SUVA, April 10 (Xinhua) -- Fiji criticized on Saturday the 2020 report on human rights in Fiji by the United States Department of State, saying that it is selective in its treatment of facts.
According to Fiji Broadcasting Corporation (FBC), Ashwin Raj, director of Fiji Human Rights and Anti-Discrimination Commission (HRADC), has labelled the U.S. report perfunctory, scant in its interpretation and deconstruction of the law, saying it is saturated with generalisations and is selective in its treatment of facts.
He pointed out that the U.S. report is a skewed interpretation of the law and particularly given the fact that there was neither any stakeholder consultation in the formulation of this report, nor any ethic of constructive engagement of the State Department on these human rights matters with the national human rights institution like HRADC.
Raj stressed that the U.S. human rights record is hardly worthy of emulation for the countries like Fiji.
Given that the United States jealously guards the right to free expression, or so it putatively claims, the director said that he will point out some of their human rights failings and the reason he raises these are because ironically some of these human rights failings form the basis of the report on Fiji.
He hit out that the United States is a country that until recently had turned its back on the Paris Climate Agreement, had withdrawn from the UN Human Rights Council, placed sanctions against the International Criminal Court and has yet to ratify all core international human rights instruments. Enditem
