democracy, we saw further controls on political processes, a tightened grip on the media, and constraints on the work of non-governmental organizations. As a result, the Russian government today is less accountable to the people, and the environment surrounding the 2007-2008 Duma and presidential elections is increasingly daunting for those with opposing views.

Unfortunately, these negative trends have continued into 2007. Recent months have seen a further erosion in freedoms of expression, association and assembly, with repeated, heavy-handed responses by the authorities to peaceful demonstrations in Moscow, Nizhniy Novgorod and St. Petersburg. The Chechen Friendship Society was shut down and the NGO Internews/Educated Media Foundation was raided in an excessive action by Russian police, resulting in a suspension of its work. Moreover, NGOs have struggled to meet onerous reporting requirements leveled by the new NGO law.

In Venezuela last year, under President Chavez's so-called "participatory" democracy, the government continued to consolidate power in the executive branch, harass the opposition and NGOs, restrict press freedom and weaken judicial independence. In December, President Chavez won a second term. Early this year at his request, the National Assembly, totally controlled by pro-Chavez parties, granted him the power to rule by executive decree for 18 months. Here is a democratically elected government that does not govern democratically.

A second sobering reality is that insecurity due to internal or cross-border conflict can threaten gains in human rights and democratic government.

Despite the Iraqi government's commitment to foster national reconciliation and reconstruction, keep to an electoral course and establish the rule of law, deepening sectarian violence and acts of terrorism seriously undercut human rights and democratic progress.

And although Afghanistan has made important human rights progress since the fall of the Taliban, its human rights record remained poor, due mainly to weak central institutions and attacks by extremists.

Third, despite gains for human rights and democratic principles in every region of the world, much of humanity still lives in fear yet dreams of freedom.

Countries in which power remained concentrated in the hands of unaccountable rulers continued to be the world's most systematic human rights violators. We see this from Burma to Cuba, North Korea to Eritrea, China to Iran, and Belarus to Zimbabwe. Recent months have witnessed fresh outrages, whether it's: new arrests of Burmese human rights defenders; the sentencing in Cuba of an independent journalist to 4 years of imprisonment for "social dangerousness" and a lawyer who painted graffiti and distributed pamphlets criticizing the government to 12 years - demonstrating that repression continues unabated under Raul Castro; China's targeting for persecution and imprisonment of released Uighur activist Rebiya Kadeer's family in retaliation for her international advocacy efforts; the arrest in Iran of peaceful demonstrators gathered in the days leading up to International Women's Day to support women on trial for demanding equal status under the law; or the brutal suppression of peaceful gatherings of opposition members in Zimbabwe.

The fourth sobering reality is that as the worldwide push for greater personal and political freedom grows stronger, it is being met with increasing resistance from those who feel threatened by change. 2006 was the "Year of the Push-back". This disturbing trend continues into 2007. A growing number of countries have passed or selectively apply laws and regulations against NGOs and the media. In light of the observances this week of World Press Freedom Day, I will highlight here - these examples by no means constitute an exhaustive survey -- the Internet restrictions in China and Cuba, the arrest, detention and abuse of Egyptian Internet bloggers, and just yesterday Uzbekistan, continuing its concerted repression of civil society and the media, convicted and sentenced Human Rights Watch staffer Umida Niyazova to seven years following a trial that did not observe due process.

Fifth, and the most sobering reality of all: almost 60 years after the adoption of the UN Universal Declaration of Human Rights - an expression of the outraged conscience of mankind to the enormity of the Holocaust and the cataclysm of the Second World War - genocide continued to ravage the Darfur region of Sudan.

In March, just after the publication of the Human Rights Reports, I traveled to Sudan to assess first hand the appalling situation in Darfur. Fear and anxiety permeated the region. The fear was palpable in a camp for Internally Displaced People that I visited. It is one of the largest - harboring a population of over 90,000 people. The desperate Darfurians who fled into the camps want to go home, but they cannot. They know that the overwhelmed African Union peacekeepers cannot protect them all.

The humanitarian organizations and other NGOs trying to help the people in the camps are besieged. There are brutal attacks on NGO convoys. The Sudanese government has erected bureaucratic roadblocks in order to frustrate and constrain the efforts of aid workers. Despite the March 29 Joint Communique issued by the Sudanese government and the United Nations that would greatly -- if adhered to -- improve the ability of humanitarian workers to operate in Darfur, we continue to receive almost daily reports of obstruction of vital humanitarian assistance.

In my meetings with Sudanese officials, I emphasized that continued Sudanese obstructionism is unacceptable. U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon is working intensively to secure Sudan's commitment to the Heavy Support Package and the acceptance of a transition to an AU-UN hybrid force under UN command and control as agreed in Addis Ababa on November 16, 2006. We have decided to allow him some additional time to pursue diplomacy. However, as President Bush made clear during his speech on Holocaust Remembrance Day, and Deputy Secretary Negroponte reinforced to President Bashir during his recent visit to Sudan, the United States will not wait much longer. We are committed to imposing additional unilateral sanctions against companies owned or controlled by the Sudanese Government and against individuals who continue to commit human rights abuses or impede peace in Darfur if the Sudanese Government does not begin quickly to honor its commitments under the Addis Ababa agreement. We also are exploring with our UN Security Council partners a resolution calling for international sanctions and we will press forward with this effort during our Security Council Presidency this month.

Mr. Chairman, the challenge of protecting and advancing human rights and democratic principles worldwide requires us to be steadfast and innovative in our approaches. I will highlight two initiatives Secretary Rice launched in 2006 to defend human rights defenders.

Secretary Rice announced the creation of a Human Rights Defenders Fund to be administered by the State Department that will quickly disburse small grants to help human rights defenders facing extraordinary needs as a result of government repression.

Secretary Rice also announced ten guiding NGO Principles regarding the treatment by governments of nongovernmental organizations. These core principles are meant to complement lengthier, more detailed United Nations and other international documents and to serve as a handy resource for our embassies and other governments, international organizations, civil society groups, and journalists. The principles already have been translated into Arabic, Chinese, Farsi, French, Russian and Spanish. They are available on the Internet, and we have sent them to all of our embassies around the world.

Mr. Chairman and Members of the Subcommittee, thank you, once again, for holding this hearing to spotlight human rights conditions around the globe. Over the years, the deep and active commitment of Members on both sides of the aisle in Congress, and between the Legislative and Executive Branches of our government, has strengthened my hand and that of my predecessors as Assistant Secretary. Your commitment also has sent a clear signal to human rights defenders worldwide that the United States Government and the American people stand in solidarity with them.

When the United States and our fellow democracies demonstrate their support for the work of human rights advocates and civil society organizations, we are helping men and women in countries across the globe shape their own destinies in freedom. And by so doing, we are helping to build a safer, better world for all.

And now, Mr. Chairman and Members of the Committee, I will be happy to try to answer your questions.