U.K.: Postponing Rights Report Sends ‘Wrong Message’

(London, September 9, 2004) The British government is sending a disastrous message by postponing the publication of its Human Rights Report, Human Rights Watch said today in a letter to the British foreign secretary. The Foreign Office has announced that the publication of the annual report would be “inappropriate” at this time in light of the recent hostage-taking in a school in Russia.

Heinous criminal acts are not a reason to put other human rights abuses to one side. On the contrary. Steve Crawshaw, London Director

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In a letter to the British Foreign Secretary, Jack Straw, Human Rights Watch called on the government to reconsider its decision to postpone the release of the report in wake of the hostage-taking in a school in the town of Beslan in the Russian province of North Ossetia.  
 
“It’s difficult to overstate the callous brutality of the hostage-takers at the school in Beslan,” said Steve Crawshaw, Human Rights Watch’s London director. “But heinous criminal acts are not a reason to put other human rights abuses to one side. On the contrary.”  
 
In its letter, Human Rights Watch quoted Straw’s own words from the introduction to the government’s 2002 Human Rights report: “The promotion of human rights is not just right in itself but an integral part of our long-term security.”  
 
In the past two years, however, this lesson has been repeatedly ignored in many places around the world, Human Rights Watch said. The holding of detainees without trial for two years at a time, and a newly permissive attitude towards torture, are just two examples.