Human rights report critical of U.S.

Amnesty International’s newly-released annual report on the state of human rights in the world asserted that, six decades after the United Nations adopted the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, scores of countries, including the U.S., still torture or mistreat their citizens, The New York Times reported Thursday.

The report cited several “flashpoints” of severe human rights violations that “demand immediate action,” in Darfur, Zimbabwe, Gaza, Iraq, and Myanmar. The report also urged the United States to close down the notorious Guantanamo Bay detention facility in Cuba.

The U.S. State Department had no comment on the Amnesty International report, but the government has staunchly defended its interrogation tactics, military tribunals, and policies of extraordinary rendition in Guantanamo in the past.

The annual report said that people “are still tortured or ill-treated in at least 81 countries, face unfair trials in at least 54 countries and are not allowed to speak freely in at least 77 countries.”

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For Amnesty International Report 2008: State of the World’s Human Rights, click here.