Human Rights Workers and Obama – A Meeting

( – promoted by buhdydharma )

Sam Stein is reporting over at HuffPo that President Obama met with several human rights and civil rights groups yesterday.  The information is still pretty sketchy as to what they brought up, but there’s more information on what Obama had to say:

Speaking to human rights officials on Wednesday, the president also left the door open for the future release of detainee abuse photos, saying that his administration’s current opposition to the release was dictated by immediate concern over the complications it could cause to America’s mission in Afghanistan.

More broadly, Obama said he was determined to build a new structure for executive oversight that would last beyond his presidency, preempting the problems he currently confronts from happening again.

“We talked a lot about the framework in which he is operating, and he talked about his strong desire to reestablish a system under which the executive is not exercising unfettered authority,” said Elisa Massimino, CEO of Human Rights First and an attendee at the Wednesday affair. “One of the chief differences between him and his predecessor was that he didn’t think he ought to be making these decisions in an ad-hoc, unaccountable way. And so he said that, in thinking through this, he was focused on how his successor might operate.”

Nothing new in Obama’s reasons for blocking the photos, except that he did say it was a matter of timing (which he did not say in his initial statement on why he was blocking them, claiming then that it was a matter of “protecting the troops”) — which makes me wonder, of course, what actions our military are planning in Afghanistan.

Information is also sketchy as to who attended this meeting on the human rights side:

Obama, along with Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel, Attorney General Eric Holder, advisers Valerie Jarrett and David Axelrod, foreign policy hand Dennis McDonough, and counter-terrorism chief John Brennan, held court with a group of academics, as well as officials with the ACLU, Human Rights Watch, and the Center for Constitutional Rights.

I checked the ACLU site and there’s nothing about the meeting there.  I ask whichever intrepid bloggers who are following human rights issues to keep an eye out for any more information about this meeting.

I find it interesting because of the intersection of politics and human rights.  My belief is that unless we see real enforcement of human rights laws by our government, we will always be dependent upon the favor of those in power and the hard work of advocacy groups like the ACLU and CCC, which rarely get the kind of attention from the citizenry they deserve.

This is why I feel it is so important to see those who planned and used the highest powers of our country to torture held accountable the same as any other criminal.  Until we see everyone treated equally under the law, support for human rights will be a matter of mere words and the favor of whoever is in power at the moment.

I’ll keep checking to see if there’s more on this story and if I find anything, I’ll update.