[R-G] Human Rights Watch math (in Georgia)

[Anthony Fenton]

http://machetera.wordpress.com/2008/08/20/human-rights-watch-math/

How many civilians died in South Ossetia, when after being cut off  
from water supplies for more than a month, they were attacked by U.S./ 
Israeli trained Georgian military forces? Somewhere between 133 and  
1,492. 1,492 is the figure given by local authorities. 133 have been  
identified so far by Russian investigators. How many does Human Rights  
Watch claim? Dozens. “We believe we are talking about dozens rather  
than thousands,” claimed Anna Neistat, a Human Rights Watch  
representative.

That’s right, the same Human Rights Watch which sports the blowhard  
Jorge Castañeda on its board of directors, the same HRW that has a  
more than $100 million budget, nearly half of which comes from  
“government funding,” (easily dwarfing the few millions it gets from  
private foundations) and the same human rights group that pays its  
executive director a salary of more than $340,000 a year. Speaking of  
math.

But Human Rights Watch doesn’t stop there. It accuses the Russians of  
dropping cluster bombs on Georgian cities. The accusation engendered  
protests in front of the Russian embassy in Dublin, and was widely  
picked up by major media which usually did not bother to air the  
Russians’ response, which was that they had not used cluster bombs and  
had no reason to do so.

This is nothing new for HRW though, which took a similar approach to  
Venezuela earlier this summer, after swallowing the documents from  
Colombia’s magic laptops, hook, line and sinker - demanding “answers”  
from Venezuela about its relationship with FARC guerrillas.

Human Rights Watch is calling for international organizations to send  
“fact-finding missions [to South Ossetia & Georgia] to establish the  
facts, report on human rights, and urge the authorities to account for  
any crimes.” What a great idea. Too bad there aren’t any international  
human rights organizations with the money to sponsor such an endeavor  
that aren’t, like HRW, completely compromised. HRW’s own reports on  
the conflict reveal a surface willingness to blame both sides (they’re  
not as brutish as Reporters Without Borders after all), as long as the  
lion’s share of the blame rests with the side least favored by the  
United States.