Four Human Rights Activists Murdered

Via Chad Evans comes this story from Baghdad.

From USATODAY:

Armed men stormed a house in Baghdad on Tuesday, killing four Iraqi human rights activists and wounding another, a member of the group said.

The victims belonged to the local International Organization for Human Rights and were shot by several men at their office in the western neighborhood of Jamaa, their colleague Jamal Ibrahim said.

"As soon as we entered the office, we saw four dead bodies," Ibrahim said. "A fifth person was wounded and the neighbors rescued him."

Condolences to the families and friends of those who were murdered.

It is beyond my comprehension of common sense to understand how people can devote their lives to human rights activism in the middle of a war zone. It's suicidal. Imagine the ludicrous image of a few activists setting up an office in Berlin during WWII to try and convince the Third Reich to be kinder to prisoners at Auschwitz.

I don't mean to be cruel, but it seems that human rights activists should be working to support and achieve an environment of civilized peace before they worry about blurry human rights idealism. Yet, oddly, any honest assessment of human rights activism, as it's currently being practiced, has to conclude that the wrong side is being supported. The terrorists can maim and behead innocent civilians all day long and neither Amnesty International (AI) nor Human Rights Watch will issue one peep. But let a U.S. Marine inappropriately handle the Koran and, globally and loudly, human rights activists issue protests. And, the protests endure and are magnified, all the way to the floor of the United States Senate.

Day after day, the terrorists kill innocent people and human rights activists look the other way. As an example, the current (7/13/05 0830 EDT) lead story on the AI website calls for President Bush to stop torturing terrorists that are imprisoned while, as a earlier report indicates, a terrorist bomber today killed 24 children in Baghdad.

I personally believe that the term "human rights activism" is nothing more than a euphemism for "anti-American activism" and, by the process of elimination, "activism in support of America's enemies." On an individual level, I'm sure some people are truly concerned about human rights. However, on an organizational level, and relying on an honest assessment, there is little evidence that human rights groups give one whit about global human rights while it's easy to prove their relentless bashing of the United States.