Keane Bhatt: While human rights organizations provide valuable information and engage in important advocacy, they can play a role similar to that of The New York Times, demarcating what qualifies as respectable debate. José Miguel Vivanco, director of Human Rights Watch's (HRW) Americas division, singled out Venezuela by saying a 2008 report was written "to show to the world that Venezuela is not a model for anyone." He and HRW's global advocacy director Peggy Hicks wrote a letter to Chávez on November 9, saying that the country was unfit to serve on the UN's human rights council, which The Washington Post repurposed as an editorial two days later. HRW sent no similar letter to Obama, and the United States was quietly re-elected to a three-year term on the same council.
Amnesty International, for its part, went to Chicago for the NATO summit in May, but unlike activists protesting the brutal U.S. military occupation of Afghanistan, Amnesty's Cristina Finch wrote that, "There is real danger that women's rights will get thrown under the bus as the United States searches for a quick exit from Afghanistan . . . This is a defining moment for the U.S. government to show that it will not abandon women."
Carlos Lauría of the Committee to Protect Journalists called his organization a "human rights defender," yet said little to defend beleaguered journalist Julian Assange of WikiLeaks, who faces the threat of extradition to the United States, where he could be held under the same "cruel, degrading and inhuman" conditions that Bradley Manning suffered. Instead, Lauría noted that it was "ironic" that Ecuador "has granted asylum to Assange," given the country's poor reputation on press freedoms. No watchdog groups noted the irony of Ecuadorian editor Emilio Palacio seeking asylum within the United States, which imprisoned an Al Jazeera cameraman for six years in Guantánamo.
Having detailed the behavior of the media, do you think such institutions similarly manufacture consent? And given their sterling reputations in the public sphere, is there a way to hold these accountability groups accountable?
Noam Chomsky: They do some good things. They're part of the educated, liberal, intellectual elite and suffer from its deficiencies; so you hold them accountable in the same way you hold the media and intellectual community accountable. Take Human Rights Watch. There's some things that they've proposed that they keep kind of quiet, but which are quite good. They're way out in the lead in boycotts, divestment, and sanctions on Israel. They've called on the U.S. government to stop any funding of Israel that's in any way related to the occupied territories or to repression inside Israel. That's nice. It's a good plank—they make sure no one hears much about it, but I'm glad it's there.
Venezuela is one of their main hates, so they'll say Venezuela is not fit, but they won't say the United States is not fit, though it's much worse than Venezuela. You can say the same about the press. You can say the same about the Harvard Faculty Club. These are the things you have to struggle against all the time.
