US report finds government attacks on human rights growing 'more brazen'

By Michael Hernandez

WASHINGTON (AA) - Some governments are growing increasingly strident in their human rights abuses and have taken exceptional measures to punish dissidents across borders, according to a US report published Tuesday.

Rolling out the State Department's annual human rights report, Secretary of State Antony Blinken said governments are "growing more brazen in reaching across borders to threaten and attack critics."

He pointed in particular to an Iranian plot to kidnap an Iranian-American journalist in New York City, Belarus' forced landing of a commercial jetliner to seize an independent journalist and the Syrian regime's threats against nationals and their family members to pressure them against testifying in a crimes against humanity trial in Germany.

The report, which focuses on events in 2021, highlights what the US calls "transnational repression" in which governments have harassed, intimidated or murdered dissidents and their loved ones.

It also found an increased number of incidents where governments have jailed critics at home with more than 1 million people behind bars in over 65 countries for speaking out against their government.

That includes north of 600 people who were imprisoned in Cuba for taking part in anti-government protests in July, according to the State Department.

There was also an uptick in arbitrary detentions in which some governments sought to use the detained as "human pawns" to gain leverage in bilateral relations.

Turning specifically to China, Blinken said Beijing has continued its systematic repression of minority Uyghur Muslims, which the US has determined constitutes genocide and crimes against humanity and has worked "to erode fundamental freedoms and autonomy in Hong Kong, and to carry out systematic repression in Tibet."

The Taliban's violent seizure of power, meanwhile, "precipitated a humanitarian crisis and has resulted in serious erosion of human rights from arbitrary detentions of women, protesters and journalists, to reprisals against security forces from the former government, to growing restrictions on where women and girls can study or work," said Blinken.

"We invest so much effort into documenting these and other abuses year after year, not only because it aligns our most sacred values, but also because respect for human rights is a fundamental part of upholding the international rules based order, which is crucial to America's enduring security and prosperity," he added.

In Russia, the report found "significant human rights issues" that included extrajudicial killings, including of LGBTQ+ persons in Chechnya, enforced disappearances and "pervasive torture by government law enforcement officers that sometimes resulted in death and occasionally involved sexual violence."