international

New America Media, Q&A, Roberto Lovato, Posted: Dec 09, 2006

Editor's Note: New America Media caught up with Kenneth Roth, executive director of Human Rights Watch, during an event in honor of International Human Rights Day, which is Sunday. U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan spoke at the event. Roberto Lovato is a New America Media writer based in New York.

NAM: What will HRW's priorities be this coming year?

Kenneth Roth: Most urgently, we want to stop large-scale killing in places like Darfur and Eastern Congo. We want to stop the retrenchment in human rights in places like Russia and we want to push for a more responsible global role for countries like China. At the same time, we want to open up some of the closed societies in the Middle East. It's also critical that we fight the entrenched repression in places like Burma and North Korea. And we need to change the attitude toward fighting terrorism, so that it is inherently one that is based on a fundamental respect for human rights.

NAM: What are your concerns about human rights in the United States?

Unfortunately, U.S. credibility on human rights in the world has been shot by the way the U.S. has chosen to fight its so-called "war on terrorism." Kofi Annan stressed today that you can't effectively curb terrorism if you are violating human rights; you can't use secret detention facilities or torture to promote human rights. That's a message that is clearly directed at Washington.