Human Rights in Libya?

And of course, Libya is now a member of The UNHRC !

“By electing serial human rights violators, the UN violated its own criteria, basic logic and morality,” said Hillel Neuer.

“Watching Libyan dictator Moammar Qaddafi judge others on human rights will turn the U.N. Human Rights Council into a joke. Libya received the least votes after our campaign, but that's little consolation.”

Neuer said that the council now drops from a membership that is 49% democratic, according to the annual survey by Freedom House, to a new low of only 40% (20 of 47 countries). Those figures ought to raise alarm bells," said Neuer.

Based on past voting, the new membership would likely adopt the council's annual, Islamic-sponsored resolution on "defamation of religion" by a vote of 22 to 18. In March, the current membership passed it by a vote of 20 to 17.

“The Libyan government gave a pledge stating that it respects human rights, but in truth it's the same regime that brutally scapegoated five Bulgarian nurses for a crime they did not commit, that tortures dissidents like the late Fathi Eljahmi, and that continues to hold hostage an innocent Swiss businessman."

"In the past year, Qaddafi declared from the UN podium that he rejects the principles of the UN Charter and called for a Jihad against Switzerland. How can he now be elected a member of the UN Human Rights Council?”...

When the new Council was created in 2006, it was supposed to improve on its widely discredited predecessor, the similarly-named Commission on Human Rights. UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan acknowledged that the old Commission suffered from a fatal “credibility deficit”— one that was casting “a shadow on the reputation of the United Nations system as a whole.” He decried a situation where countries sought membership of the Commission “not to strengthen human rights but to protect themselves against criticism or to criticize others.” “Politicization” and “selectivity,” according to Secretary-General Annan, were nothing less than “hallmarks of the Commission’s existing system.”

The new Council, however, promised to be different, with criteria of membership that contemplate electing those who “uphold the highest standards in the promotion and protection of human rights.”

Libya, by any measure, completely fails this test. The Libyan regime of Col. Qaddafi received Freedom House’s worst possible score on political rights and civil liberties, qualifying it as one of the world’s most repressive societies. Political parties, free speech and open media are banned. Violators face jail or the death sentence. Col. Qaddafi’s regime controls the country’s only internet service provider.