76-06-B8
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Human Rights Double Standard[edit]
Transcript[edit]Do you sometimes wonder if there's a double standard on the part of some editorial commentators in the news media? In print and over the airwaves, we get regular doses of morality from them but there is an odd inconsistency about it. For example, there's much talk about human rights. That's something everyone should be concerned about, but the editorial fingers are usually pointed in one direction at such nations as Argentina, Brazil and Chile. (I'll have more to say about the latter in a moment.) When was the last time you read or heard an editorial taking Fidel Castro to task for not allowing elections in Cuba, or for prohibiting Cubans from exercising basic religious freedoms? In some of the news media there is a good deal of editorial handwringing over the United States arms sales to the Middle East. Sometime it takes the form of roundly criticizing military aid to any but the most rigorously democratic nations. South Korea, in particular, is held up as a bad example because that nation's regime has, indeed, engaged in some internal practices we would not condone in our own country. But have you seen or heard any editorial comment deploring the sales of U.S. military hardware to Omar Torrijos, the leftist military dictator of Panama who censors the press, won't permit elections, has suspended civil rights and passes out thinly disguised threats to sabotage the Panama Canal if we don't hand it over to him on his terms? And, when it comes to Vietnam, editorialists often express routine sympathy for the families of American servicemen missing in action -- men for whom a promised accounting has never been made by Hanoi -- but the writers then go on to castigate the United States for being so rude as to vote against allowing the conquerors of South Vietnam a seat in the United Nations. Never mind the fact Hanoi has put thousands of South Vietnamese in concentration camps. Indeed, something called "world opinion" is invoked by these writers to justify the idea that we should embrace Hanoi with open arms. Sometimes I wonder if "world opinion" doesn't consist of the editorials in a handful of European newspapers. As for Chile, the government there may have devised a way-to-end-all-ways to spike communist propaganda against it, as well as giving those double-standard editorialists here something to think about. Recently, the government of Chile announced that it was freeing some 320 political prisoners which it considered a security threat no longer. In addition, it said it would free another 20 on special conditions. Eighteen of these, unnamed, but believed to be leading Marxists associated with the deposed Allende regime, will be freed "subject to the sole condition that other countries can be found to receive them." The other two, top Communists associated with Allende, will be released under more specific conditions. One, Luis Corvalan would be freed on condition the Soviet Union frees a dissident scientist, Vladimir Bukovsky who is in jail there as a political prisoner. The other, Jorge Montes would be freed if Castro releases Hubert Matos, a former leader of the Castro regime who turned against it and was jailed. When it comes to human rights, it seems that what's good for the goose is going to have to be good for the gander, too. This is Ronald Reagan. Thanks for listening. |
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