HRW Handbook of Defamatory Techniques
HRW is a non-governmental organisation (NGO) dedicated to the investigation, defence and promotion of human rights. A noble task in which all democrats believe.
However, HRW's scandalous report, "Manual of repression techniques in Morocco", is a major infamy of this organisation that pretends to defend human rights in the world with suspicious techniques.
HRW has been criticised by many governments and also by other non-governmental organisations, as well as by its own founder and former leader Robert L. Bernstein. It is customary for Human Rights Watch to award prizes and recruit activists, indicted in justice cases in their countries around the world, to become its employees to report abuses, their own or others'.
Unlike Amnesty International, which does not accept government funding, but rather voluntary donations from civil society, HRW has around 300 employees on its payroll and requires an annual budget of around $40 million.
A Human Rights Watch delegation was recently in Saudi Arabia: to investigate the mistreatment of women? to campaign for the rights of homosexuals, subject to the death penalty? to protest the lack of religious freedom? to issue a report on political prisoners?
David Bernstein asked in a July 2009 article in The Wall Street Journal entitled "Human Rights Watch goes to Saudi Arabia", only to later reveal that it had gone to raise money from wealthy Saudis by highlighting HRW's demonisation of Israel.
A sudden change of stance since the organisation was known, in the Arab-Israeli conflict, for its bias against the Hebrew country, a familiar sight in the Arab world.
The organisation does not hesitate to openly and unabashedly whip up other governments to take action against alleged human rights abusers or to impose sanctions against countries. It is even capable of pointing its accusatory finger, without hard evidence, at individuals or public officials for their arrest.
In 2014, Mairead Maguire and Adolfo Pérez Esquivel, both Nobel Peace Prize laureates, along with a hundred professors from the United States and Canada, called on Human Rights Watch to take "steps to strengthen the independence" of the organisation.
For many years now, Human Rights Watch had abandoned the sacred principles of neutrality, objectivity and credibility in its reporting on human rights internationally and most particularly towards Morocco.
The title of the report alone portrays the abject bias of Human Rights Watch. And its explicit content exposes its defamatory techniques. It goes beyond describing or stating otherwise repetitive facts, but directly accuses the country with unfounded lies in order to damage its unstoppable progress. It thus becomes a mere report, clearly "against" Morocco. And where HRW portrays itself as both judge and party. Judge, because it draws its own conclusions in the form of a verdict to place itself above the judiciary of an entire country. And party, because it relies on the accounts of the accused who are or will in the near future be its paid reporters.
In this way, HRW's manual is simple: whatever the targeted country does, HRW will always find accusations against it. And when it is short of budget it uses the technique of the highest bidder, in this case Algeria, as the country that pays the most and is most in need of comfort. In any case, HRW will always find both reasons to defame and means to survive.
The HRW report does not come to defend any rights, but to make money above all else. The report does not take into account the real progress that the country has been making in terms of political, civic, cultural, economic and social rights, such as the regularisation of thousands of sub-Saharan Africans who already have jobs all over the country.
HRW's hostile attitude raises countless questions. What right does HRW have to accuse an entire country on the basis of sub judice or sentenced facts? Who is HRW to judge whether a country is democratic or not? How can it arrogate to itself the power to attack other countries against Morocco?