DOCSLIB.ORG

Debating the Endtimes of Human Rights | Activism and Institutions in a Neo-Westphalian World Table of Contents

Total Page：16

File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb

Download full-text PDF Read full-text
Debating the Endtimes of Human Rights | Activism and Institutions in a Neo-Westphalian World Table of Contents Changing perspectives on human rights Debating The Endtimes of Human Rights Activism and Institutions in a Neo-Westphalian World Edited by Doutje Lettinga & Lars van Troost The Strategic Studies Project initiated by Amnesty International Netherlands The Strategic Studies Project (SSP) is an initiative of Amnesty International Netherlands. Since 2013 SSP has been mapping out national and international social, political and legal developments which can affect the future of human rights and the work of Amnesty International in particular. Contact: [email protected]. Changing perspectives on human rights 2 Debating The Endtimes of Human Rights | Activism and Institutions in a Neo-Westphalian World Table of Contents List of Authors and Editors 5 Introduction 7 Stephen Hopgood, The Endtimes of Human Rights 11 Michael Barnett, What’s so Funny About Peace, Love and Human Rights? 19 Todd Landman, Social Magic and the Temple of Human Rights: Critical Reflections on Stephen Hopgood’s Endtimes of Human Rights 25 Steve Crawshaw, Neo-Westphalia, So What? 33 César Rodríguez-Garavito, Towards a Human Rights Ecosystem 39 Monica Duffy Toft, False Prophecies in the Service of Good Works 47 Frank Johansson, The Question of Power, a View of a Critical Insider 53 Daan Bronkhorst, Hard Times, not Endtimes: The Case for Human Rights Defenders 61 Stephen A. Lamony, International Justice and the ICC: neither ‘Europe’s Court for Africa’ nor ‘Africa’s Court’ 69 Noel M. Morada, The Responsibility to Protect: Why This Evolving Norm Matters and is Here to Stay 77 References 85 Changing perspectives on human rights 3 Debating The Endtimes of Human Rights | Activism and Institutions in a Neo-Westphalian World Debating The Endtimes of Human Rights | Activism and Institutions in a Neo-Westphalian World Published in July 2014 by Amnesty International Netherlands Cover image: “De eedaflegging van de Vrede van Muster” (The ratification of the Treaty of Munster) Gerard Ter Borgh, 1648, collection of Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam, the Netherlands The digital reproduction appears with full credits in the volume. Changing perspectives on human rights 4 Debating The Endtimes of Human Rights | Activism and Institutions in a Neo-Westphalian World List of Authors and Editors Michael Barnett is University Professor of International Stephen Arthur Lamony is a Senior Adviser on the AU (Africa Affairs and Political Science at the George Washington Union), UN (United Nations) & Africa Situations at the University and the author of Empire of Humanity: A History Coalition for the International Criminal Court (CICC). An of Humanitarianism (Cornell University Press 2011). International Human Rights lawyer, Mr Lamony has been advocating for international criminal justice and an end to Daan Bronkhorst has been working at the Netherlands impunity for over 15 years. section of Amnesty International since 1979. He is writing a PhD thesis on human rights defenders. Todd Landman is Professor of Government and Executive Dean of the Faculty of Social Sciences, University of Essex. Steve Crawshaw is Director of the Office of the Secretary He teaches, researches and carries out international General at Amnesty International, and co-author of Small consultancies on development, democracy and human Acts of Resistance: How Courage, Tenacity and Ingenuity Can rights. His most recent book is Human Rights and Change the World, preface by Vaclav Havel. He worked at Democracy: The Precarious Triumph of Ideals (Bloomsbury Human Rights Watch before joining Amnesty International. 2013). www.todd-landman.com Parts of this essay previously appeared in the Chatham House magazine, The World Today. Doutje Lettinga is a fellow at the Strategic Studies Project of Amnesty International Netherlands. She holds Stephen Hopgood is Reader in International Relations at a doctorate in sociology at the VU University Amsterdam SOAS, University of London. He is the author of Keepers of and has master degrees in history and political science. the Flame: Understanding Amnesty International (Cornell Prior to joining Amnesty, Doutje worked as a researcher University Press 2006), winner of the American Political and consultant, including for Human Rights Watch, Science Association Best Book in Human Rights Award the EU Fundamental Rights Agency, and the European (2007) and most recently of The Endtimes of Human Commission. Rights (Cornell University Press 2013). He also writes on humanitarianism, most recently in ‘The Last Rites for Noel M. Morada is the Director of Regional Diplomacy Humanitarian Intervention: Darfur, Sri Lanka and R2P,’ and Capacity Building at the Asia Pacific Centre for the forthcoming in the journal Global Responsibility to Protect. Responsibility to Protect (APR2P), School of Political Science and International Studies, the University of Frank Johansson has been the Director of Amnesty Queensland, St. Lucia, Brisbane, Queensland, Australia. International in Finland since 1996. He first joined Amnesty He has published policy-relevant research on the R2P in as a volunteer in 1983. In 2013 he edited a Finnish Southeast Asia and Africa. language anthology of critical international texts on humanitarianism: Hyvän tekeminen ja valta (Doing Good César Rodríguez-Garavito is an Associate Professor and and Power), Gaudeamus/Helsinki University Press. Director of the Program on Global Justice and Human Changing perspectives on human rights 5 Debating The Endtimes of Human Rights | Activism and Institutions in a Neo-Westphalian World Debating The Endtimes of Human Rights | Activism and Institutions in a Neo-Westphalian World List of Authors and Editors Rights at the University of the Andes. He is a founding member and International Director of the Center for Law, Justice, and Society (Dejusticia), a human rights NGO and research centre based in Bogotá, Colombia. Monica Duffy Toft is Professor of Government at Oxford University’s Blavatnik School of Government. Previously, she taught at Harvard and served in the U.S. Army. Professor Toft has authored books, including God’s Century (Norton 2011), Population Change and National Security (Oxford 2012) and Rethinking Religion and World Affairs (Oxford 2012). Lars van Troost is head of Strategic Studies at Amnesty International Netherlands, where he worked before as International Criminal Law project officer, coordinator for Political Affairs, head of the Refugee Department and head of Political Affairs and Press Office. He is chair of the Advisory Council of the Netherlands Institute for Human Rights. Changing perspectives on human rights 6 Debating The Endtimes of Human Rights | Activism and Institutions in a Neo-Westphalian World Introduction According to historian Mark Mazower, human rights attained and global affairs? It is not just academics and think-tanks sudden and unexpected prominence during and after the debating these issues, but also politicians and lately even Second World War, amongst other reasons, because they of- presidents have seen a need or opportunities to address the fered “an attractive and plausible alternative” to the League make-up of the international order more than once in the of Nations system of minority rights protection. That system last couple of years in public speeches. had proven to be a blatant failure before and during Nazi rule On 28 May 2014, President Barack Obama gave a speech at over large parts of Europe, would be impossible to resurrect in the United States Military Academy at West Point. Addressing Soviet-dominated post-war Europe, and would be an obstacle West Point graduates, the President reflected on the United to the foreseen expulsion of more than ten million (ethnic) States’ foreign policy. President Obama acknowledged that Germans as soon as Nazi occupation came to an end. No-one the distribution of power in the world is rapidly changing and with a stake in shaping the post-war international system that the US and its partners and allies have to adjust to new seemed to have an interest in reviving the League of Nations realities. He said: system of treaties protecting collective minority rights. And so individual human rights, internationally recognized but “[T]he world is changing with accelerating speed. This not legally binding at first, entered the stage of world politics. presents opportunity, but also new dangers. We know They served the interests of what would soon become the all too well, after 9/11, just how technology and global- powers that be (Mazower 2004). ization has put power once reserved for states in the hands of individuals, raising the capacity of terrorists Despite the emergence of individual human rights in the to do harm. Russia’s aggression toward former Soviet United Nations, the minority treaties of its predecessor, the states unnerves capitals in Europe, while China’s League of Nations, were not terminated, but smothered until economic rise and military reach worries its neighbors. a few years into its existence the UN concluded that they From Brazil to India, rising middle classes compete with should be considered as having ceased to exist some time us, and governments seek a greater say in global fo- ago. In the meantime, human rights found their canonical rums. And even as developing nations embrace democ- formulation in the 1948 Universal Declaration of Human racy and market economies, 24-hour news and social Rights and three decades later, their political apex in US media makes it impossible to ignore the continuation President Jimmy Carter’s new foreign policy.
Load more

Recommended publications
  • Aryeh Neier Interview
    Interview Dr. Daniel Stahl Quellen zur Geschichte der Menschenrechte Aryeh Neier Aryeh Neier, born in 1937, was active in the U.S. civil rights movement in the 1960s and 1970s. In 1978 he turned to the issue of international human rights and was among the founders of Helsinki Watch, which was renamed Human Rights Watch in 1988. After his work for HRW he played a principal role in building the Open Society Foundations, which since the 1990s has supported projects related to issues of human rights. Interview The following interview with Prof. Dr. Aryeh Neier was conducted in his office at the Open Society Foundations by Prof. Dr. Claus Kreß, Director of the Institute for International Peace and Security Law of the University of Cologne, and Dr. Daniel Stahl, coordinator of the Study Group »Human Rights in the 20th Century«, on the afternoon of March 3, 2015. By advance agreement the discussion was limited to two hours and there was no opportunity for a spontaneous extension. Neier spoke in a deliberate manner and required little time to recall the situations and facts he describes. Daniel Stahl I would like to start with your time in England, where you went after leaving Germany in 1939. How did you as a child experience this time – the World War, and the persecution of Jews? Aryeh Neier In general, I had a fairly happy childhood. There is one exception to that. During the first year that I was in England, when I was still a very young child, I was in a hostel for refugee children.
    [Show full text]
  • The Aclu: Evangelists, Nazis and Bakke
    Earl Raab September 12, 1977 THE ACLU: EVANGELISTS, NAZIS AND BAKKE The American Civil Liberties Union is one of these organizations that would have to be created if it didn't already exist. Its single-minded purpose is to protect those First Amendment rights which distinguish a democratic society from a Nazi or Soviet Society. In pursuit of that purpose, the ACLU gets into many issues - and doesn't necessarily end up on the right side of every tangle. The Northern California Chapter of the ACLU has been most recently of great assistance to the Jewish community on the issue of Christian evangelism in the high schools. Last year the evangelizers began to swarm onto high school grounds. The Jewish community objected; and the ACLU followed with a strong legal letter to every school administrator in this area. The ACLU has also supported the Jewish community on related legislative issues in Sacramento. But nationally, the ACLU is in the middle of one of its most controversial cases: it is defending the right of the Nazis to meet in Skokie, Illinois. This is a standard position for the ACLU: 11 I:f everyone doesn't have the right to speak, no one will have that right. 11 Aryeh Neier, a refugee from Nazi Germany and national esecutive director of the ACLU, puts it this"way: "One comment that often appears in letters I receive is that, if the Nazis come to power, the ACLU and its leaders would not be allowed to survive. Of course that is true. Civil liberties is the antithesis of Nazism.
    [Show full text]
  • REPORT Donations Are Fully Tax-Deductible
    SUPPORT THE NYCLU JOIN AND BECOME A CARD-CARRYING MEMBER Basic individual membership is only $20 per year, joint membership NEW YORK is $35. NYCLU membership automatically extends to the national CIVIL LIBERTIES UNION American Civil Liberties Union and to your local chapter. Membership is not tax-deductible and supports our legal, legislative, lobbying, educational and community organizing efforts. ANNUAL MAKE A TAX-DEDUCTIBLE GIFT Because the NYCLU Foundation is a non-profit 501(c)(3) organization, REPORT donations are fully tax-deductible. The NYCLU Foundation supports litigation, advocacy and public education but does not fund legislative lobbying, which cannot be supported by tax-deductible funds. BECOME AN NYCLU ACTIVIST 2013 NYCLU activists organize coalitions, lobby elected officials, protest civil liberties violations and participate in web-based action campaigns THE DESILVER SOCIETY Named for Albert DeSilver, one of the founders of the ACLU, the DeSilver Society supports the organization through bequests, retirement plans, beneficiary designations or other legacy gifts. This special group of supporters helps secure civil liberties for future generations. THE AMICUS CLUB Lawyers and legal professionals are invited to join our Amicus Club with a donation equal to the value of one to four billable hours. Club events offer members the opportunity to network, stay informed of legal developments in the field of civil liberties and earn CLE credits. THE EASTMAN SOCIETY Named for the ACLU’s co-founder, Crystal Eastman, the Eastman Society honors and recognizes those patrons who make an annual gift of $5,000 or more. Society members receive a variety of benefits. Go to www.nyclu.org to sign up and stand up for civil liberties.
    [Show full text]
  • The Man Who Shaped History Nyreview of Books, Michael Ignatieff, October 11, 2012
    The Man Who Shaped History NYReview of Books, Michael Ignatieff, October 11, 2012 The International Human Rights Movement: A History by Aryeh Neier Princeton University Press, 379 pp., $35.00 Aryeh Neier giving a talk about the international human rights movement at the University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, February 2012 When the blind human rights activist and lawyer Chen Guangcheng arrived from Beijing to begin a new life at New York University in mid-May, with the camera flashes ricocheting off his dark glasses, his first moments in freedom recalled the euphoric day in 1986 when the diminutive Anatoly Shcharansky crossed the Glienecke Bridge from East to West Berlin with an impish grin on his face. In both cases, a single person demonstrated the asymmetric power that humbles powerful regimes. When Shcharansky—a dissident who had spent nine years in the Gulag—won his freedom, he and those who had gone before—Andrei Sakharov and Alexander Solzhenitsyn—helped to weaken tyranny and set it on the downward slope to its eventual collapse. The question today is whether human rights activists still possess the power to drain legitimacy away from repressive regimes. Then and now the United States had no desire to upset its relations with a powerful rival just for the sake of human rights, and yet, in the 1980s, human rights demands in Eastern Europe began wearing away the façade and inner confidence of Soviet rule. China now is what the Soviet system was to the human rights movement in the cold war: its largest strategic challenge, the one regime with global reach that believes it can deny full civil and political rights in perpetuity and permanently deny its citizens access to the Internet and the information revolution.
    [Show full text]
  • The Contributions of State Responsibility for Genocide to Transitional Justice
    A NEGLECTED OPTION: THE CONTRIBUTIONS OF STATE RESPONSIBILITY FOR GENOCIDE TO TRANSITIONAL JUSTICE SAIRA MOHAMED* Despite the pervasive involvement of government bureaucra- cies in perpetratinggenocide and other atrocities, the inter- national community's efforts to assist societies emerging from these horrors have relied primarily on establishing the guilt of individuals in criminal tribunals, rather than ad- dressing the wrongs committed by governments through other means. The International Court of Justice diverged from this approach to transitionaljustice when it decided in 2007 that states themselves can be held civilly responsible for committing genocide. Characterizing the decision as re- viving the concept of collective guilt in contravention of ac- cepted principles of transitionaljustice, some warned that holding states responsible for mass atrocity would trigger renewed conflict and prevent peace in societies attempting to recover from violent conflict or mass atrocity. This Article challenges the notion that state responsibility for genocide is incompatible with transitionaljustice. The jurisprudence of internationalcriminal tribunals reveals that despite the tri- bunals' mandate to determine the guilt only of individuals, group dynamics play a significant underlying role in prose- cutions and convictions. Moreover, holding states responsi- ble for committing genocide contributes to accountability and truth-telling, the professed goals of transitionaljustice, while criminal trials come up short. When atrocities are committed through the systematic, coordinated actions of a state, contemplating accountabilityonly in relation to the of- fenses of individuals is imprecise and incomplete. In order to establish meaningful accountability and reveal the truth about a genocide, the state institutions that urged, organ- * James Milligan Fellow, Columbia Law School. The author formerly served as a senior advisor to the Special Envoy for Sudan in the U.S.
    [Show full text]
  • Aryeh Neier Laudatio
    Aryeh Neier Laudatio Aryeh Neier is one of the world’s leading advocates for open society. Founder of two great international human rights organizations, and one-time director of the leading civil liberties organization in the US, Aryeh has been at the center of the global rights movement for more than half a century. He has led campaigns for freedom of expression, criminal justice reform, racial and gender equality, personal privacy, international justice and accountability for crimes against humanity and genocide. To do so, he has developed unparalleled expertise, encyclopedic knowledge and an uncanny ability to marshal arguments and people to advance the cause of human rights. Born in Nazi Germany, Aryeh and his family escaped to England on the eve of World War II. As an American university student, he was inspired by the 1956 Hungarian revolution to start a campus forum on freedom and justice. In 1963, at the height of the Civil Rights Movement, Aryeh joined the staff of the American Civil Liberties Union, where he participated in the struggle for racial desegregation in America. In 1970, he was chosen to direct the ACLU, and he led it through intense controversies over freedoms of speech and assembly during the Vietnam War. Later, he mobilized to defend civil liberties against massive abuses by the Nixon Administration. In 1974, President Nixon was held responsible for these crimes, impeached in the US House of Representatives and forced to resign from office in 1974. But even the impeachment of a president was less controversial than Aryeh’s courageous defense of the freedoms of those with whom he most intensely disagreed – a small band of Neo-Nazis who sought to march through the heavily Jewish town of Skokie, Illinois, where there were many Holocaust survivors.
    [Show full text]
  • Civil Liberties in Uncivil Times: the Ep Rilous Quest to Preserve American Freedoms Kenneth Lasson University of Baltimore School of Law, [email protected]
    University of Baltimore Law ScholarWorks@University of Baltimore School of Law All Faculty Scholarship Faculty Scholarship 2007 Civil Liberties in Uncivil Times: The eP rilous Quest to Preserve American Freedoms Kenneth Lasson University of Baltimore School of Law, [email protected] Follow this and additional works at: http://scholarworks.law.ubalt.edu/all_fac Part of the Civil Rights and Discrimination Commons, Constitutional Law Commons, and the National Security Law Commons Recommended Citation Civil Liberties in Uncivil Times: The eP rilous Quest to Preserve American Freedoms, 2 London Law Review 2 (2007) This Article is brought to you for free and open access by the Faculty Scholarship at ScholarWorks@University of Baltimore School of Law. It has been accepted for inclusion in All Faculty Scholarship by an authorized administrator of ScholarWorks@University of Baltimore School of Law. For more information, please contact [email protected]. bepress Legal Series Year Paper Civil Liberties in Uncivil Times: The Perilous Quest to Preserve American Freedoms Kenneth Lasson University of Baltimore This working paper is hosted by The Berkeley Electronic Press (bepress) and may not be commercially reproduced without the permission of the copyright holder. http://law.bepress.com/expresso/eps/1090 Copyright c 2006 by the author. Civil Liberties in Uncivil Times: The Perilous Quest to Preserve American Freedoms Abstract The perilous quest to preserve civil liberties in uncivil times is not an easy one, but the wisdom of Benjamin Franklin should remain a beacon: “Societies that trade liberty for security end often with neither.” Part I of this article is a brief history of civil liberties in America during past conflicts.
    [Show full text]
  • Endnotes for Professor Nadine Strossen's Book HATE: Why We Should Resist It with Free Speech, Not Censorship
    Endnotes for Professor Nadine Strossen’s book HATE: Why We Should Resist It with Free Speech, Not Censorship (Oxford University Press 2018) Endnotes last updated 4/27/18 by Kasey Kimball (lightly edited, mostly for format, 4/28/18 by Nadine Strossen) Note to readers from Nadine Strossen: I gratefully acknowledge the excellent work of my New York Law School student Research Assistants, who prepared these endnotes. Most of the work was done by Kasey Kimball, who did a superb job as my Managing RA. Other valued contributions were made by Dennis Futoryan, Nana Khachaturyan, Stefano Perez, and Rick Shea. I have gladly delegated the endnoting responsibility to them, consistent with the practice of law reviews. Any readers who might have questions or comments about any endnote or source, or who might seek additional information about any point in the book, is welcome to contact me via Email: [email protected]. I will endeavor to respond as promptly as feasible, consistent with a heavy travel and speaking schedule. KEY TERMS AND CONCEPTS PAGE PASSAGE CITATION xxiv “essence of self- Garrison v. Louisiana, 379 U.S. 64, 74, 75 (1964). government.” xxiv “entitled to special Snyder v. Phelps, 562 U.S. 443, 444 (2011) (quoting Connick v. protection.” Myers, 461 U. S. 138, 145 (1983)). xxiv “the bedrock” of our Texas v. Johnson, 491 US 397, 414 (1989). freedom of speech. xxiv-xxv “information or Turner Broadcasting System, Inc. v. FCC, 512 U.S. 622, 641 manipulate public (1994). debate.” xxv “suppression of ideas is R.A.V. v. St.
    [Show full text]
  • The Real Aclut
    The Real ACLUt Mary Ellen Galett and Nadine Strossenttt INTRODUCTION Andrea Dworkin's polemic against the American Civil Liberties Union' is appropriately entitled "Bait and Switch." While ostensibly attacking the ACLU as anti-feminist and inimical to the rights and needs of women and other disadvantaged groups, Dworkin in fact seeks to discredit an or- ganization that doesn't exist. The real ACLU is and has been for many years something quite different from the white-male-dominated 2 monolith she first imagines and then condemns, primarily for its alleged monomani- acal devotion to disembodied principles in callous disregard of real harms to real people.' The real ACLU-the one with which the authors of this essay have been associated for more than fifteen years-was infiltrated and transformed by women, feminists, and feminist ideas, long ago. The real ACLU celebrates and defends the importance of first amendment val- ues, especially unfettered speech,4 but it also proclaims, nurtures, and struggles to secure for women and historically disempowered minorities" t Copyright 1989 by Mary Ellen Gale and Nadine Strossen. The authors thank Professor Samuel Walker for his valuable help. f Professor of Law, Whittier College School of Law. A.B. 1962, Radcliffe-Harvard College; J.D. 1971, Yale Law School. Professor Gale, a member of the ACLU National Board of Directors and of its Executive Committee, was President of the ACLU of Southern California from 1985 to 1988. She was Executive Editor of The Southern Courier, a weekly newspaper that reported on the civil rights movement in Alabama and Mississippi, from 1965 to 1968.
    [Show full text]
  • FREE SPEECH for ALL Aryeh Neier
    XML Template (2008) [19.8.2008–12:00pm] [20–25] {TANDF_REV}RIOC/RIOC_I_37_03/RIOC_A_330850.3d (RIOC) [Revised Proof] FREE SPEECH FOR ALL Aryeh Neier recalls a controversial First Amendment case – still a landmark in the history of free expression after more than 30 years In 1977 and 1978, when the court cases involving the right of a small group of neo-Nazis to march in Skokie, Illinois were underway, the issue was quite controversial in the United States. Much of the controversy focused on the fact that the town of Skokie – it was called a village, but its population was about 70,000 and so I refer to it as a town – had become the home of a large number of Holocaust survivors. Many Americans thought the neo-Nazis had been deliberately provocative in choosing Skokie as the place to march. No doubt, they enjoyed the extra attention they got because of the demography of Skokie. Actually, however, it would be more accurate to say that the elected officials of Skokie chose to make their town the site of a legal confrontation with the neo-Nazis. This is how it happened. The neo-Nazis had been holding demonstra- tions in a section of Chicago where a small park separated a neighbourhood largely populated by east European immigrants from another neighbourhood that was predominantly African-American. The neo-Nazi demonstrations in that part of Chicago were intended to exploit racial tensions in the area. When a court order blocked those demonstrations, the neo-Nazis sent letters 20 XML Template (2008) [19.8.2008–12:00pm] [20–25] {TANDF_REV}RIOC/RIOC_I_37_03/RIOC_A_330850.3d (RIOC) [Revised Proof] FREE SPEECH FOR ALL – ARYEH NEIER to officials of more than a dozen Chicago suburbs saying they would hold demonstrations there instead.
    [Show full text]
  • Michael Ignatieff the International Human Rights Movement: a History by Aryeh Neie
    Michael Ignatieff The International Human Rights Movement: A History By Aryeh Neier Princeton University Press, 379 ps. ISBN 0691135150 When the blind human rights activist and lawyer, Chen Guang Cheng, arrived from Beijing to begin a new life at New York University a few weeks ago, with the camera flashes ricocheting off his dark glasses, his first moments in freedom recalled the euphoric day in 1986 when a diminutive Anatoly Shcharansky crossed the Glienecke Bridge from East to West Berlin with an impish grin on his face. In both cases, a single individual demonstrated the asymmetric power that humbles powerful regimes. When Shcharansky—a dissident who had spent nine years in the Gulag-- won his freedom, he and those who had gone before—Andrei Sakharov and Alexander Solzhenitsyn -- helped to weaken tyranny and set it on the downward slope to its eventual collapse. The question today is whether human rights witness still possesses the power to drain legitimacy away from repressive regimes. Then and now the United States had no desire to upset its relations with a powerful rival just for the sake of human rights, and yet, in the 1980’s human rights demands in Eastern Europe began wearing away the outer façade and inner confidence of Soviet rule. China now is what the Soviet system was to the human rights movement in the Cold War: its largest strategic challenge, the one regime with global reach that believes it can deny full civil and political rights in perpetuity and deny its citizens access to the Internet and the information revolution forever.
    [Show full text]
  • 1 February 4, 2014 the Honorable
    WASHINGTON LEGISLATIVE OFFICE February 4, 2014 The Honorable John A. Koskinen Commissioner of Internal Revenue CC:PA:LPD:PR (REG-134417-13), Room 5205 Internal Revenue Service 1111 Constitution Avenue NW Washington, DC 20224 Re: Comments on Draft Guidance for Tax-Exempt Social Welfare AMERICAN CIVIL Organizations on Candidate-Related Political Activities LIBERTIES UNION WASHINGTON LEGISLATIVE OFFICE Dear Commissioner Koskinen: 915 15th STREET, NW, 6 TH FL WASHINGTON, DC 20005 T/202.544.1681 The American Civil Liberties Union (“ACLU”) respectfully submits these F/202.546.0738 WWW.ACLU.ORG comments in response to the Notice of Proposed Rulemaking (the “Notice”) issued by the Internal Revenue Service (the “IRS” or “Service”) and the LAURA W. MURPHY 1 DIRECTOR Treasury Department on November 29, 2013. NATIONAL OFFICE 125 BROAD STREET, 18 TH FL. I. Executive Summary NEW YORK, NY 10004-2400 T/212.549.2500 As we explain in detail in our comments below, while we support replacing OFFICERS AND DIRECTORS SUSAN N. HERMAN the current “facts and circumstances” test for political activity by affected PRESIDENT tax-exempt organizations with a bright-line standard, we have serious ANTHONY D. ROMERO concerns with the rule as proposed in the Notice, both from a First EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR Amendment perspective and as a simple matter of workability. ROBERT REMAR TREASURER We comment below on: The danger with the Service’s proposed “electioneering communications-plus” approach in the definition of candidate-related political activity (“CRPA”), which would cover any public communication that refers to a candidate within 30 days before a primary or 60 days before a general election, or, in the 60 days before a general election, refers to a political party; Why the proposed “functional equivalence” test, which would count as CRPA any communication that is “susceptible of no reasonable interpretation” other than one in support of or opposition to a 1 Guidance for Tax-Exempt Social Welfare Organizations on Candidate- Related Political Activities, 78 Fed.
    [Show full text]