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<\/a>[Source: rumble.com]<\/p><\/div>2 Jan 2025 <\/em>– In the words of the United Nations, \u201chuman rights\u201d range from \u201cthe most fundamental\u2014the right to life\u2014to those that make life worth living, such as the rights to food, education, work, health, and liberty.\u201d These rights are supposed to be \u201cinherent to us all.\u201d But this lofty ambition has become distorted, not only by the UN itself but by the whole of what Alfred de Zayas calls the \u201cHuman Rights Industry.\u201d<\/a><\/p>\n This industry, headed by the UN Human Rights Council (UNHRC), has multiple layers that include UN \u201cexpert groups\u201d and \u201crapporteurs,\u201d regional commissions like (in the Western Hemisphere) the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights, international NGOs such as Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International, and tens of thousands of other non-governmental organizations.<\/p>\n In part, this industry still attempts to defend real human rights\u2014the most topical example being the remarkable work of the UN\u2019s Special Rapporteur on Palestine, Francesca Albanese. But, take almost any other country as an example\u2014such as the much less publicized case of Nicaragua\u2014and the real purpose of most of the human rights industry is exposed.<\/p>\n This purpose, I argue, is what Noam Chomsky and Edward S. Herman in their 1988 book<\/a> described as \u201cmanufacturing consent,\u201d that is, promoting people\u2019s acceptance of government policies on the basis of a partial picture of issues (in this case, human rights), denying them access to alternative views which would lead them to oppose such policies. The relevant U.S. government policy here is regime change.<\/p>\n In Nicaragua\u2019s case, U.S. regime-change attempts have a long history. Most recently, the country was the subject of a U.S.-funded coup attempt in 2018. Since then it has also suffered U.S. sanctions, which have cost it an estimated <\/a>$2.5-3.5 billion in lost aid for poverty-reduction projects.<\/p>\n Elections held in 2021 prompted further U.S. intervention and, when Daniel Ortega was re-elected, Washington labeled the election a \u201csham\u201d<\/a> and then escalated its attacks. None of these interventions, not even the unilateral sanctions which are contrary to international law, appears in any published \u201chuman rights\u201d reports, despite the very obvious damage they have inflicted on ordinary Nicaraguans. Indeed, a feature common to all such reports is that they focus on the rights only of those opposed to the Sandinista government.<\/p>\n The UNHRC has just published its periodic review of Nicaragua\u2019s human rights record<\/a>. Such reviews are supposed to show a country\u2019s progress toward genuine human rights, as defined by the UN. Civil society groups are encouraged to make submissions about a country\u2019s human rights, supposedly to allow the UNHRC to get a rounded picture.<\/p>\n Nicaragua has made huge advances in social and economic rights since 2007 under its Sandinista government. Just one example, highlighted in a new report<\/a> from the respected international body, the Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean, is that Nicaragua is devoting a larger proportion of its budget to public health than most Latin American countries, and that one of the direct benefits is high life expectancy compared with the majority of the other, wealthier countries. But hardly any good news of this kind\u2014of which Nicaragua has plenty\u2014appears in the UN\u2019s report.<\/p>\n In the hope that the UNHCR might want to present a balanced picture, I joined a small voluntary group, Friends of Latin America, which compiled and submitted first-hand evidence to the periodic review. The group had done this (successfully) to an earlier review on Cuba. However, our submission was rejected, on the spurious grounds that the evidence was not first-hand.<\/p>\n When we complained that this was untrue, the reason for rejection was changed to say we had made no recommendations (which is not required by the UN\u2019s own guidelines). But by then, the periodic review had been published. Not unexpectedly, the majority of the civil society evidence<\/a> it cited supports the U.S. narrative about Nicaragua, that its government is attacking, not defending, human rights.<\/p>\n Much of the evidence accepted by UNHCR comes from dozens of NGOs that champion Nicaraguan \u201chuman rights\u201d but which are actually based in the U.S. and Costa Rica, including more than 20 operating under the banner Coalici\u00f3n Nicaragua Lucha<\/a>. Their evidence is by definition second-hand!<\/p>\n Several have roots in NGOs originally based in Nicaragua but subsequently closed. For example, the Colectivo de Derechos Humanos Nicaragua Nunca M<\/a><\/a>\u00e1s<\/a> was established with funding from a small NGO, the Nicaraguan Center for Human Rights (CENIDH, for its initials in Spanish), which in the build-up to the coup attempt was awarded a staggering $23 million<\/a> by various European institutions, some with government connections.<\/p>\n The re-established NGO has conducted a highly questionable campaign<\/a> around alleged systematic murders in rural Nicaragua. I investigated the background and funding of CENIDH and other NGOs in detail in 2019 for The Grayzone<\/em><\/a>. Like the other NGOs, Nunca M\u00e1s does not declare where its money comes from, but in 2021 it received a \u201cdemocracy award\u201d<\/a> from the U.S. government-funded National Endowment for Democracy, a CIA offshoot<\/a> that specializes in regime-change operations and political propaganda.<\/p>\n Nicaragua\u2019s \u201chuman rights\u201d champions lost their NGO status and were forced to close by the government after the coup attempt was defeated. While this was inevitably portrayed as \u201cpersecution\u201d by the corporate media, the behavior of these bodies suggested they were little more than foreign-funded propaganda outfits. <\/a><\/p>\n Their role, which they executed successfully, was to exaggerate the numbers killed in the coup attempt and to blame all the deaths on the government. For example, Coalici\u00f3n Nicaragua Lucha<\/a> repeated the lie that 350 people were killed during \u201cpeaceful demonstrations\u201d in 2018, denying the reality of horrendous opposition violence that resulted in the deaths of 22 police officers and of large numbers of government supporters and innocent bystanders.<\/p>\n Selectivity in compiling evidence on human rights is not new. Nicaragua\u2019s first human rights NGO, the Permanent Commission on Human Rights, made wildly unjustified claims of human rights<\/a> abuses by the revolutionary Sandinista government in the 1980s.<\/p>\n Another NGO, ANPDH, was set up by the Reagan administration in Miami<\/a>, specifically to defend the \u201cContra\u201d forces against the many accusations that they were victimizing civilians. It is now based in Costa Rica.<\/p>\n More interesting and alarming is how the contamination of human rights work extends to international bodies, whether well-known NGOs like Human Rights Watch and <\/a>Amnesty International, or the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (an offshoot of the Organization of American States, or OAS) or the UNHCR itself. All of these bodies utilize evidence provided by the local \u201chuman rights\u201d NGOs, apparently without questioning its veracity.<\/p>\n Nor do these bodies respond if a lay person points out the errors, omissions and outright lies promulgated by these NGOs. I have found that emails to such international bodies routinely go unanswered, evidence of errors in published reports is ignored and, when official complaint mechanisms are used, nothing happens. The rest of this article gives examples from my personal experiences of dealing with such bodies, from 2018 until now.<\/p>\n During and immediately after the coup attempt, Amnesty International (AI) published two reports on Nicaragua that relied heavily on \u201cevidence\u201d from local NGOs. A group of activists working with the Alliance for Global Justice (AfGJ), alarmed at AI\u2019s obvious bias, researched and prepared a response to the second report<\/a>, which AI pejoratively titled Instilling Terror<\/em>.<\/p>\n Our report, Dismissing the Truth,<\/em> showed in detail<\/a> the bias, omissions and errors in AI\u2019s material. For example, it unraveled the story of a police officer who, according to AI, was killed by his fellow officers.<\/p>\n This unlikely explanation of his murder had been offered by his estranged mother, an opposition supporter, via a local NGO. In reality there was convincing evidence<\/a>, including from his partner (also a police officer), that he was killed by an opposition sniper.<\/p>\n Several attempts were made to engage with AI about its report, including a formal complaint via its published procedures and the offer to discuss it at their London headquarters. There was never anything more than a peremptory response.<\/p>\n The Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR) was one of several bodies invited by the government, in good faith, to visit Nicaragua in 2018 and investigate the human rights situation. After such a visit, IACHR\u2019s GIEI-Nicaragua<\/a> (Grupo Interdisciplinario de Expertos Independientes<\/em>) presented a detailed analysis<\/a> of deaths that occurred on May 30, 2018, when two large marches were held in Managua, one by the opposition and one by Sandinista supporters.<\/p>\n Yet the published material and a video reconstruction (since removed from its website) only examined in detail the deaths among government opponents, referring only briefly to the several Sandinista deaths and not at all to the many injuries to police officers.<\/p>\n Crucially, its report was shown to have ignored and manipulated evidence<\/a> from its own experts. It omitted evidence of the use of firearms by the opposition, manipulated the analysis of a weapons expert, and concluded that the protesters were killed by the police.<\/p>\n As a result of the report\u2019s gross distortions of the May 30 events, a large number of organizations and individuals wrote to the IACHR and separately made a formal complaint to the OAS, but received only a brief reply. Nevertheless, for Spanish newspaper El Pais<\/em><\/a> and for the BBC<\/a>, the reconstruction proved that the police were the killers.<\/p>\n In another example, from March 2021, the IACHR held an open session on Indigenous people\u2019s rights in Nicaragua<\/a>, to which no democratically elected representatives of Indigenous communities were invited, only spokespeople from two <\/a>opposition-oriented NGOs. One was a recipient of USAID finance. The AfGJ, which discovered by chance that the hearing would take place yet managed to make a submission<\/a> by the deadline, was not called to give evidence, nor was its submission even mentioned. In July 2024, the IACHR held another session<\/a> in which only opposition-oriented NGOs took part.<\/p>\n Perhaps the most egregious example of partiality comes from the UN itself. In 2022, the UNHCR established a \u201cGroup of Human Rights Experts on Nicaragua\u201d (GHREN) which, in February 2023, published a highly biased report<\/a>. It went so far as to argue that Nicaragua\u2019s government had committed \u201ccrimes against humanity.\u201d The \u201cexperts\u201d even went beyond their mandate and recommended further economic sanctions.<\/p>\n A \u201dcollective\u201d of small opposition NGOs had been given open access<\/a> to the GHREN and clearly had a strong influence on its work. The Nicaragua Solidarity Coalition<\/a> (consisting of a number of Nicaraguan government-supporting organizations in the Americas and Europe) quickly prepared a detailed critique<\/a> of the report<\/a>. For example, they showed how the GHREN\u2019s chronology of events during the coup attempt in the city of Masaya (where I live) omitted almost all opposition violence, including murders, torture and destruction of municipal buildings and Sandinista homes.<\/p>\n When the Coalition accompanied this evidence with a well-supported petition, sent to the UNHCR and its \u201cgroup of experts,\u201d there was no response. After multiple emails containing further evidence, only a single, one-line reply was received, pointing the Coalition to the material on the GHREN\u2019s website. Since then, further reports have been produced by the GHREN, none with any mention of our submissions.<\/p>\n In The Human Rights Industry, <\/em>Alfred de Zayas makes the point that the real purpose behind such expert groups or commissions is \u201cto denigrate and destabilize the targeted government to facilitate undemocratic \u2018regime change\u2019 as desired by one or more powerful countries.\u201d<\/p>\n They are part of the \u201chybrid war arsenal\u201d which such countries employ. He goes on to refer specifically to the GHREN\u2019s report on Nicaragua, labeling it a \u201cpolitical pamphlet\u201d and saying that its accusations of crimes against humanity are undeserving of detailed comment. He duly signed the Coalition\u2019s petition, along with several other human rights lawyers and experts. His signature carries the weight of someone who is, himself, a former UN expert.<\/p>\n It might be argued that little attention is paid to human rights reports about a small country like Nicaragua. However, if a country is being targeted by Washington, legacy media such as The New York Times<\/em> and The<\/em> Washington Post<\/em> do cover them, often embellishing what they say.<\/p>\n For example, the item in the Times<\/em> on the GHREN\u2019s second report was headed<\/a> \u201cNicaragua Nazis: Stunned researchers cite Hitler\u2019s Germany.\u201d Such media reports, carrying a message that Nicaragua is an authoritarian state, echo and reinforce Washington\u2019s message that Nicaragua is a dictatorship or even, as former National Security Adviser John Bolton put it, part of a \u201ctroika of tyranny\u201d<\/a> with other target countries, namely, Cuba and Venezuela.<\/p>\n The real intention of the UNHCR\u2019s \u201cgroup of experts\u201d can hardly be to appraise and influence the human rights of Nicaraguans. They are not even able to visit the country, because when the Sandinista government found that \u201cexperts\u201d sent by the UN or OAS disregarded much of the evidence presented to them, it closed its doors. Real help to Nicaragua might include recommending that the damaging, illegal sanctions imposed on the country be removed (instead of calling for more of them).<\/p>\n As de Zayas says, such \u201cexperts\u201d might even make a genuine offer of technical help in the field of human rights. But these groups, and these reports, are not really concerned with the rights of ordinary Nicaraguans, nor are they intended to assist the government. At best, they are concerned only with the rights of a small elite represented in the (mainly exiled) opposition groups. At worst, their purpose is to demonize the government, aiding the process of manufacturing consent for Washington\u2019s aim of regime change in Nicaragua.<\/p>\n ________________________________________________<\/p>\n <\/p>\nWho submits this evidence?<\/strong><\/h2>\n
International human rights bodies refuse to acknowledge errors in their work<\/strong><\/h2>\n
The real purpose of \u201cexpert\u201d groups<\/strong><\/h2>\n
<\/a>John Perry is based in Masaya, Nicaragua and writes for the <\/em>Council on Hemispheric Affairs, London Review of Books, FAIR and elsewhere. He can be reached at johnperry4321@gmail.com<\/span><\/a><\/em><\/p>\n