Shackelford: Worse than ignoring human rights, America is twisting the meaning

When the second Donald Trump administration began a great number of worried that it would abandon America s long-standing bipartisan commitment to human rights around the world This was the concern during the first administration too but career foreign affairs professionals continued much of the day-to-day work that has supported human rights for decades This time around however President Trump s squad ousted or undermined anyone who might try to stay the syllabus and has taken an even more nefarious approach Rather than ignore human rights the administration is twisting the concept in promotion of a political agenda that undermines equality justice and human precaution in the world by reinforcing only the rights of the strong at the expense of the weak Two latest examples are particularly alarming the rewriting of the U S State Department s annual human rights reports and the proposed plan for refugee admissions Since Congress has mandated that the State Department review on the human rights record of countries around the world to inform U S agenda decisions on everything from foreign economic and military assistance to sanctions immigration and asylum We didn t want our assistance to prop up bad actors so we needed to know how our partners acted As a career diplomat I updated the annual overview in each country where I served Political realities occasionally influenced specific reports but for the the majority part they were widely recognized as accurate and fair assessing internationally recognized categories of rights and researched and written by professionals on the ground Lawyers rights groups and foreign governments anticipated their release each year and used them to backing court cases asylum suggests and advocacy Congressional staff relied on them heavily I was proud to be part of this effort Sections deleted This year s reports just published this month will not carry that credibility Several key sections were deleted wholesale including those addressing the world s the greater part vulnerable women LGBTQ communities and minority groups in general The only area of discrimination retained is on antisemitism and the reports equate any critique of Israel s leadership as such References to governing body corruption were dropped entirely The majority reporting on political rights and inclusion including free and fair elections was also deleted The rights of the the greater part vulnerable and their tools for fighting back were all left on the cutting room floor The sections that remain are manipulated to reflect a world of fiction in which Germany and the United Kingdom pose greater threats to human rights than El Salvador which was shared to have literally no credible reports of substantial human rights abuses Only last year the State Department released a laundry list of El Salvador s offenses including lethal prison conditions a convenient about-face for an administration using these same prisons as gulags for its deported immigrants The grave offenses of our European allies included prohibiting hate speech and Nazi propaganda and preserving safe perimeters around abortion clinics In this imaginary world the gravest human rights offense in South Africa is land amendment to address historic inequities that persist from the apartheid era which the statement lists under its section on Torture and Cruel Inhuman or Degrading Cure or Punishment The law in question is complicated but measured nothing akin to the land grab Trump has claimed it to be and his charges of a white genocide are not only false but offensive Which leads me to my second example refugee admissions Each year the president determines how numerous refugees we will admit and designates allotments per region This is typically based on humanitarian need national interest considerations and the ability to process and integrate them This administration is reportedly planning to set the limit to less than one-third of last year s allotment with of those slots reserved for Afrikaners the Dutch-descended white minority in South Africa But white South Africans as a category do not meet the basic legal requirements for refugee status since they are not in fact casualties of targeted violence or political persecution This means only actual refugees could qualify for admission to the United States in the coming year a historically low figure when refugee numbers are at a historic high Blatant racism Countries are not mandated by law or treaty to take in refugees so the low numbers are disappointing but not legally questionable What is both legally and morally objectionable however is the blatant racism in the administration s refugee admissions South Africa is a country of violent crime but white South Africans face far less of it statistically than Black South Africans do The idea that they are politically and economically targeted is also false White South Africans make up about of the population but hold about of privately owned land and they earn on average almost five times as much as black South Africans Apparently Trump believes they are entitled to maintain this superiority The through line here isn t pretty but it s clear This administration is manipulating human rights platforms not to promote rights and justice for all but in furtherance of a world where those who have historically held the largest part power can continue to wield it against everyone else Elizabeth Shackelford is a foreign affairs columnist for the Chicago Tribune She was previously a U S diplomat Chicago Tribune Distributed by Tribune Content Agency