United Nations<\/a>\u2019 rights chief on Thursday delivered a blunt critique of global powers, including the United States, in a report warning that many measures adopted by governments in the name of protecting national security violated human rights.<\/p>\n\u201cThe fight against terror is a struggle to uphold the values of democracy and human rights, not undermine them,\u201d said Zeid Ra\u2019ad al-Hussein, the United Nations high commissioner for human rights, calling for counterterrorism strategies that addressed the causes of extremism.<\/p>\n
In his report, Mr. al-Hussein had stern words for the United States, saying that findings by the Senate of torture by the C.I.A. showed that the country had at times \u201cabandoned\u201d its principles in the fight against terrorism.<\/p>\n
\u201cFor a country that believes so strongly in human rights to have swiftly abandoned their fundamentals at a time of crisis is as astonishing as it is deplorable,\u201d Mr. al-Hussein wrote of the United States.<\/p>\n
Few other countries would have had the courage to publicly investigate such actions, he wrote, but he added that the Senate report must now be followed by action to hold people accountable, to investigate the causes and to ensure they do not recur.<\/p>\n
\u201cTorture cannot be amnestied,\u201d he wrote.<\/p>\n
Mr. al-Hussein also denounced the killings of opposition leaders and rights defenders in Russia, and China\u2019s limited tolerance of lawyers, rights activists and journalists.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere is real danger that in their reaction to extremist violence, opinion leaders and decision makers will lose their grasp of the deeper principles that underpin the system for global security which states built 70 years ago to ward off the horror of war,\u201d he told the United Nations Human Rights Council here.<\/p>\n
Mr. al-Hussein condemned the \u201cacts of horror\u201d inflicted by the Islamic State in Iraq, Libya and Syria, and by Boko Haram in Nigeria, but he also drew attention to allegations that the Nigerian armed forces had killed 600 people suspected of belonging to Boko Haram in retaliation for an attack in March 2014.<\/p>\n
\u201cIf true, this would constitute a war crime,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
Extremism grew from years of tyranny, corruption, repression and deprivation of rights, he said, citing abusive governments in Iraq and Syria. \u201cTerrorist attacks cannot destroy the values on which our societies are grounded, but laws and policies can,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
Many measures adopted by governments in an attempt to build a \u201cnational security state\u201d \u2014 including torture, arbitrary detention, mass surveillance and curbs on freedom of speech \u2014 constituted rights abuses, he said.<\/p>\n
Military campaigns and sanctions have their place in the fight against terror, he said, but \u201cthe struggle to combat extremist violence must tackle the visions of injustice that fuel it, as well as the experiences of humiliation, inequality and discrimination.\u201d<\/p>\n
Mr. al-Hussein, the first Arab and the first Muslim to lead the United Nations human rights office, called for \u201ca real campaign of ideas\u201d against the Islamic State that would encourage moderate Muslims to take a stand against extremism. The narrative of persecution and repression propagated by the Islamic State, also known as ISIS or ISIL, had overshadowed the fact that a vast majority of their victims were Muslims, he said.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
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