Human Rights, the NSA, and U.S. Moral Decline (La Jornada, Mexico)
"The massive spying against governments, organizations and
citizens - for alleged reasons of security - is the most immediate example of
moral backsliding by our neighboring country's institutions, a setback that has
translated into a deterioration of individual rights on a planetary scale. Of
course, such abuses don't only occur outside U.S. territory: it must be
remembered that under the pretext of the war on terror unleashed by the 9-11
attacks, Washington authorized the infringement of the rights of its own
citizens."
In
the context of the opening of its regular sessions, the Inter-American
Commission on Human Rights (IACHR) demanded
yesterday, in the midst of scandal over the massive and systematic espionage
practiced by Washington against citizens and governments, that the United
States apply mechanisms to regulate the surveillance of communications so as
not to infringe on human rights.
Felipe
González, commissioner of the hemisphere-wide group,
said that the Commission must advance toward a mechanism that, assuming the
legitimacy of the security efforts of states, is not invasive of the rights of
individuals. Meanwhile, his counterpart Rodrigo Escobar, stressed that the
powers of the United States on security matters must not be absolute, and that
the neighboring country must be subject to certain limits, rules and
procedures.
Significantly, these signs from the IACHR
coincided with the publication of an editorial by The New York Times that denounced the Obama Administration for
maintaining a frenetic pace of deportations of undocumented immigrants -
400,000 per year - based on political decisions rather than public safety
concerns. It asks the president to suspend deportations of people who have not
committed a felony, and asserts that many of the nefarious characteristics of
the U.S. immigration system, which the president himself has called
unsustainable, can be corrected without the need for immigration reform.
Despite the differences in their origins and themes, the
comments by the IACHR and the New York newspaper
reveal the deplorable human rights situation being maintained within U.S.
territory, and the constant danger people in that country confront of having
their rights run over by the government in Washington - regardless of their
immigration status.
Indeed, the massive spying against governments,
organizations and citizens - for alleged reasons of security - is the most
immediate example of moral backsliding by our neighboring country's
institutions, a setback that has translated into a deterioration of individual
rights on a planetary scale. Of course, such abuses don't only occur outside
U.S. territory: it must be remembered that under the pretext of the war on
terrorism unleashed by the September 11, 2001 attacks, the government in
Washington authorized the infringement of the rights of its own citizens and
legalized the wiretapping, interception of e-mail traffic, the illicit opening
of correspondence and the theft of personal documents, without there being a
genuine threat to justify such measures. The same can be said of the policy of
persecuting undocumented immigrants, which, as The New York Times points out,
is not the consequence of any legal consideration, but rather political and
economic decisions, since the massive deportation of illegal immigrants allows
for the modulation of the U.S. economy's labor market.
Up to now, the Obama Administration been unable or
unwilling to move its ever-changing intentions on immigration into the realm of
fact. Rather, it has shown resistance to abandon the traditional
interventionist and hegemonic policies which characterized his predecessor and
which, after all, were violations of human rights.
In short, it is clear that Washington lacks the moral
qualities necessary to hold itself out as an example and judge on matters of
human rights. It will be hard pressed to achieve clear legitimacy in this area,
in a world where there persists so many exercises of denial, simulation, and
damage control, like those that have taken place in the White House over recent
weeks and months, ever since the espionage revelations leaked by former member
of the National Security Agency, Edward Snowden.
