Max Baucus Quotes

The human rights record within China seems to rise and fall over time, but it's very clear that in the run up to the 2008 Beijing Olympics and since then, there's been a greater intolerance of dissent and the human rights record of China has been going in the wrong direction.

Xi has made plain that he will no longer tolerate hearing the words 'human rights' spoken out loud in the same sentence with the word 'China.'

Iran has a dismal record on human rights.

... the Saudis have never shown any respect for human rights, either now or in the past. Even a petty burglar faces having one of his hands chopped off. The liberal press in America prefers to ignore all this, although they don't hesitate to blacken the reputation of Iran..

I will not ascribe to the 'Blame America' club for vicious abuses of human rights, systemic exploitation of Cuban labor, unrelenting repression, and stifling censorship.

There's no doubt that the Chinese government is waging a full-fledged crackdown on Demosisto.

Bhutto's regime is remembered for having one of the worst human rights records in Pakistan's history, and her government did not allow the media freedoms she criticizes Musharraf for crushing.

It's up to any government to decide how to react to the denial of basic human rights anywhere in the world, including Egypt.

Any Human Rights Council reform that allows countries that sponsor terrorism to remain as members, such as Cuba, is not real reform. And in the past, countries such as Libya, Iran and Syria have participated on this council.

As in Pakistan, Tunisian and Egyptian human rights activists are concerned that any censorship mechanisms, once put in place, will inevitably be abused for political purposes no matter what censorship proponents claim to the contrary.

The Chinese people have been forced to forget the Tiananmen massacre. There has been no public debate about the event, no official apology. The media aren't allowed to mention it. Still today people are being persecuted and imprisoned for disseminating information about it.

Being born in Cuba, a country where freedom of speech is non-existent, it's startling to observe how Venezuela, where I was happily raised, is fast becoming Cuba's mirror image: Dismantling of fundamental democratic rights deserved by its people and citizens of the world.

On the human rights side, administration policy has been marked by indifference. When the people of Iran flooded the streets to protest the theft of their presidential election in June 2009, President Obama was silent for 11 days.

It seems clear to me that the Obama Administration has no human rights policy. That is, while in some inchoate sense they would like respect for human rights to grow around the world, as all Americans would, they have no actual policy to achieve that goal - and they subordinate it to all their other policy goals.

Additionally, any Human Rights Council reform that allows countries with despicable human rights records to remain as members, such as China and Saudi Arabia, is not real reform.

I worry about censorship in many parts of the world.

Amnesty International continues to report that extra judicial tortures and murders continue. This is not democracy that we are exporting to Mexico, and this is certainly not what the Mexican workers signed up for.

New Zealand's been pretty quiet on human rights issues, which we will be taking rather more interest in, and in international labor issues.

... authoritarian states sign on [to human rights treaties] solely for propaganda purposes and then find it fairly easy to flout the rules.

Censorship is definitely one of the main issues that you have to live with in China – period!

Having strong human rights laws is important, but they must be effectively enforced.

Governments whose authority is ebbing have been increasingly brazen in their attempts to silence critics.

Turkey still has one of the highest number of imprisoned journalists in the world.

The government that has imprisoned more journalists than any other in the world was democratically elected.

I have been made stateless and hounded for my act of political expression.