Politics, Business & Culture in the Americas

Human Rights Group Gives Grim View of the Americas



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The New York City-based rights organization Human Rights Watch (HRW) released its annual World Report, presenting a dismal outlook on human rights in the Americas. This year’s report focused specifically on some of the most troubled countries in the region, including Colombia, Cuba, Ecuador, Haiti, Honduras, and Venezuela, as well as regional economic powerhouses Brazil and Mexico.

HRW released the report in São Paulo, highlighting various abuses across the hemisphere including NSA surveillance, police brutality, political violence, and new laws curtailing freedom of expression. HRW criticized media laws that have effectively silenced journalists in Argentina, Ecuador and Venezuela, as well as the U.S. National Security Agency (NSA) surveillance scandal that was made public by former NSA contractor Edward Snowden last May.

Kenneth Roth, the executive director of Human Rights Watch, stated that the reforms announced by President Obama last Friday did not go far enough. “In none of this has there been a recognition that non-Americans outside the United States have a right to the privacy of their communications, that everybody has a right to the privacy of their metadata and that everybody has a right not to have their electronic communications scooped up into a government computer,” Roth told Reuters in Berlin.

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