Human Wrongs Council

Publius writes:

Cuba has secured a spot on the new United Nations human rights council, the board that replaced a previous one, which was intended to keep countries like Zimbabwe and Burma off these boards.

Cuba is the biggest human rights violator in the hemisphere. It is one of the few tyrannies in the world that refuses its citizens the right to leave, effectively turning it into an island prison. It has one of the world’s highest suicide rates. Its locals without party connections get no health care, and in fact are denied education if their parents are dissidents. Its residents are not allowed to keep dollar remittances sent by relatives, and instead must accept vile Cuban pesos at rates determined by Castro. Its dissidents are tortured, imprisoned and beaten. It is one of the most horrible places on the face of the earth. Its residents brave shark-infested waters to reach someplace, any place, where they can at long last breathe free air.

Also joining this human rights group?

China, Pakistan, Russia, Saudi Arabia and Azerbaijan.

Lovely. Absolutely lovely. The US declined to join the club because there is no reason to believe that the reconstituted human rights organization (the UN Human Rights Council) will do anything more than the old one (the UN Human Rights Commission). This was the UN's lame attempt at reform, and all it did was repackage the same pablum in a new name.

From the NYT:

Kenneth Roth, the executive director of Human Rights Watch, said: "The good news is that we did better than expected in the voting because Iran and Venezuela both lost. Venezuela's losing shows that bluster and anti-Americanism isn't enough to get elected."

Nations running for the council had to meet more demanding standards than in the past.

The previous commission was long a public embarrassment to the United Nations because countries like Sudan, Libya and Zimbabwe became members and thereby thwarted the investigation of their own human rights records.

The United States did not run for a seat on the council, saying that the new body did not go far enough to correct the deficiencies of the old one. The council was created on March 15, in a 170 to 4 vote, that the United States, Israel, Palau and the Marshall Islands opposed.

Considering that the last board used its position to pummel Israel all while ignoring the atrocities and human rights abuses by its own member countries, there was no reason for Israel to vote for this abomination.

However, this lets the UN say that they're interested in protecting human rights without actually doing anything other than issue missive after missive.

I'm also glad that HRW thinks that this is an improvement because Venezuela and Iran didn't make it into the club. I guess they overlooked the Chinese and Saudi human rights violations and/or consider those countries ones that they can work with.

Ed Morrissey notes:

The US objected to the new Human Rights Council because its so-called reforms showed little difference between the new panel and the old Human Rights Commission. Once again, we see that notorious human-rights violaters have standing to pass judgment on other nations and to direct investigations as they see fit. Cuba will therefore get a pass on its jailing of dissidents and reporters; China will not answer for its forced abortions and its political oppression. The good news, however, is that Venezuela won't be a member despite Hugo Chavez' slavish devotion to Fidel Castro.

Fausta is even more blunt - calling for the US to cut off UN funding.

UPDATE:
Adjusted the name of the posting.