(Mizzima) – The US wants the UN to hold Burma accountable for alleged human rights violations, the Associated Press (AP) reported.
The US also named China, Iran, Libya, North Korea, Bahrain, Belarus, Cuba, Sri Lanka, Sudan, Syria, Venezuela, Yemen and Zimbabwe as states that abuse human rights.The US ambassador to the UN Human Rights Council, Eileen Chamberlain Donahoe said on Wednesday 'too many governments repress dissent with impunity', according to AP.
Donahoe criticized Burma for holding more than 2,000 political prisoners in detention.
The 17th UN Human Rights Council session in June examined the human rights records of 192 nations in the Universal Periodic Review (UPR).
The UPR occurs once every four years and gives each country the opportunity to declare what actions they have taken to improve their human rights situation. It also allows states to make recommendations on their fellow UN members' progress on improving their respective human rights situations.
UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon has said that the UPR 'has great potential to promote and protect human rights in the darkest corners of the world'.
According to Amnesty International (AI), Burma accepted 'only 74 of the 190 recommendations made during the review', Mizzima reported on Thursday.
AI has called on Burma to provide clarification of which recommendations it supports and stressed in their statement presented at the council that, 'Many of the 70 recommendations Myanmar rejected are essential to ensure a minimum level of human rights protection in the country’.
Conversely, the US was criticized by the UN Human Rights Council in November 2010 when it urged the US to abolish the death penalty. The UN also called on US President Barack Obama last November to order a full investigation of US forces’ involvement in human rights abuses in Iraq, according to the Guardian Newspaper.
