WASHINGTON – The United States Thursday singled out Syria, Russia, China and Egypt for using restrictive laws to suppress political opposition, minorities and journalists seeking to expose abuses, according to the State Department’s 2014 Human Rights Report.
Those singled out for praise included Ukraine’s protest movement, which U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry said comprised people “calling for government accountability” and that illustrated the “power of people to determine how they are governed.”
The United States stands with nations committed to a world “where speaking ones mind does not lead to prosecution and where professing one’s love does not lead to persecution,” Kerry said.
The State Department report chronicles annually human-rights conditions in almost 200 countries and territories, identifying governments that the report says “continue to tighten their grasp” on free expression, association and assembly using increasingly repressive laws, politically motivated prosecutions and even new technologies to deny citizens their universal human rights.”
“This is not some high-minded exercise, this is about accountability,” Kerry said. “This is about ending impunity.”
“Places where we see security challenges today are also places where governments have denied human rights to their people,” Kerry said. “It is no coincidence,” he said, that a recent report by the United Nations Human Rights Commission found massive crimes against humanity in North Korea.
That nuclear-armed government has fired artillery and antiaircraft weapons at people, “while masses are forced to watch, an example of gross intimidation,” he said.
The report said countries where human rights are denied are also places were violent extremism and transnational crime take root, “contributing to instability, insecurity and economic deprivation.”
The report also criticized Persian Gulf monarchies that are U.S. allies in the Middle East. It criticized the United Arab Emirates for arresting Islamist political activists who called for democratic reforms.
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