The United States Ousted the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights
Mary Robinson, the outgoing United Nations human rights commissioner, discusses the U.S. role in her leaving: "'I am not somebody to just walk away,' Robinson, a former president of Ireland, told Reuters in an interview in Geneva. She said she would have agreed to stay if asked, but added, 'There seems to have been strong resistance from just one country.'
"Robinson has had sharp differences with the Bush administration on several issues. They include her criticism of U.S. treatment of prisoners from Afghanistan being held at the U.S. base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba; the idea of using U.S. military tribunals to try suspects on charges arising from the Sept. 11 attacks, and the lengthy U.S. detention without trial of some suspects.
'I do appreciate that the United States was very traumatized by the attacks of Sept. 11 and geared itself for a situation of being at war,' she told Reuters. 'That meant that it did not put the same emphasis on human rights standards, and it was my job to say that human rights standards apply even more at times like that.'"
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