Daily NEWS Srilanka

The US has come under sharp criticism at the UN Human Rights Council in Geneva for a long list of human rights. These ranged from detention without charge at Guantánamo, drone strikes and NSA surveillance, to the death penalty, rampant gun violence and endemic racial inequality.

The Guardian, UK reported that this criticism came at the start of a two-day grilling of the US delegation by the committee’s 18 experts yesterday. The experts made clear their deep concerns about the US record across a raft of human rights issues.

Commenting on more recent issues, the experts raised questions about the National Security Agency’s surveillance of digital communications in the wake of Edward Snowden’s revelations. This week’s dispute between the CIA and US senators over calls for declassification and release of the 6,300-page report into the Bush administration’s use of torture techniques and rendition matters were also raised.

The committee is charged with upholding the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, a UN treaty that the US ratified in 1992. The Guardian report stated that “the US is clearly sensitive to suggestions that it fails to live up to the human rights obligations enshrined in the convention.

Walter Kälin, a Swiss international human rights lawyer who sits on the committee, attacked the US government’s refusal to recognize the Convention’s mandate over its actions beyond its own borders.

Kalin said this world is an unsafe place. He queried whether it will become even more dangerous if any state would be willing to claim that international law does not prevent them from committing human rights violations abroad? Strong criticism also came on the large number of persons on death row in the US. On the issue of guns Kälin pointed to another “staggering figure” – that there are 470,000 crimes committed with firearms each year, including about 11,000 homicides.