U.S. rights record lopsided

Press, 4 February 1987, Page 11

U.S. rights record lopsided

NZPA-Reuter Washington Two United States human rights groups yesterday applauded President Ronald Reagan’s role in ending authoritarian Governments in the Philippines and Haiti, but remained critical of his over-all record. A report by the Watch Committees and the International Committee for Human Rights said that in 1986 the Administration to live up to Mr Reagan’s promise that the United States would oppose tyrannies of the Right and Left. The White House had continued to provide steady support for tyrannies of the Right, including the Governments of South Korea, Pakistan, Indonesia, and Liberia, it said. The Administration’s support for the antiSandinist contra rebels in Nicaragua had led it to “countenance many abuses that it might other-

wise have opposed effectively,” including attacks by the contras on noncombatants in Nicaragua. The White House had continued to denounce vigorously human rights abuses by tyrannies of the Left, with results the report called substantial. Insistent United States pressure had led to the release of political prisoners in Poland and of the best-known political prisoners in the Soviet Union.

if applauded also the Administration’s role in ending the dictatorial Governments of Ferdinand Marcos in the Philippines and JeanClaude Duvalier in Haiti. “The Reagan Administration’s abandonment of Duvalier and Marcos, and its part in persuading them to leave, earned it considerable applause from those around the world who are concerned with human rights,” the report said. The Administration had, however, mismanaged its policies towards Chile, by criticising the military Government of Augusto Pinochet and later opposing a United Nations condemnation of him. “The Administration had thought it could organise a successor to Pinochet on its own terms and when it could not subsequently backed away,” said Aryeh Neier, the report’s editor.