Liberia: Next Steps Toward Accountability for War and Economic Crimes

Chairman Smith, Chairman McGovern, and honorable members, thank you for the opportunity to testify today. While the topic of today’s hearing is the effort to win justice for Liberians and bring accountability to those who exploited and abused Liberians during decades of civil war, much more is at stake. The Growing Problem of Human Rights Fraud As Liberia continues to emerge from the civil war era and seeks to solidify its democracy, it desperately needs human rights organizations to fight for true accountability, for not only those who raped, enslaved, and murdered during the West African nation’s two civil wars but also those who sought to profit from such abuses. Now Liberians face an additional problem as scammers cloaking themselves in the mantle of human rights advocacy seek to pervert justice in Liberia for their own prestige, profit, or political interests. Alas, in this, Liberians are not alone. Human rights fraud is epidemic. While boutique human rights organizations like Civitas Maxima and the Center for Justice and Accountability might promote and profit from shoddy if not dishonest advocacy involving Liberia, marquee organizations like Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch increasingly trade upon reputations built in decades past to cover or give credence to fraudulent work today. Liberians and other victims of human rights abuses deserve better. If the United States is to advocate effectively for the respect of human rights, US government officials must act as either advocates for or liaisons to human rights groups to promote reform and accountability within a human rights industry in crisis. When the US ambassador to the United Nations ignores fraud, waste, and abuse in UN agencies, she enables it. To advocate for a clean UN by demanding the organization clean house is not anti-UN. After all, should the US ambassador fight corruption in Mexico, no honest analyst would dismiss this as anti-Mexican. Likewise, the State Department’s ambassador-at-large for global criminal justice must have a record of unquestioned integrity, for any compromise on her part would taint US advocacy across an administration. While many human rights advocates and researchers demand governments and media take their findings at face value, increasingly political and profit motivations undercut their work. An unprecedented crisis afflicts human rights organizations today, made worse by their tendency to circle the wagons, demonize critics, and deflect criticism rather than acknowledge and weed out rot. There are three major types of human rights fraud. The first, and most common, involves corruption of methodology. Too many groupsallow subjective embrace and amplification of certain evidence in pursuit of an ideological agenda. The American Friends Service Committee (AFSC), for example, embraced the Khmer Rouge in Cambodia. It dismissed evidence cited by policymakers about the group’s mass murders as motivated by hatred of capitalism. John McAuliff, head of the AFSC’s Indo-China division, for example, called reports of Khmer Rouge massacres a US attempt to discredit “the example of an alternative model of development.” Russell Johnson, the Quaker organization’s New England regional director, dismissed the “bloodbath stories” as motivated by Washington’s desire to punish those countries who sought “to close their boundaries to exploitation by multinational corporations seeking raw materials, markets for surplus, and cheap labor.” [1] More recently, Amnesty International based its 2022 apartheid calumny against Israel in both cherry-picking of fact and a suspension of ordinary methodology in favor of political polemic. On February 1, 2022, for example, Amnesty International Secretary-General Agnès Callamard and Philip Luther, its Middle East and North Africa research and advocacy director, could not explain why the standards supporting the apartheid label against Israel would not also apply to China, Turkey, and Iran. Nor could they define metrics used to quantify when a debate reached a threshold in which Amnesty International would prioritize one country’s situation over another. [2] The second stream of human rights fraud involves outright falsehood. In July 2017, for example, Human Rights Watch released a report alleging that Rwandan police had murdered a number of petty criminals. [3] The Rwandan government subsequently produced those individuals very much alive. [4] Simply put, either Human Rights Watch sources or personnel fabricated the abuse as part of a long-standing grudge against the Rwandan government and lied about their subsequent due diligence. A variation of such falsehood revolves around the deliberate laundering of propaganda out of political sympathy. A decade ago, for example, Human Rights Watch incorporated reporting from the self-described Arab human rights organization Al Karama into its reporting criticizing Abu Dhabi’s crackdown on Muslim Brotherhood offshoots. They failed to mention that the US Treasury Department subsequently designated Qatari national Abd al-Rahman bin Umayr al-Nuaimi, who founded Al Karama, as an al Qaeda financier. [5] In his other capacity as secretary-general of the Global Anti-Aggression Campaign, an umbrella group to coordinate al Qaeda, the Muslim Brotherhood, and the Ummah Conference, Nuaimi explained his goals: The Muslim ummah—in this era—is facing a vicious aggression from the powers of tyranny and injustice, from the Zionist power and the American administration led by the extreme right, which is working to achieve control over nations and peoples, and is stealing their wealth, and annihilating their will, and changing their educational curriculums and social orders. . . . In resistance to this aggression, the signatories of this statement announce the Global Anti-Aggression Campaign as a vessel uniting the efforts of the children of the ummah, and to remind them of their obligation for victory. [6] Human Rights Watch responded to criticism of accepting Al Karama studies uncritically with indignation and slander of critics. They did not retract reports nor strengthen the checks and balances governing their partnerships. Accordingly, the same pattern repeats today as human rights groups accept uncritically a stream of falsehoods from local partners affiliated with Hamas or the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East as they purport to monitor and report on Israel’s war against Hamas in the Gaza Strip. The third stream of human rights fraud involves pay to play and falsification for profit. In 2009, Sarah Leah Whitson, at the time director of Human Rights Watch’s Middle East and North Africa division, held a fundraiser in Saudi Arabia in which she and Hassan Elmasry, a member of the organization’s International Board of Directors, suggested a quid pro quo. [7] Human Rights Watch would go easy on Saudi abuses if Saudi businessmen donated to support Human Rights Watch expenses. [1] Guenter Lewy, Peace and Revolution: The Moral Crisis of American Pacifism (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1988), 141. [2] Lazar Berman, “Amnesty to ToI: No Double Standard in Accusing Israel, but Not China, of Apartheid,” Times of Israel , February 2, 2022. [3] Human Rights Watch, “All Thieves Must Be Killed:” Extrajudicial Executions in Western Rwanda , July 13, 1971. [4] “Report on Investigations Carried Out by the National Commission for Human Rights in Rustiro and Rubavu Districts on the Human Rights Watch (HRW)’s Report of July 2017,” October 2017. [5] US Department of the Treasury, “Remarks of Under Secretary for Terrorism and Financial Intelligence David Cohen Before the Center for a New American Security on ‘Confronting New Threats in Terrorist Financing,’” March 4, 2004. [6] “البيان التأسيسي للحÙ.لة العالÙ.ية Ù„Ù.قاوÙ.Ø© العدوان” [Founding Statement of Global Anti-Aggression Campaign], May 17, 2006. [7] Nasser Salti, “HRW Lauded for Work in Gaza,” Arab News , May 26, 2009; and David Bernstein, “Human Rights Watch Goes to Saudi Arabia,” Wall Street Journal , July 15, 2009. Read the full testimony here .