The situation of human rights “deteriorated” in Brazil, but in El Salvador “There is no credible information” that abuses occur. In Israel and the occupied territoriesThe only war crimes are committed by Hamas. This is the vision of the world, and global respect for rights, owned by the US State Department as part of the Donald Trump administration, reflected in its annual rights and freedoms report in different countries and published on Tuesday.
THE 2024 country reports on human rights practices is very different from last year's document, issued as part of the Democratic Administration of Joe Biden. The publication of the new text had been delayed for months, apparently to align it with the perceptions of the republican administration: so far, the usual presentation has taken place in April or May. Compared to previous editions, sections on respect for the rights of homosexuals and the analyzes of sexist violence have disappeared; Instead, sections on “life” and “personality security” were included.
For years, the report has served as a source and argument for human rights defenders in their mobilization campaigns. The US Congress also refers to him in his decisions, as the approval of arms salesAmong other things. But Trump had already pointed out that changes were coming. During his trip to Saudi Arabia in the spring, the Republican was unleashed at “Western interventionism” and assured that the United States would “give you no more conferences on how to live or how to govern your own affairs”.
In the new report, the nations with which Washington of Trump maintains good relations generally receive positive notes. Those who, for any reason, have irritated the American president receives more hard reprimands than in previous years. Venezuela – including President Nicolás Maduro Accuses links with drug trafficking – is one of the most classified nations of the report: his human rights situation “has deteriorated considerably” when there have been “credible reports” of disappearances, torture, arbitrary detentions, transnational repression and many other abuses, according to the document.
The section on Israel is much shorter than in the 2023 version. There is no reference to Thousands of Palestinian deaths in GazaWhether the Hamas Ministry of Health estimates more than 61,000. There is also no mention of the desperate humanitarian situation or restrictions on Israel on food supplies. The section on war crimes and the genocide ends with two lines: “Terrorist organizations in Hamas and Hezbollah continue to engage in the blind targeting of Israeli civilians in violation of the armed conflict law.”
Another government which is a close ally of the Trump administration, that of President Nayib Bukele in Salvador, saw his notes considerably improved, and the dedicated space of the report was considerably reduced: comments take 75% less than in previous editions. The mentions of the country's prison conditions, which Amnesty International had described as “inhuman”, and allegations of arbitrary arrests have disappeared.
According to the report, in the Nation of Central America: “There was no significant change in the human rights situation in Salvador during the year. Gang violence reports have remained at a historic hollow under the state of exception, because mass arrests have removed the activity of the gangs.
Brazil, on the other hand, whose relationship with Washington has dropped and on which the Trump administration imposed new prices due to the residence of residence of former president Jair Bolsonaro – A former international ally of Trump – is vilified in the report. The State Department, which had previously criticized the president's arrest as a violation of the right to freedom of expression, attacks the government of Luiz Inácio Lula Da Silva, arguing that the restrictions he imposes on access to internet content disproportionately harm the supporters of the right chief.
The report also cites the temporary blocking by the courts of the X social media platform, owned by Elon Musk, as an example of what he considers as the “decline” of human rights in Brazil. “The courts have taken wide and disproportionate measures to undermine freedom of expression and internet freedom by blocking millions of users' access to information on a large social media platform in response to a case of harassment,” said the report.
The State Department also believes that the Brazilian government “has undermined the democratic debate by restricting access to online content considered to be undermining democracy”, disproportionately eliminating the speech of the supporters of former president Jair Bolsonaro as well as elected journalists and politicians, often in secret procedures that lacked regular procedure guarantees. “”
In addition, according to the department of Marco Rubio, the Brazilian government “has not always taken credible measures to identify and punish officials who have committed human rights violations”.
The report also criticized Berlin for his restrictions on extreme right speech. In Germany, the report indicates that “the human rights situation has worsened” during the year due to “restrictions on freedom of expression” and “credible reports of crimes, violence or threats of violence motivated by anti -Semitism”.
The State Department presents its new report “summarized” as more faithful to what American law requires, which obliges it to submit several annual reports on the state of human rights in the world: the general relationship and those specific on questions such as the deal of human beings or respect for religious freedom. But criticisms thwart the arguments of the institution by saying that changes reduce the examination of authoritarian regimes in the world. Among other things, they underline, the sections dedicated to each country cite only one example of the type of abuse they denounce, even if several cases have occurred. Previous editions have listed different cases.
“The report demonstrates what is happening when the political agendas have priority about the facts,” said Josh Paul, director of non -profit policy and a former head of the State Department who resigned to protest against American policy in the Gaza War. “The result is a much shorter product that reads more as a press release of Soviet propaganda than a document from a democratic system.”
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