For rights activists, Trump’s victory is a dark cloud with one silver lining. For the next four years, human rights groups will be inoculated against accusations of complicity in US foreign-policy machinations.
Once Trump assumes control, no good-faith critic is likely to condemn Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International or their local counterparts as “agents of the American empire.” After all, the new US president explicitly rejects fundamental rights principles. He advocates torture of terrorism suspects, killing of their family members, creating a national registry of Muslims, expanding libel laws to silence the media and taking away citizenship from US-born children of immigrants.
Until now, the perception of being complicit in Washington’s policies has often hurt rights groups. Ever since President Jimmy Carter proclaimed his support for human rights in the 1970s, critics of US foreign policy have accused Western-supported rights groups of tacitly promoting US hegemony. Here are the three main versions of this:
