It can be hard to keep track of Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, since he doesn’t do public speeches and doesn’t allow the press to follow him around. When Tillerson failed to show up for the release of the State Department’s annual report on human rights, it was a break with tradition, but easy to pass off as just another aspect of the Exxon-exec’s reluctance to actually fill his role at State.
Now it seems that the fact that Tillerson was a no-show on the rights reports, and that he didn’t even bother to send a replacement, was a sign of things to come.
The U.S. State Department has informed Congress that it will proceed with a $5 billion sale of fighter jets to Bahrain, waiving concerns about the Gulf state’s human rights record that had initially delayed the deal under the Obama administration. …
Secretary of State Rex W. Tillerson has embarked on a round of diplomacy with Gulf leaders, meeting with the Saudi and Emirati foreign ministers this month. He has sought to realign Washington’s ties in the region amid concerns among Gulf states that the Obama administration was too preoccupied with human rights.
“The Obama administration was too preoccupied with human rights.” That’s something that could only be considered a flaw by a very select group of people. Autocrats. Dictators. And apparently the Trump regime.
“This deal sends a dangerous signal to Bahrain and all other countries that engage in serious human rights violations,” Sunjeev Bery, an advocacy director with Amnesty International, said in a statement. “It is particularly galling to arm these governments while simultaneously barring those fleeing violence entrance to the U.S. These deals place the U.S. at risk of being complicit in war crimes, and discourage other countries, like Saudi Arabia, from addressing their own human rights records.”
Tillerson may not be speaking in public, but the signal he’s sending is loud and clear. And it includes the idea that cracking down on dissent is just fine.
Rights groups condemned on Monday the decision of the Bahraini Parliament a day earlier to approve military trials for civilians as a “disaster for human rights” in the Gulf Kingdom. …
“It will be used as a speedy way of finalizing their political calculations. The King is turning his back on his every commitment to reform that he claimed he was going to implement,” he says. “It is effectively turning the country into what I would call an undeclared state of martial law.”
Tillerson will likely bring back some notes for Trump.