Human Rights, U.N. Wrongs

The United Nations has been front and center since April 9, when U.S.-led coalition military forces took control of Baghdad and effectively ended one of the bloodiest tyrannies in recorded human history. At U.N. headquarters in New York, of course, Secretary General Kofi Annan and his diplo-functionaries have been frantically attempting to reinsert themselves into the postwar Iraqi picture, claiming a unique mandate of legitimacy from the "international community" to administer the country they did absolutely nothing to help free. Things have been plenty busy in Geneva, Switzerland, too, where the U.N. Human Rights Commission has been wrapping up its annual six-week confab. And how has the "international community," there assembled, taken note of the Baath party human rights atrocities now being uncovered on a near-daily basis? Let's have a peek at the commission's recent agenda:

April 9

Crowds of Iraqis celebrate and pull down a statue of Saddam as Baghdad falls. Western newspapers publish reports from inside the infamous "White Lion" prison in the southern city of Basra, where for decades victims of the toppled regime were hung from ceiling hooks and tortured with hot irons, cigarettes, boiling water, pliers, and baths of acid.

The U.N. high commissioner for human rights, Sergio Vieira de Mello, announces himself "deeply disturbed" over civilian deaths and injuries resulting from the U.S.-led coalition war of liberation.

April 14

Western newspapers publish reports from inside suburban Baghdad's notorious Abu Ghraib prison, Saddam's largest, where thousands of people were tortured and murdered: forced to sit on glass bottles

Vieira de Mello tells the BBC that "war is always too high a price" to pay for freedom, that coalition forces are guilty of "serious breaches to the Geneva Convention," breaches that his agency will investigate if, "as I hope we will be able to," his staffers are allowed to return to Iraq. Meantime, the commission approves a resolution expressing "deep concern that Islam is frequently and wrongly associated with human rights violations and terrorism" and authorizing an inquiry into "the situation of Muslim and Arab peoples" with "special reference" to attacks against their persons and properties "in the aftermath of the events of 11 September 2001."

April 15

U.S. Marines discover and free 123 prisoners, some of them women, from deep underground bunkers at the Baath party's Al-Istikhbarat Al-'Askariya torture facility west of Baghdad. All the prisoners are emaciated and some have survived by eating scabs off their sores.

In Geneva, the U.N. Human Rights Commission approves three separate resolutions condemning Israel for the "gross violations of human rights and international humanitarian law" involved in its "policy of liquidation" against Palestinians and Syrians in the Golan Heights, which policy the commission calls an "offense against humanity."

April 16

Western newspapers publish reports on the thousands of documents British troops have recovered from Basra's "Mother of All Battles Branch" of Saddam's Baath party, documents detailing a decades-long and hair-raising program of systematic terror against Shiite locals.

The U.N. Human Rights Commission passes yet another resolution of censure against Israel, but declines to take any action on the epic human rights violations by Robert Mugabe's regime in Zimbabwe or on the recent wave of political arrests and executions by Fidel Castro's government in Cuba.