The administration talks a lot about its principled policy of democracy promotion.

Let’s look at the situation in Egypt. Ayman Nour is “one of only about three dozen opposition members in the 444-seat [Egyptian] Parliament.” Nour was “calling for changes in the Constitution that might allow, among other things, a direct challenge to President Hosni Mubarak if he runs for a fifth term to extend his 24-year rule” — certainly a step forward for Democracy in the region.

In Egypt, members of the parliament are generally immune from prosecution. On January 29, Nour “was called before Parliament and stripped of immunity on 30 minutes’ notice, with no chance to mount a defense.” Here is what happened next:

Nour was thrown into jail, in a textbook example of the way Washington’s Arab allies thwart hopes to expand freedom…They dragged him down the street, then put him in a police van in the middle of Cairo’s busiest square, apparently as an example to the public….Nour is now locked up for at least 45 days of interrogation, and has been refused bail. The charges? Alleged forgery of affidavits used to win legalization last year for his El Ghad (Tomorrow) Party. Fifty such papers were necessary. Nour received thousands, which have been in government hands for months.

What is the administration doing in response? Pressing forward with $1.795 billion in direct aid to the Egyptian Government.

Following the ouster of Haiti’s president one year ago this week, then-Secretary of State Colin Powell spoke of “bring[ing] democracy, prosperity and hope to the people of Haiti” through a combination of a new U.S.-backed government and a fresh infusion of global aid. Months later, freedom is clearly not on the march in the “hurricane of violence” known as Haiti:

U.S.-backed gov’t? Weak, not credible: “Almost a year after the abrupt departure of former President Aristide, the political, security and social-economic situation in Haiti remains in crisis. The transitional government is weak and fighting to maintain credibility, and there are no clear signs of either political reconciliation or economic reconstruction.” (International Crisis Group, 2/8/05)

Promised aid? Still waiting: “The situation in Haiti has gone from bad to worse since former President Jean-Bertrand Aristide was ousted from that desperate country this year. … Little of the $1.3 billion in foreign aid promised by the United States and other international donors in July has been delivered.” (Dan Erikson and Adam Minso, Baltimore Sun, 11/24/04)

Freedom on the march? Not quite: “After ten months under an interim government backed by the United States, Canada, and France and buttressed by a United Nations force, Haiti’s people churn inside a hurricane of violence. Gunfire crackles, once bustling streets are abandoned to cadavers, and whole neighborhoods are cut off from the outside world. Nightmarish fear now accompanies Haiti’s poorest in their struggle to survive in destitution. … There has been no investment in dialogue to end the violence.” (Center for the Study of Human Rights, University of Miami School of Law, 2/8/05)

Four years after President Bush reinstated the Global Gag Rule, a policy that severely restricts funding for any non-governmental organization that performs abortions or advocates for a woman’s right to choose, the administration is back on the attack against allowing reproductive rights to be available to all women. The United States delegation to the U.N. Commission on the Status of Women is demanding that the platform “make clear that abortion is not a fundamental right.” The same delegate, Ellen Sauerbrey, then proceeded to blame NGOs, the groups actually doing the tough work on the ground, for “trying to distort the issue.” But, in fact, she and other conservative activists have long stood as a barricade to the quest for basic human rights:

• At a U.N. Commission on the Status of Women meeting in 2003, the United States joined with Iran, Egypt, Sudan, and other countries notorious for human rights abuses to raise objections against a platform that was committed “to strengthen legislation to end domestic violence and sexual exploitation and trafficking of women [as well as] educate governments on how to promote and protect women’s human rights.” This block was the “first-ever diplomatic failure” in the meeting body’s history.

• In 2004, Janice Crouse, one of the acting U.S. delegates to the U.N. Commission on the Status of Women, wrote, “Radical feminists typically use the phrase made famous by now-Sen. Hillary Clinton (D-New York) at the United Nations’ Beijing Women’s Conference in the mid-1990s, when she said: ‘Women’s rights are human rights.’ That mantra carries the special agenda of the radical feminists — abortion, lesbianism and quotas.”
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America was notably absent from the State Department’s annual report on Human Rights. Here’s what Assistant Secretary of State Michael Kozak had to say when asked yesterday about our government’s controversial program of “extraordinary renditions”:

“There’s also our obligations under the Convention Against Torture, which is, I think the basic obligation there is you can’t turn someone over…if the likelihood, if it’s more probable than not that he will be tortured, then you can’t turn him over. I think that’s the exact legal standard. And we take that seriously.”

This would be a troubling statement – from the administration that has made “promoting human rights” the “bedrock” of its foreign policy – even if it were true (for instance, it means that if the Bush administration concludes there’s a 49 percent chance a prisoner will be abused, it sees no problem sending him away). But it’s not true. The Bush administration does not “take seriously” the standard laid out in the Convention Against Torture.

The Convention Kozak sites prohibits extradition to a State “where there are substantial grounds for believing that he would be in danger of being subjected to torture.”

Several reports indicate the Bush administration, based on a top-secret memo drafted at the request of new Attorney General, Alberto Gonzales, has shipped prisoners off to Syria and Egypt, both of which appear in the State Department’s Human Rights report released this week.

So, are there “substantial grounds for believing” those countries might abuse detainees? You decide:

Egypt: “[In 2003 and 2004], torture and abuse of detainees by police, security personnel, and prison guards remained common and persistent. According to the U.N. Committee Against Torture, a systematic pattern of torture by the security forces exists, and police torture resulted in deaths during the year…there were numerous, credible reports that security forces tortured and mistreated detainees.”

Syria: “During the year…The torture of political detainees was a common occurrence…torture methods included administering electrical shocks; pulling out fingernails; forcing objects into the rectum; beating, sometimes while the victim was suspended from the ceiling; hyperextending the spine; bending the detainees into the frame of a wheel and whipping exposed body parts; and using a backward-bending chair to asphyxiate the victim or fracture the victim’s spine.”