Tariq Masarwa (“Watching Human Rights in the Prisons for Iraqi Women … and in Jordan!”, December 25) makes several unsubstantiated accusations against Human Rights Watch in an attempt to discredit our latest report on the Jordanian government’s use of repressive laws to restrict civil society’s fundamental rights to expression, association and assembly (“Shutting Out the Critics,” published December 17 in Amman). Instead of addressing the issues raised by the report, he tries to distract the reader with mischaracterizations about our reporting on other countries and about methods of operation.
Human Rights Watch’s report, “Shutting Out the Critics” documents in detail governmental repression under the current 1966 nongovernmental organization (NGO) law and the dangers posed by the proposed NGO law to improperly interfere in the work of NGOs. The report criticizes the Jordanian government for severely restricting the rights of its citizens to peacefully assemble and protest governmental policies. We also call on the United States and the European Union, generous supporters of the Jordanian government, to condition future aid to Jordan on the reform of these oppressive laws.
Masarwa makes a great deal about abuses in Iraqi prisons, accusing Human Rights Watch of ignoring human rights violations there, as if the existence of abuses in Iraq should justify overlooking abuses in Jordan. A quick check of our website shows that we have reported extensively on Iraqi prison conditions since 1991, most recently in a July 2007 report on security detainees in Iraqi Kurdistan. Since the US-led invasion of Iraq, we have reported on numerous US abuses in Iraq and continue to press for accountability and prosecution of former US secretary of defense Donald Rumsfeld, and former director of the Central Intelligence Agency George Tenet for their role in the mistreatment of detainees at Abu Ghraib and elsewhere.
Masarwa also tries to avoid discussing the Jordanian government’s human rights abuses by charging – without presenting any evidence – that we are agents of Western powers and a “mercenary of US intelligence.” Human Rights Watch is a non-profit, independent, non-governmental organization (with no affiliation to the UN or any other governmental or inter-governmental body) that in our nearly 30 years of existence has never accepted funding from any government, arms or oil company. Our sources of funding are made public in our annual report, available on our website at www.hrw.org. Exceptionally, we do not identify witnesses or victims of human rights abuses in our reports where there is a reasonable fear of governmental retribution against those individuals or organizations, such as occasionally happens in Jordan.
Human Rights Watch stands by its reporting on Jordan and our methods of operation. But it serves no one – certainly not the people of Jordan – to continue to ignore serious rights violations by the Jordanian government. It is time for those issues to get proper attention in the media.
