We applaud U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell’s statement in the introduction to the 2002 human rights country reports that reaffirms the essential obligation of confronting human rights abuses head on. “We gain little by ignoring human rights abuses or flinching from reporting them,” he wrote. He sets the bar high, and it is more important than ever that the United States be judged by this standard.

In some of the key reports, like Egypt, Colombia and Uzbekistan, the State Department flinched, and failed to achieve the standard of objectivity that Secretary Powell set out. In addition, in its “Year in Review” introduction to the report, a critical barometer of human rights conditions around the world, no mention was made of the “war on terror” nor any of the measures taken in its name - many of which undermined human rights.

For example:

• In Egypt, the report moved from condemning state security courts two years ago, to last year changing the language to make such courts seem less bad. This year, the report says that Egypt is bringing inappropriate cases in those courts - but does not take issue with the courts themselves.
• In Colombia, the report lacks the detail of prior reports in describing the relationship of paramilitary forces and the government's regular armed forces.
• In Uzbekistan, the report covers the arrest of independent Muslims who the Uzbek government characterizes as “extremists” who threaten the security of the state. But in the large majority of cases, individuals have been arrested solely because they are critics or hold independent religious views. The report fails to give a view on the real basis for the arrests—and whether the measures represent persecution of nonviolent independent Muslims.
• The "year in review" introduction. The Lawyers Committee believes the introduction to the report can serve as an important summary of the priorities of human rights conditions around the world. A striking change in this year’s instructions to embassies on how to prepare the reports was the following directive: “Actions by governments taken at the request of the United States or with the expressed support of the United States should not be included in the report.”

Concerns about this instruction are only reinforced by the fact that this year’s introduction omits any references to the war against terrorism - and the weapons with which it is being fought: detention without trial, military tribunals, restrictive anti-terror legislation and even torture. All of these issues would seem a natural headline of the report, but appear nowhere in the essay that serves as the overture to set the scene for what follows in the individual countries.

To illustrate this omission: in the introduction to last year’s report, the subheading “physical integrity,” included examples of countries in which torture and the absence of due process and fair public trials were a concern. Those named for torture included China, Indonesia, Kenya, Burma, Uzbekistan, Mexico, and Turkey. This year, the same physical integrity subheading is followed by just two examples: progress in reining in the paramilitaries in Colombia and a reduction of killings in the Dominican Republic. Torture dropped out. Military trials and due process dropped out.