Living close to Turkey, I follow the situation there perhaps with more worry than others. And nothing good seems to happen:
Turkish police detained three district heads of the pro-Kurdish Peoples’ Democratic Party (HDP) and seven others in Istanbul on Friday over alleged links to militants, police said, two days after a court case began over banning the party.
Separately, Turkey’s Human Rights Association (IHD) co-chairman Ozturk Turkdogan was arrested by police at his home, IHD said, prompting human rights groups to call for his release. Turkdogan was then released on Friday evening, the association said.
Responding to the arrest today of Öztürk Türkdoğan, the president of Turkey’s Human Rights Organisation, Esther Major, Amnesty International’s Senior Research Adviser for Europe, said:
“The detention of Öztürk Türkdoğan is outrageous. With ink barely dry on the Human Rights Action Plan announced by President Erdoğan two weeks ago, his arrest reveals that this document is not worth the paper it is written on.
After over three years in jail without a conviction, one of Turkey’s highest-profile detainees, Osman Kavala, is “not optimistic” that President Tayyip Erdogan’s planned reforms can change a judiciary he says is being used to silence dissidents. A philanthropist, 63-year-old Kavala told Reuters that after decades of watching Turkey’s judiciary seeking to restrict human rights, it was now engaged in “eliminating” perceived political opponents of Erdogan’s government. Kavala was providing written responses via his lawyers to Reuters’ questions days after Erdogan outlined a “Human Rights Action Plan” that was said will strengthen rights to a free trial and freedom of expression. See: https://humanrightsdefenders.blog/2020/09/16/osman-kavala-and-mozn-hassan-receive-2020-international-hrant-dink-award/ and
Not surprisingly this is leading to reactions, such as a bipartisan letter penned by 170 members of the US Congress to Secretary of State Antony Blinken, in which the lawmakers have urged President Joe Biden’s administration to consider the “troubling human rights abuses” in Turkey. “President Recep Tayyip Erdogan and his Justice and Development Party have used their nearly two decades in power to weaken Turkey’s judiciary, install political allies in key military and intelligence positions, crack down on free speech and (the) free press,” the letter said. Dated 26 February but made public on 1 March, the letter asks Washington to formulate its policy regarding Turkey considering human rights, saying that the Erdogan administration has strained the bilateral relationship.
On top of this Turkey has pulled out of the world’s first binding treaty to prevent and combat violence against women by presidential decree, in the latest victory for conservatives in President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s ruling party. The 2011 “Istanbul Convention| [SIC], signed by 45 countries and the European Union, requires governments to adopt legislation prosecuting domestic violence and similar abuse as well as marital rape and female genital mutilation. Conservatives had claimed the charter damages family unity, encourages divorce and that its references to equality were being used by the LGBT community to gain broader acceptance in society. The publication of the decree in the official gazette early Saturday sparked anger among rights groups and calls for protests in Istanbul. Women have taken to the streets in cities across Turkey calling on the government to keep to the 2011 Istanbul Convention.
Gokce Gokcen, deputy chairperson of the main opposition CHP party said abandoning the treaty meant “keeping women second class citizens and letting them be killed.” “Despite you and your evil, we will stay alive and bring back the convention,” she said on Twitter. Last year, 300 women were murdered according to the rights group We Will Stop Femicide Platform. The platform called for a “collective fight against those who dropped the Istanbul convention,” in a message on Twitter. “The Istanbul convention was not signed at your command and it will not leave our lives on your command,” its secretary general Fidan Ataselim tweeted.
Kerem Altiparmak, an academic and lawyer specializing in human rights law, likened the government’s shredding of the convention to the 1980 military coup. “What’s abolished tonight is not only the Istanbul convention but the parliament’s will and legislative power,” he commented.
This year includes an honorary award for seven women leaders and activists from Afghanistan who were assassinated for their dedication to improving the lives of Afghans:
Fatema Natasha Khalil, an official with the Afghanistan Independent Human Rights Commission who was killed, along with her driver, in June 2020 by an IED in Kabul, on her way to her office.
General Sharmila Frough, the head of the Gender Unit in the National Directorate of Security (NDS) was one of the longest-serving female NDS officers, having served as chief of the anti-kidnapping division and working undercover combating criminal networks. General Frough was assassinated in an IED explosion targeting her vehicle in March 2020 in Kabul.
Maryam Noorzad, a midwife who served remote locations in Wardak and Bamyan provinces before working for Médecins Sans Frontières Kabul PD13 hospital. On May 12, 2020, three gunmen attacked the maternity ward of the hospital, but Maryam refused to leave her patient, who was in labor. Maryam, her patient, and the newborn baby were killed in the delivery suite.
Fatima Rajabi, a 23-year-old police officer originally from Ghazni province and a member of the anti-narcotics division. She was traveling to her home village in Jaghori district in a civilian minibus in July 2020 when the Taliban stopped the vehicle and took her captive. Two weeks later, the Taliban killed her and sent her remains, which had gunshot wounds and signs of torture, to her family.
Freshta, daughter of Amir Mohamed, a 35-year-old prison guard with the Office of Prison Administration. She was walking from her residence in Kandahar City to a taxi on her way to work when she was murdered by an unknown gunman on October 25, 2020.
Malalai Maiwand, a reporter at Enikas Radio and TV, was shot and killed, along with her driver, by a gunman on December 10, 2020, in an attack on her vehicle in Jalalabad. Malalai was not the first in her family to be targeted. Five years earlier, her mother, an activist, was also killed by unknown gunmen.
Freshta Kohistani, a 29-year-old women’s rights and democracy activist, was assassinated by unknown gunmen near her home in Kapsia province on December 24, 2020. Kohistani regularly organized events advocating for women’s rights in Afghanistan and used social media as a platform for her messaging.
The other 2021 awardees are:
Belarus – Maria Kalesnikava
Ahead of the August 9, 2020, presidential election, Belarusian women emerged as a dominant political force and driver of societal change in Belarus due in no small part to Maria Kalesnikava. After authorities jailed or exiled the three most popular male opposition candidates, Maria and her partners mounted a historic and sustained challenge to the 26-year rule of Alyaksandr Lukashenka. Maria continues to be the face of the opposition inside Belarus, courageously facing imprisonment in the aftermath of the disputed election. Despite her detention, Maria continues to keep the democratic movement alive inside Belarus and serves as a source of inspiration for all those seeking to win freedom for themselves and their countries.
Burma – Phyoe Phyoe Aung
An emerging leader who is likely to play a role in shaping the country in the coming years, Phyoe Phyoe Aung is the co-founder of the Wings Institute for Reconciliation, an organization that facilitates exchanges between youth of different ethnic and religious groups. Her work promotes peacebuilding and reconciliation and enables a vital dialogue on federalism and transitional justice. She organized a 2015 protest march from Mandalay to Yangon that was violently suppressed by the Myanmar Police Force as it neared Yangon, and she and her husband were arrested and imprisoned. Phyoe Phyoe was released in April 2016 after 13 months as part of a broad pardon of political prisoners facing court trials. See also: https://humanrightsdefenders.blog/2016/05/11/finalists-runners-up-front-line-defenders-award-human-rights-defenders-2016-announcement/#more-7981
Cameroon – Maximilienne C. Ngo Mbe
Maximilienne C. Ngo Mbe has demonstrated extraordinary leadership, courage, and perseverance through adversity in promoting human rights in Cameroon and Central Africa. She has been an outspoken voice among civil society actors, often sacrificing her personal safety, in the push for a peaceful solution to the Anglophone crisis in Cameroon. She has called for an end to human rights abuses committed by separatists and security forces in the Northwest and Southwest regions and by security forces in the Far North. Maximilienne has also spoken out against the increased constraints placed on civil society, journalists, and political opposition by the Government of Cameroon. Her commitment to promoting human rights has been unwavering despite the intimidation, threats, and assault she has endured.
China – Wang Yu
Wang Yu was one of the country’s most prominent human rights lawyers until her arrest and imprisonment following China’s nationwide persecution of lawyers and rights advocates during the “709 crackdown.” She had taken on multiple politically sensitive cases, representing activists, scholars, Falun Gong practitioners, farmers, and petitioners in cases involving a wide array of issues, including women’s and children’s rights, and the rights to religion, freedom of expression, assembly, and association. She is now under an exit ban and has been harassed, threatened, searched, and physically assaulted by police since she began to take on rights abuse cases in 2011. [see also https://humanrightsdefenders.blog/2016/08/02/another-chinese-human-rights-lawyer-wang-yu-spontaneous-video-confession/]
Colombia – Mayerlis Angarita
Mayerlis Angarita has courageously advanced peace and human rights in Colombia, often at great personal risk. Her work has improved the security, livelihoods, and resilience of countless women leaders, conflict victims, and her community. Finding healing in storytelling after her own mother was forcibly disappeared during Colombia’s conflict, she founded the civil society organization “Narrate to Live,” which now serves over 800 women victims of conflict. Additionally, after the most recent attempt on her life, she engaged the highest levels of the Colombian government to advance a comprehensive action plan to prevent violence against women leaders in her community. Her constructive engagement across 27 government entities, civil society, and the international community has been key to the plan’s success and propelled it to become a model for human rights defender protection throughout Colombia.
Democratic Republic of the Congo – Julienne Lusenge
Since 1978, Julienne Lusenge has been the leading female activist in Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) fighting against gender-based violence (GBV) and the promotion of the rights of women and girls in conflict situations. In 2000, she created Women’s Solidarity for Peace and Integral Development, the DRC’s foremost organization defending the rights of women and girls against impunity for GBV. Julienne’s vocal testimony has contributed to the adoption of international agreements such as UN 1820, which recognizes sexual violence as a weapon of war. Julienne has touched the lives of millions of women across the DRC, harnessing the attention of the international community to acknowledge and act on the extent of sexual violence shattering DRC’s communities.
Guatemala – Judge Erika Aifan
Judge Erika Lorena Aifan is a trial judge working in the High-Risk Criminal Court with responsibility for high-impact crimes. She has presided over high-profile corruption and war atrocity cases, leading to defamation and threats of violence against her. Despite these challenges, Judge Aifan persisted as a Guatemalan judge independent of political influence. She has demonstrated determination and fortitude in upholding the rule of law in Guatemala. Despite the strong opposition she has faced throughout her tenure, Judge Aifan has become an icon in Guatemala in the fight against corruption, efforts to increase transparency, and actions to improve independence in the justice sector.
Iran – Shohreh Bayat
When Shohreh Bayat boarded her flight on her way to the 2020 Women’s Chess World Championship, she had no idea she might be seeing her native Iran for the last time. Shohreh, the first female Category A international chess arbiter in Asia, was photographed at the Championship without her hijab visible, which is compulsory in Iran. Within 24 hours, the Iranian Chess Federation – which Shohreh had previously led – refused to guarantee Shohreh’s safety if she returned to Iran without first apologizing. Fearing for her safety and unwilling to apologize for the incident, Shohreh made the heart-wrenching decision to seek refuge in the UK, leaving her husband – who lacked a UK visa – in Iran. In that moment, Shohreh chose to be a champion for women’s rights rather than be cowed by the Iranian government’s threats.
Nepal – Muskan Khatun
Muskan Khatun has been instrumental in bringing about new legislation criminalizing acid attacks and imposing strong penalties against perpetrators in Nepal. When Muskan was 15, she was critically injured in an acid attack after she rejected a boy’s romantic propositions. With the help of a social worker, Muskan lobbied for stronger legal action against the perpetrators of acid attacks under duress of threats and the strong social stigma associated with acid attack victims. She went before a parliamentary committee, wrote a letter to Nepal’s Prime Minister, and eventually met with him in person, to request a stronger law. Within a year of her attack, Nepal’s President issued an ordinance with harsh penalties for acid attacks and regulations on the sale of acids, a testament to Muskan’s significant advocacy.
Somalia – Zahra Mohamed Ahmad
For more than 20 years, Zahra Mohamed Ahmad has been at the forefront of defending human rights in Somalia, especially for its most vulnerable groups. As an accomplished lawyer, Zahra began providing legal aid, for sexual and gender-based violence (SGBV) survivors, women on remand status, and women in pre-trial detention. Zahra is the founder of and legal advisor for the Somali Women Development Center, an organization that reports on human rights violations and cases of abuse; supports survivors through legal assistance; established Somalia’s first free hotline service to combat SGBV; and operates one-stop centers for SGBV survivors, mobile legal clinics, family care centers, safe spaces for women and girls, and community child protection centers for internally displaced children.
Spain – Sister Alicia Vacas Moro
A registered nurse, Sister Alicia Vacas Moro ran a medical clinic in Egypt for eight years, helping 150 low income patients a day treat their maladies. She then moved to the biblical town of Bethany to help an impoverished Bedouin community, especially women and children. She set up training programs for women that provided them with previously unavailable economic opportunities, and established kindergartens in Bedouin camps, providing an educational foundation for children. In an environment shaped by the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, Sister Alicia also assisted traumatized refugees and asylum seekers, a job she continues to perform on a larger scale in her current role as the regional coordinator for the Comboni Sisters in the Middle East. When the COVID-19 pandemic struck northern Italy, she flew to Italy to assist and treat fellow sister nuns, undeterred by extreme danger to herself.
Sri Lanka – Ranitha Gnanarajah
Ranitha Gnanarajah, a lawyer, continues to fight for and defend the rights of the marginalized and vulnerable communities in the country, despite threats and challenges by the state. Ranitha has dedicated her career to accountability and justice for victims of enforced disappearances and prisoners detained often for years without charge under Sri Lanka’s Prevention of Terrorism Act by providing free legal aid and related services. As an individual personally affected by the conflict and based on her extensive experience working with victims and their families, Ranitha has demonstrated tremendous passion and dedication to justice and accountability, especially for Sri Lanka’s most vulnerable populations.
Turkey – Canan Gullu
Canan Gullu has been an activist and organizer for 31 years and is the president of the Turkish Federation of Women’s Associations, an umbrella organization of women’s NGOs; she leads186 branches and 52,500 members. Canan has been a steadfast champion of gender equality, working to promote women’s participation in governance, labor force, and education. In 2007, the Turkish Federation of Women Associations established the first emergency hotline for victims of violence in Turkey, which continues its operations. Over the past two years, Canan launched an education and advocacy campaign focused on failures in the Turkish government’s implementation since 2012 of the Istanbul Convention, the Council of Europe’s Convention on preventing and combating violence against women and domestic violence. Canan’s activism has been critical to educating the public about the convention and reinforcing the need to combat gender-based violence, which quelled some politicians’ calls for Turkey’s withdrawal.
Venezuela – Ana Rosario Contreras
As president of the Caracas Nurses’ Association, Ana Rosario Contreras has been on the front lines in the fight for the rights of healthcare professionals, patients, and labor unions. Contreras’ fierce activism has generated widespread support from the Venezuelan people and is at the center of the civil-political movement pushing for democratic change. In a climate where the government routinely jails, tortures, harasses, threatens, or restricts the movement of its opponents, Contreras defends citizens’ rights at great personal risk. She has advocated for labor rights and has worked tirelessly to ensure that healthcare workers could receive a subsidy through Interim President Juan Guido’s Health Heroes program..
We’re also stepping up our diplomacy to end the war in Yemen — a war which has created a humanitarian and strategic catastrophe. I’ve asked my Middle East team to ensure our support for the United Nations-led initiative to impose a ceasefire, open humanitarian channels, and restore long-dormant peace talks….
And to underscore our commitment, we are ending all American support for offensive operations in the war in Yemen, including relevant arms sales.
This announcement does not augur peace in Yemen any time soon. Rather it looks a bit like political mystification that some have chosen to celebrate now, regardless of what it actually means, apparently in hope of making it a meaningful, self-fulfilling prophecy some time in the future. This does not seem likely, given what Biden actually said, but we shall see.
For the foreseeable future, Yemen, the poorest country in the Middle East, will remain the victim of a Saudi war of aggression and Saudi war crimes. Since March 2015, with the full support of the Obama administration, Saudi Arabia and its allies have turned Yemen into the world’s worst humanitarian disaster, as assessed by the United Nations. Relentless bombing of military and civilian targets alike has led to the deaths of more than 100,000 Yemenis from famine and disease. Millions more need international aid to survive.
One hopeful sign now is the Biden administration’s announcement on February 5 that the US designation of the Houthis as a terrorist organization has been rescinded. This was a necessary corrective, not a bold move. The Houthis are ethnic natives in northwest Yemen. Their current territory holds about 70% of Yemen’s 30 million people. They are the victims of Saudi terror bombing.
The Houthis are also the victims of US Iranophobia, the paranoid policy framing that sees Iranian devils behind every difficulty in the Middle East, regardless of any lack of evidence. Former secretary of state Mike Pompeo is an Iranophobe, as well as a Christo-fascist. In a midnight news dump on January 10, Pompeo announced the terrorist designation to go into effect on January 19. The announcement provided little basis in policy or fact and received bipartisan criticism because its most likely impact would have been to exacerbate human suffering in Yemen.
While the Biden administration’s decision to rescind the terrorist designation eliminates a factor that would have made the Yemen situation worse, there is little in Biden’s speech that promises to make the situation better any time soon.
Supporting United Nations efforts is probably helpful as far as it goes, but it’s a far cry from US engagement on the peace side to match US engagement on the war side. And to suggest that the UN might “impose a ceasefire” implies a military deployment that is pretty much imaginary. The conflict within Yemen is multi-sided, with few if any clearly-defined frontlines.
The Houthis control most of the northwest, but not all, and that may be the most coherent governmental region in the country. In the south, the official Yemen government, unelected but imposed by international fiat and controlled by Saudi Arabia, shares territory with its own rebel faction controlled by the UAE (United Arab Emirates). The eastern two-thirds of the country, mostly desert, contains islands of control under Al-Qaeda, the Islamic State, and other, smaller factions.
The US was misguided, at best, to sanction the Saudi aggression. The US was criminal to support the Saudi aggression for the past six years. Now Biden has said the US is ending “all American support for offensive operations in the war in Yemen.” There are NO defensive operations in that war, the war is effectively all in Yemen. And when Biden says the US is ending all American support, does that mean no more military guidance from the US mission in Riyadh? No more logistical support? No more intelligence sharing? No more training Saudi pilots? No more target selection? No more mid-air refueling? No more maintenance for Saudi bombers? No more spare parts? Does it mean an end to the US naval blockade, itself an act of war?
The US has been doing all these things, and probably more, with Obama’s and Trump’s blessings since 2015. Will the US stop doing all of them now, or in the near future? Biden didn’t say (the State Department later hedged). Biden promised to end “relevant arms sales,” whatever “relevant” is supposed to mean, since it means nothing on its face. And in the next line of his speech, Biden revealed the calamitous duplicity of the US position all along:
At the same time, Saudi Arabia faces missile attacks, UAV strikes, and other threats from Iranian-supplied forces in multiple countries. We’re going to continue to support and help Saudi Arabia defend its sovereignty and its territorial integrity and its people.
This is cover-your-butt spinning to excuse future failures planned to appease the Saudi aggressors. Saudi Arabia faces missile attacks and UAV strikes from the Houthis because the Houthis, in the face of relentless attack, have been fighting back.
Biden’s undefined “other threats from Iranian-supplied forces in multiple countries” is murky, non-specific, unverifiable. This makes Biden sound like he’s channeling Pompeo in pure Iranophobe-speak. This fearmongering portends nothing good for Yemen.
Saudi Arabia’s sovereignty is under no discernible threat, except perhaps from within the monarchical police state. So the US is committed to defending an anti-democratic dictatorship that murders its critics in the most brutal fashion? How is that a good thing?
Saudi Arabia’s territorial integrity is under no credible threat. Quite literally, Saudi Arabia has NO territorial integrity, since most of its border with eastern Yemen has never been drawn. The Saudis and the Houthis have a territorial dispute in the northwest dating to the 1930s. The Saudis have built more than one wall over the years in an effort to block Yemeni migrants seeking work in Saudi Arabia, which has some ten million migrant workers mostly treated abominably.
Saudi Arabia’s people face a chronic, lethal threat from their own government. There are occasional, minor threats from dissidents. Threats from abroad are likewise all but non-existent. Those missiles and UAV worrying Biden have apparently killed no one; there are no Saudi civilian casualties from the Yemen war, just the 100,000-plus Yemenis.
Biden’s reassurances to Saudi Arabia weren’t just specious, they represent an unchanging rigidity in American thinking that continues as a threat to peace. On Democracy Now, Michigan State University assistant professor Shireen Al-Adeimi, a Yemeni scholar and activist, put Biden’s comments in perspective:
So, in his speech, Biden said that he is ending offensive operations in Yemen, but committed — he went on to commit to defending Saudi borders. Now, this is really concerning to me, because I still remember the statement that the White House put out when Obama initially entered the war in March of 2015, and that was the exact same framing, that they were defending Saudi territory from the Houthis. This is what led us here — six years of war, over 100,000 Yemenis killed, 250,000 people starved to death, if not more, the entire country destroyed. And the framing was always to protect Saudi borders.
In reality, in 2015, the Houthis were nowhere near the Saudi border, they were deep in southern Yemen, on the verge of overrunning Aden and driving out the Yemeni puppet government controlled by Saudi Arabia. That was when the Saudis launched their undeclared war; that was when the US supported the unrestricted aerial bombardment of a country with no air defense.
And beneath all the other arguments was the widespread fear of Iran, Iranophobia, based on little to no evidence. Iran is a despised Shia Muslim state in a Sunni Muslim world, and the mutual distrust is deep-seated and irrational, except that the Iranians remember that the western allies of Saudi Arabia imposed one of the world’s bloodier dictatorships on Iran. The Iranians weren’t ever very grateful, so how could the US trust them after that: obviously, if Iran had an interest in supporting the Houthis in resisting a puppet government controlled by the Saudi dictatorship, the US had a reason to intervene against the defenders of freedom. Or as Reuters reported in 2015:
The United States is speeding up arms supplies and bolstering intelligence sharing with a Saudi-led alliance bombing a militia aligned with Iran in neighboring Yemen, a senior U.S. diplomat said on Tuesday….
“Saudi Arabia is sending a strong message to the Houthis and their allies that they cannot overrun Yemen by force,” he told reporters in the Saudi capital Riyadh.
“As part of that effort, we have expedited weapons deliveries, we have increased our intelligence sharing, and we have established a joint coordination planning cell in the Saudi operation center….”
That US diplomat in 2015 was US Deputy Secretary of State Antony Blinken, now President Biden’s new Secretary of State. He was an architect of a criminal war rooted in a largely irrational fear of Iran, along with cynical fealty to Saudi Arabia. Since 1979, US relations with Iran have been poisoned by Iranians taking American diplomats hostage, then manipulating those hostages to push Americans to elect President Reagan. There’s plenty to regret on both sides. But on February 5, Secretary Blinken started a new round of talks with American allies aimed at shaping a new relationship with Iran. The trick will be to treat Iran as a rational adversary, and even more so to persuade Iran that the US can be rational, too. The Yemen initiatives are steps in a positive direction, but only baby steps.
The United States will seek to rejoin the United Nations Human Rights Council — as an observer nation, initially — according to a statement made on Monday by Secretary of State Antony Blinken.
“When it works well, the Human Rights Council shines a spotlight on countries with the worst human rights records and can serve as an important forum for those fighting injustice and tyranny,” Blinken said in announcing the decision.
The move comes almost two years after the Trump administration removed the U.S. from the council as both a voting and an observing member. The choice to do so, ostensibly to protest against the council’s actions that Trump officials had disagreed with, “did nothing to encourage meaningful change, but instead created a vacuum of U.S. leadership, which countries with authoritarian agendas have used to their advantage,” Blinken said.
There are 47 member countries on the UN Human Rights Council. No country can serve as a voting member of the council for more than two consecutive three-year terms.
The council has faced a number of criticisms in recent years, most notably for having among its members representatives from countries with notable records of human rights abuses themselves, including China, Russia, Cuba, Venezuela and Eritrea. But while the Trump administration cited the membership of those nations as a partial reason for leaving the council, it is believed that the decision may have been largely prompted by the Trump White House’s desire to bolster diplomatic ties with Israel, which is widely viewed in the international community as a chronic violator of human rights. Biden’s decision to reenter the council will likely earn him the criticism of Republicans.
Former United Nations ambassador Nikki Haley, who served in that post when the U.S. left the council, justified the decision to leave at the time by saying the country’s commitment to the issue “does not allow us to remain a part of a hypocritical and self-serving organization that makes a mockery of human rights.”
Ironically, the administration’s departure from the council came about at the same time that the Trump White House was engaged in human rights abuses of its own — that of forcibly separating migrant children from families and placing them in cages as they came across the U.S.’s southern border. Thousands of families were ripped apart from one another as a result of the Trump administration’s zero-tolerance policy on immigration, and to this day more than 600 children remain separated from their loved ones.
“American leadership still matters. The reality is the world simply does not organize itself,” Secretary of State Antony Blinken proclaimed at his confirmation hearing. “When we are not engaged, when we are not leading, then one of two things is likely to happen. Either some other country tries to take our place but not in a way that is likely to advance our interests and values, or maybe, just as bad, no one does and then you have chaos.”
Much like President Joe Biden, Blinken is a neoliberal Democrat who believes in the doctrine of “Manifest Destiny.” He thinks if the United States does not impose its will and shape the world then there will be no law and order. He cannot fathom how countries could survive on their own. At least, that is how he argues for greater American intervention in global regions.
Blinken was confirmed as secretary of state in a vote on January 26. Not a single Democrat in the Senate voted against Blinken.
He is a longtime ally of Biden, and during Biden’s first term as vice president, he was his national security adviser.
During President Barack Obama’s second term, Blinken was deputy secretary of state. He was also a part of President Bill Clinton’s National Security Council from 1994 to 2001.
Making Venezuela’s ‘Regime Enablers’ Finally Feel The Pain Of Sanctions
Blinken’s predecessor Mike Pompeo, a right-wing Christian reconstructionist, was involved in President Donald Trump administration’s failed regime change operation against Nicolas Maduro’s government in Venezuela. Yet, despite its failure, Blinken told Republican Senator Marco Rubio he thought the Biden administration should keep recognizing Juan Guaido as the one and only true “leader.”
“We need an effective policy that can restore democracy to Venezuela, free and fair elections,” Blinken declared. He even embraced sanctions, despite the fact that they have hampered the country’s ability to respond to the COVID-19 pandemic and resulted in the deaths of tens of thousands of Venezuelans.
“Maybe we need to look at how we more effectively target the sanctions that we have so that regime enablers finally feel the pain of those sanctions,” Blinken added.
However, a report [PDF] from the Congressional Research Service (CRS) dated January 22, 2021, indicates the sanctions by both the Obama and Trump administrations were targeted pretty well and imposed to inflict “pain” against 113 Venezuelans and 13 entities.
…President Maduro, his wife, Cecilia Flores, and son, Nicolás Maduro Guerra; Executive Vice President Delcy Rodriguez; Diosdado Cabello (Socialist party president); eight supreme court judges; the leaders of Venezuela’s army, national guard, and national police; governors; the director of the central bank; and the foreign minister…
Trump imposed sanctions to prohibit Venezuela from participating in U.S. financial markets and block the government’s ability to issue digital currency. Treasury Department officials prohibited corporations from purchasing Venezuelan debt. Venezuela’s state oil company, PdVSA, was aggressively targeted for seeking to evade U.S. sanctions and Venezuela’s central bank was sanctioned too.
Blinken Defends Being Wrong On War In Libya
Obama flouted the War Powers Act and launched a war in Libya against Muammar Gaddafi’s regime without the approval of Congress. It created a power vacuum filled by extremist militia groups and transformed the country into a failed state. Migrants are captured and sold in what the United Nations has referred to as “open slave markets.”
Despite the catastrophe sparked by war, Blinken defended his support for a regime change war. “I think it’s been written about. I — I was the president-elect’s national security adviser at the time. And he did not agree with that course of action.”
Biden was opposed to war in Libya. “My question was, okay, tell me what happens? [Gaddafi’s] gone. What happens? Doesn’t the country disintegrate? What happens then? Doesn’t it become a place where it becomes a petri dish for the growth of extremism? Tell me. Tell me what we’re gonna do.”
Screen shot from Senate confirmation hearing for Secretary of State Antony Blinken
Rather than concede President Biden was right and he was wrong, Blinken signaled to Senate Republicans that he would be their hawk when Biden was too dovish.
Blinken bafflingly blamed Gaddafi, who was summarily executed, for what happened in Libya after his death.
“We didn’t fully appreciate the fact that one of the things Gaddafi had done over the years was to make sure that there was no possible rival to his power. And as a result, there was no effective bureaucracy, no effective administration in Libya with which to work when he was gone,” Blinken argued.
The Bothsidesism Of Blinken’s View Toward War In Yemen
Sarah Lazare recalled for In These Times the horrors unleashed on the people of Yemen, as a result of the Obama administration’s support for Saudi Arabia’s war against the Houthis.
“The coalition bombed a center for the blind, a funeral, a wedding, a factory and countless homes and residential areas, and blockaded Yemen’s ports, cutting off vital food and medical shipments — all while the Obama-Biden administration was in power,” Lazare wrote.
“Indeed, the Obama White House was so complicit in war crimes in Yemen in that its own State Department internally warned key U.S. military personnel could be subject to war crimes prosecution, according to a Reuters investigation published in October 2016. By July 2015, a United Nations official was already warning that Yemen was on the verge of a famine, a premonition that horrifically came true.”
One of Pompeo’s final actions was to sanction Houthis, which caused a disruption to aid groups delivering humanitarian assistance. Biden froze the sanctions for one month the same day the Senate confirmed Blinken.
Asked about the intense humanitarian crisis in Yemen, Blinken drew a false equivalency between the actions of the Houthis and the Saudis.
“We need to be clear-eyed about the Houthis. They overthrew a government in Yemen. They engaged in a path of aggression through the country. They directed aggression toward Saudi Arabia,” Blinken contended. “They’ve committed atrocities and human rights abuses and that is a fact. What’s also a fact though is that the Saudi-led campaign in Yemen to push back against
the Houthi aggression has contributed to what is, by most accounts, the worst humanitarian situation that we face anywhere in the world.”
The Houthis were part of the Arab Spring uprising in Yemen against the corrupt government of Ali Abdullah Saleh. State Department officials generally backed these rebellions against autocratic rulers.
According to a 2017 post from Bruce Riedel of the Brookings Institution, “American intelligence officials said that Iran was actually trying to discourage the Houthis from seizing Sanaa and openly toppling Hadi. Iran preferred a less radical course, but the Houthi leadership was drunk with success. Moreover, Undersecretary of Defense Michael Vickers said on the record in January that Washington had a productive informal intelligence relationship with the Houthis against al-Qaida. He suggested that the cooperation could continue.”
The Obama administration, which included Blinken, did not want to jeopardize a 70-year-plus alliance with Saudi Arabia and backed the monarchy’s intervention.
‘Very Much’ Supporting U.S. Arms Shipments To Ukraine
Blinken expressed his support for arming Ukrainian groups a total of three times. He even reminded Republican Senator Ron Johnson he had the opportunity in 2018 to write an op-ed for the New York Times promoting what senators euphemistically describe as “lethal defensive assistance.”
He told Republican Senator Rob Portman, “I very much support the continued provision to Ukraine of lethal defensive assistance and, and indeed, of the training program as well.”
“To the extent that across a couple of administrations, we’ve been able to effectively train and as well as assist in different ways the Ukrainians, that has made a material difference in their ability to withstand the aggression they’ve been on the receiving end of from Russia,” Blinken asserted.
It is difficult to gauge whether the policy has been effective or helped Ukrainians withstand battles with pro-Russian separatist groups. There is not a whole lot of reporting.
But Lieutenant General Ben Hodges, who was the commander of the U.S. Army in Europe, stated in 2015, “If the U.S. policy changed to provide, say, Javelins, for example, that would probably lead to increased lethality on the battlefield for the Ukrainians. It would not change the situation strategically in a positive way, because the Russians would double down. They would dramatically increase more violence, more death, more destruction.”
“The conflict in Ukraine’s mostly Russian-speaking industrial east, called Donbass, erupted in April 2014, weeks after Russia’s annexation of the Crimean Peninsula,” according to the Associated Press. “More than 14,000 people have been killed in fighting between Ukrainian forces and Russia-backed separatists.”
Professor Stephen Cohen called attention to the role of neo-Nazi forces in Ukraine. The overthrow of Viktor Yanukovych was a “violent coup” led by fascist conspirators opposed to Russia. They conducted exterminations of ethnic Russians. The Azov Battalion, part of Kiev’s armed forces, is pro-Nazi and was banned from receiving U.S. military aid, but it almost certainly obtained weapons shipped by the Trump administration from the black market.
“We are left then not with Putin’s responsibility for the resurgence of fascism in a major European country but with America’s shame, and possible indelible stain, on its historical reputation for tolerating it, even if only through silence,” Cohen concluded.
Antony Blinken sworn in as Secretary of State (Photo: State Department)
US Return To Iran Nuclear Deal Not Happening Soon
It was the United States under Trump that ditched the Iran nuclear deal, not Iran. Still, it is the Biden’s administration position that Iran should first “comply” with U.S. demands before the U.S. rejoins the deal.
“If Iran returns to compliance with the JCPOA [nuclear deal], we would do the same thing and then use that as a platform working with our allies and partners to build longer and stronger agreements — also capture some of the other issues that need to be dealt with, with regard to missiles, with regard to Iran’s activities and destabilizing activities in the region,” Blinken said.
“There is a lot that Iran will need to do to come back into compliance. We would then have to evaluate whether it actually [did] so. So, I don’t think that’s anything that’s happening tomorrow or the next day.”
Meanwhile, as CBS News described in November, Iran has endured a “harrowing, sanctions-fueled coronavirus catastrophe.”
Doctors experience shortages of every supply necessary for fighting the pandemic. “U.S.-led sanctions have choked off Iran’s access to foreign-made chemicals and equipment.”
Iran has begged Biden to lift sanctions that prevent Iran from accessing COVID-19 vaccines.
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Melodramatically, Senator Marco Rubio feverishly asked Blinken has any doubt that the Chinese Communist Party’s goal is to be the “world’s predominant political, geopolitical, military, and economic power and for the United States to decline in relation.”
“I do not,” Blinken replied.
“You have no doubt?” Rubio chimed.
“I have no doubt,” Blinken restated.
From Obama to Trump, U.S. empire has prepared its forces for what it calls “great power competition” between China and Russia. It fears China will take the place of the U.S., leading to one of Blinken’s nightmare futures.
Much of the public is wary over military interventions in the Middle East. The threat of terrorism is no longer enough to justify expenditures toward an ever-gargantuan military-industrial complex. Countering China, however, is an easier sell.
“Forcing men, women, and children into concentration camps, trying to, in effect, reeducate them to be adherents to the ideology of the Chinese Communist Party, all of that speaks to an effort to commit genocide,” Blinken remarked.
Human rights abuses under Biden will increasingly be weaponized to defend policies and operations that ramp up tensions with China. Whether descriptions of China’s acts are accurate or not, the point will be to silence anyone who questions whether the violations are enough to warrant increased conflict. (Of course, how dare anyone raise the matter of U.S. deportation camps and their horrors or America’s mass incarceration of 1–2 million people to point out any sort of hypocrisy.)
After the House of Representatives voted to arm so-called rebel groups in Syria in 2014, MSNBC’s Joe Scarborough asked Blinken about concerns that arms “could end up in wrong hands.” Blinken brushed aside concerns and maintained the U.S. would vet and give arms to “the right people.”
In March 2016, the Los Angeles Times reported “CIA-armed units and Pentagon-armed [militias had] repeatedly shot at each other while maneuvering through contested territory on the northern outskirts of Aleppo” in Syria.
Blinken may not be rapture ready like his predecessor, Mike Pompeo. He may be more willing to wave the LGBTQIA+ rainbow flag when arming proxy forces or backing regime change operations. However, they are both devout believers in American exceptionalism.
He views Biden as a president who will put the “globe back on its axis” after Trump. He will spend his time at the State Department working to “restore democracy” and “renew” America’s “leadership” in the world. Which means Blinken will continue the many callous, cold, and calculating traditions of U.S. imperialism, promote hubris over humility, and commit himself to cloaking ignoble acts in the rhetoric of human rights.
