There is a piece in Christianity Today written by a “Timothy Shah,” which basically accuses gay activists of making a mountain out of a molehill in Uganda. Of course, real investigative journalists like Jeff Sharlet disagree. This is Shah’s read on the “Kill the Gays” bill proposed:
Instead, Uganda has attracted human rights activism because of a single legislative stunt by a single low-level politician named David Bahati, a member of the country’s authoritarian ruling party and an Anglican. In 2009, Bahati proposed an anti-homosexuality bill so draconian that it would make “serial” homosexual practice a capital crime and punish pro-gay advocacy with a seven-year jail sentence.
But the legislation has received widespread attention not primarily because of its draconian provisions, whose very harshness has repelled virtually all of Uganda’s major political and religious leaders—including the President, the Catholic Bishops Conference, and a parliamentary committee that recommended the bill be thrown out as unconstitutional, effectively stopping it in its tracks. Instead, a major reason for the attention focused on the bill is that many believe it is the fruit of American evangelical homophobia.
No, it’s both, sir. But he’s getting around to the real thrust of his piece, which is to absolve American Evangelicals of any responsibility for the consequences of their words and actions.
In the telling of journalist Jeff Sharlet, it’s the American fundamentalist gospel that turned supine Ugandans into raving homophobes. American “fundamentalists,” “evangelicals,” and advocates of “theocracy”—terms Sharlet uses more or less interchangeably—see Uganda as a crucial theo-political “laboratory.”
No, it’s more that the country was already rabidly homophobic [elsewhere Shah points out the statistic that a whopping one in five Ugandans are okay with homosexuality. Whoopie!], full of corrupt leaders who have chosen, on an institutional level, to make homosexuality the next scapegoat for the problems faced by the citizenry. This sort of strategy, of convincing people to blame people completely unrelated to them, or people who have less than them, has played out in the United States for years. The entire Tea Party movement is a case study of this sort of peasant behavior spurred on by political and business leaders. So in this already homophobic climate, American Evangelicals decided to go in and “help” with that “love of Christ” that looks like love only to people who are already inside their echo chamber.
But here is the statement from Shah that demonstrates that he fundamentally doesn’t get it. Referring to the conference led by Scott Lively, Don Schmierer and Caleb Lee Brundige in 2009, Shah says this:
There are, in fact, many reasons to doubt a causal or conspiratorial relationship between Bahati and American Bible-thumpers. Perhaps most important is that the agenda of the Americans who ran the 2009 conference was therapeutic, whereas Mr. Bahati’s bill is remorselessly punitive. His bill even contains provisions that would render the pastoral care advocated by the conference organizers illegal in Uganda.
Ha ha, like hell it was! First of all, no respected, grown-up mental health or medical association considers the work of Exodus to be “therapy” in any sense of the word. Moreover, this was the conference where Scott Lively dropped his “nuclear bomb,” in the form of a series of bold-faced lies fed to the Ugandan attendees, chief among them the insinuation that homosexuals were the kinds of people who caused the Rwandan genocide. Rwanda, of course, is next to Uganda. Perhaps Shah is not aware of the strange, bitter, gay-obsessed history of Scott Lively. If that is the case, click here. And perhaps Shah has never seen video of the presentation. If that is the case, hit the play button below.
So no sir, please don’t tell us that American Fundamentalists don’t bear any responsibility here because, after all, they were just trying to bring therapy and pastoral care to the poor people of Uganda! Those may be the buzzwords for extremist Christian eliminiationist policies against gay people, but they’re buzzwords just the same.
And encourage your ideological cohorts to stop trying to “help.”
Guest post by Bruce Wilson, cross-posted at Talk To Action.
Government funded missionaries in public schools? The idea would flabbergast many of America’s founders, most certainly the architects of the United States Constitution. Here’s the background: As a February 23rd, 2011 story from the Florida Independent, by Andy Kopsa, describes, the American leader of the Florida-based abstinence-only education program Project SOS endorses Martin Ssempa, a leading Uganda backer of the so-called “Kill the gays” bill that may soon come up for a vote in Uganda’s parliament. Project SOS has received over six and a half million dollars in federal funding, from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services since 2002, to teach abstinence education in Florida public schools. The funding continues into the present – in September SOS received over $450,000 from HHS.
But the Uganda tie is far from the most controversial aspect–the founder and head of SOS says the program was inspired by God, and her church identifies the Project SOS program as one of the “ministries” it supports, with SOS head Pam Mullarkey as a “missionary”…federally funded, that is.
To begin with, should federal funding still be flowing to a sex ed approach proven to be largely or wholly ineffective, according to a 2007 federally commissioned large scale study by Mathematica Research?
And, what if the program founder says plans for Project SOS came directly from God, advocates child-beating, and suggests that Catholics aren’t truly saved? What if SOS is actually a stealth ministry backed by a right wing church that teaches both anti-labor union ideology and Young-Earth Creationism, and whose longtime pastor is promoting antigay doctrines in Florida prisons?
One cable I found particularly interesting came after Rick Warren was forced to distance himself from the Ugandan bill and its proponents, because it so completely captures how and why anti-gay sentiment is being used to distract the people’s attention from what’s really wrong in that country. It happens all over Africa every day, and in many other countries around the world. Indeed, it happens in our own [see: Tea Party movement], and it’s what happens when ruling classes learn how to train their citizens to react like peasants, ready to scapegoat a minority at a moment’s notice. Here’s what the US diplomat had to say at that time:
Recent condemnations by Warren and other U.S. based individuals have further isolated Bahati. His homophobia, however, is blinding and incurable. Bahati, Buturo, and particularly Ssempa’s ability to channel popular anger over Uganda’s socio-political failings into violent hatred of a previously unpopular but tolerated minority is chilling. XXXXXXXXXXXX described Ssempa as an anti-homosexuality “extremist.” XXXXXXXXXXXX said he opposes the legislation not because he favors homosexuality, but because legalizing persecution of homosexuals is the first step toward state sponsored persecution of other minority groups.
Emphasis mine. But doesn’t that sound familiar? Think back to every Republican “family values” campaign in the past thirty years, as they have scapegoated gay people, who have nothing to do with the admitted failures of the patriarchal “family” model in the United States. I have said many times that we should be careful not to simply think of Uganda as “over there,” but, especially with the influence American Evangelicals have had on the process in that nation, understand that patriarchal, “pro-family” forces will simply do what they can get away with in a given society. They know that their views are increasingly socially unacceptable in modern, civilized nations, but when they go to Uganda and other places, it’s a far different story.
Matt Barber is over at OneNewsNow today, trying to brush off the connections between extremist Christian anti-gay rhetoric like that being employed in Uganda and incidents such as the murder of Ugandan gay activist David Kato.
Liberals and homosexuals are speaking out in response to Ugandan police reports about homosexual activist David Kato being bludgeoned to death at his home in a country where government leaders have called for the death penalty against homosexuals. According to Matt Barber, director of cultural affairs for Liberty Counsel, the news fits a pattern.
[...]
“Somewhere in the world, violence occurs, [and] liberals rush to blame conservative and Christians’ — quote — ‘incendiary rhetoric’ for the violence,” he reports. “And then later, that rhetoric is proven to be irrelevant, and the left ends up kind of playing the fool with egg all over their face.”
He says that is the case in Uganda, where police have arrested a man who lived with Kato and has confessed to murdering him for not paying for sexual favors. So Barber decides the narrative that hate and anti-homosexual rhetoric were somehow responsible for the cruel murder has crumbled around liberals.
“Once again, they have overreached to the point where they have exposed themselves for the propagandists that they are and have really damaged their credibility in the mainstream public eye,” the Liberty Counsel cultural affairs director notes.
That’s sort of pathetic. It would be less pathetic if there was really a chorus of people who agreed with Matt Barber, but really, it’s just a few anti-gay wingnuts who are rushing to cover their asses and avoid responsibility, just as it was with the spate of gay teen suicides related to bullying. You can be sure that they will never take responsibility for anything bad that happens to a gay person. They really still think that Elizabeth Vargas’s 20/20 report on Matthew Shepard’s death told “the real story.” Sad, but true.
You’ll remember that we really don’t know the full story on the Kato murder; the story the Ugandan police are telling is fascinating in that it is exactly the same “gay panic” story that the Religious Right loves to embrace in the United States. Moreover, there is no reason to trust the police in a corrupt nation such as Uganda, especially one which has been on an anti-gay tirade for the past couple of years.
But don’t worry. Bam Bam will continue to sleep like a baby.
Peter LaBarbera, Bryan Fischer, Matt Barber, and the rest of the usual suspects, are triumphantly asking for apologies from the mainstream media and gay activists for bringing up the rhetoric of Scott Lively in connection with the murder of Ugandan gay activist David Kato. Why are they so happy? Media reports are coming out that seem to possibly tell a slightly different story, at first glance, if you’re not paying attention, and if you read this story in a vacuum without any foreknowledge of what’s been going on in Uganda. Here’s Bryan Fischer:
According to Reuters, a man has now confessed to the killing, and police are saying a “personal disagreement” let to Kato’s untimely death. Meaning, of course, the whole thing had nothing to do with Lively or any other pro-family leader in America.
In fact, the police spokesman said quite pointedly that the murder “wasn’t a robbery and it wasn’t because Kato was an activist.” So the whole hate crime meme is out the window, gone, history, in the archives.
The confessed murderer, one Nsubuga Enock, is a “well-known thief,” according to police, and had been in prison until January 24. He had been staying with Kato since getting out.
Okay, “police are saying” that it was a personal disagreement. I can’t imagine why we’d have any reason not to believe the police in a nation that is seriously considering a bill that would criminalize homosexuality, and where political and religious leaders routinely tell citizens the sorts of malicious lies about gay people that they’d never get away with in a first world nation. Indeed, Scott Lively was sort of the one who kicked all of this off in Uganda, as he ran across the pond to find perhaps the only people brainwashed enough to believe his disturbed, malicious bullshit about gays causing the Holocaust and gays causing the Rwandan genocide.
Let’s look real quick at the Reuters article Fischer references, to see if he’s leaving anything out:
Kato had been featured in an anti-gay newspaper in October that “outed” people it said were gay and called on the government to kill them. His photograph was published on the cover under the headline: “Hang Them.”
The activist said he had received death threats since the publication.
[...]
Gay rights activists told Reuters they feared police may try to cover up a motive of homophobia to protect the Western aid upon which the country relies. They said they wanted proof from police that Kato was not killed over his sexuality.
And has that proof been forthcoming? Nein.
The rest of the story that’s being floated by Ugandan police smells a lot like the “gay panic” crap we’ve been hearing for years in cases like that of Matthew Shepard [which Religious Right wingnuts still try to absolve themselves of responsibility for]:
A man whom police arrested yesterday on allegations of killing David Kato, a human rights activist, has reportedly told police that the deceased coerced him into sodomy. David Kato, 46, an advocacy officer for the gay rights group, Sexual Minorities Uganda, was found with head wounds at his home in Bukusa, Mukono District but died on his way to hospital last Wednesday.
Police spokesperson Judith Nabakooba said the suspect had been hiding in Nakabago village, Mukono District. “It is true the suspect has been arrested but we need to record his statement first before giving a formal statement,” Ms Nabakooba said yesterday. But a police source, who preferred anonymity because he is not authorised to talk to the press, said the suspect confessed to killing Kato because he was reportedly tired of engaging in homosexual practices.
“We have taken him to Mukono Magistrate’s Court to record an extrajudicial statement,” the source said. “He told us that he killed Kato after he failed to give him a car, a house and money he promised as rewards for having sex with him,” the source said.
Anonymous sources to the extremely bigoted Ugandan police are good enough for Matt, Pete and Scott if they allow them another day of blissful ignorance of the people they hurt every day.
Surely you can understand the predicament the Ugandan government finds themselves in. They couldn’t ignore or even sanction the murder of a gay man, as they normally would, due to the international publicly surrounding the case. But they also couldn’t allow the murder to be construed as politically motivated, lest the resultant outrage dry up those annual millions in foreign aid.
And don’t overlook that this so-called “motive” precisely fits the long-running Christianist claim that evil local gays are using using Western-supplied money to recruit Uganda’s helpless youth into homosexuality, a charge repeated in the very issue of the newspaper that called for Kato’s murder.
We will never get the truth, you can bet on that.
No, we won’t. But here’s what we DO know. An anti-gay crusade is being waged in Uganda, aided by American Evangelicals who, in that climate of hatred and ignorance, are allowed to express their true fear and bigotry more clearly and dishonestly than they get away with in the United States. A people suffering from poverty, malnourishment, disease, the Lord’s Resistance Army, and a corrupt government are, of course, being led to scapegoat their problems on people who haven’t done a damn thing to hurt them and who never will, and idiot American Evangelicals are okay with that. Why? Because no one in the First World gives a damn what they say anymore! This is why they spend so much money on “missions” in the first place! Give impoverished people economic empowerment and education and medical care and tools to pull themselves out of poverty and they’ll have a better life, but they’ll become less and less likely to drink the religious Kool-Aid, and they might just get smart enough to realize that their goverment has been screwing them over for decades.
But if you go over there with a Bible and a scapegoat for all their problems, you protect the power of the people screwing them and you win converts without having to help a single person.
Anyway, since we’re supposed to be “apologizing to Scott Lively,” let’s see what the poor dear has been doing the past couple of days. Oh, look, as Alvin McEwen points out, Scott wrote another anti-gay screed about Uganda! Let’s see what it says:
Uganda is being murdered. The nation once called “The Pearl of Africa” by Winston Churchill, a lush and beautiful country as fertile as the Nile Delta.
By whom?
The murderers are the lavender Marxists, the now-global network of sexual revolutionaries bent on remaking the entire world in their own perverted image, whose juggernaut has toppled even once mighty Britain, crushing under their lavender boots after eight centuries the symbol of its Christian power: the Magna Carta, whose first principle had proclaimed “The English church must be free!”
These revolutionists of Sodom, who march triumphantly through all the major cities of the western world to flaunt their defeat of moral law, and who hold both Hollywood and the heart of America’s president in their iron grip: These very same zealots have fixed their malevolent gaze on Christian Uganda.
Uganda is the only country in the world with a national holiday commemorating its rejection of sexual perversion. Every June 3 it honors the 22 young men and boys who were tortured and roasted alive in 1886 by homosexual King Mwanga, because they refused to submit to sodomy. Is it any wonder, then, that Uganda has reacted violently against the army of agitators, led by George Soros, who now seek to re-homosexualize Ugandan culture?
It is as if the militant ranks of “Code Pink” were transported back to 1890s America to agitate for “sexual freedom.” Our great grandparents would not have countenanced this. There would have been violence, as there has now been in Uganda.
[...]
There is indeed evil in Uganda today, but it is not the reaction of Christian and Moslem citizens to the rape of their culture. It is the pink-gloved hand of western powers that are cutting the throat of Africa’s most God-fearing country, and one of the world‘s most promising Christian democracies.
He actually believes his own crap. He’s not even a good imperialist white man preying on the downtrodden. He actually believes that a gay army, led by George Soros [wingnut dogwhistle!], is traveling to Uganda to “re-homosexualize” the culture. Even though we know, from SCIENCE, that there are gay people in every country, tribe, religion, or any other population group you can think of. That’s sad, pathetic and sick. Get help, Scott Lively, for your own good.
So again, there will be no apologies forthcoming, from me or any other writer with a soul and an ability to use Google, analyze information and sleep at night with a good conscience.
But keep running away from it, guys. Keep running away from the consequences of your worldview. Every time you open your mouths, a few more people fall onto the side of fairness and equality and away from your fearful bigotry.
Yeah, its early….but sometimes we have to sacrifice for equality.(6am-8am).
Outside the Washington Hilton
1919 Connecticut Ave., N.W.
On the morning of February 3, Get Equal will gather on the sidewalk outside the National Prayer Breakfast to educate the breakfast attendees on “The Family’s” role in this annual event, to stand up to their bigotry, and to stop the Family’s interference in Uganda, which itself has been called a trial run for what they want to happen in the U.S.
The defilement of slain gay activist David Kato’s funeral by a “preacher” and local villagers who refused to bury his body shows the capacity of Ugandan society to commit extreme violence against gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender people. Thanks to the hateful messages spewed by American evangelical missionaries and the sermons preached by local religious zealots, the public has been whipped into a fanatical anti-gay frenzy. Sexual minorities have been so demonized that their lives are now seen as worthless.
When people are dehumanized to this extent, it is not difficult to imagine the possibility of large-scale atrocities. If anyone doubts this, they should read Daniel Jonah Goldhagen’s book, “Worse Than War: Genocide, Eliminationism, and the Ongoing Assault Against Humanity. The author makes a persuasive case that when a group is singled out, labeled inferior and deemed a threat to society, the public is primed to carry out violent acts that are otherwise unthinkable.
Given the level of vitriol in Uganda, no one was surprised when Kato was bludgeoned to death with a hammer in his home last week – least of all this brave gay activist himself who warned that “people were following him” and that “he feared for his life.” As the saying goes, one is not paranoid if the threat is real.
The treatment of this hero at his own funeral shows the moral depravity of what many people try to pass off as religion. According to various news reports, a graveside preacher exploited the somber affair to use it as an opportunity for condemnation.
“The world has gone crazy,” the pastor railed through a microphone. “People are turning away from the scriptures. They should turn back, they should abandon what they are doing. You cannot start admiring a fellow man.”
Gay activists (about 100 had arrived on a bus) seized the microphone and an unidentified woman defiantly shouted, “Who are you to judge others? We have not come to fight. You are not the judge of us.”
News reports say that villagers defended the preacher and a “scuffle” ensued. The local mob then refused to bury the body and it was left to gay activists to dispose of their friend’s remains.
The lack of empathy, human compassion, and respect for Kato’s body is astonishing. Only a spiritual cesspool with “religious” teachings ranging from vacuous-to-vaudeville-to-violent could produce such monsters. Is this really what religion has been reduced to in Uganda?
Ironically, the one figure that emerges as Christ-like is Kato.
“David lived his life for his friends, even defending those he hardly knew,” writes a Ugandan lesbian activist Val Kalende. “David was always concerned for the safety of others. Many times, he put himself out of the way for the sake of others. He fed, dressed, comforted, and housed many members of the community who were homeless.”
Kalende rightfully places the blame squarely at the feet of militants – both American and Ugandan — who are currently promoting The Anti-Homosexuality Bill. Indeed, most of the trouble in Uganda began when American evangelicals like Rick Warren, Lou Engle, and the secretive organization The Family began coming to Uganda to export their culture war.
The situation intensified in 2009 when two “ex-gay” activists joined holocaust revisionist Scott Lively at a conference in Kampala to discuss the evils of homosexuality. Two weeks after the conference, Lively bragged that he had delivered a “nuclear bomb against the gay agenda in Uganda.” This was followed by the introduction of the harsh Anti-Homosexuality Bill and Uganda’s Rolling Stone tabloid (no relation to the American magazine) publishing Kato’s picture alongside other gay activists with the call to hang them.
Interestingly, we have no compunction about expressing our outrage when Muslims mask nefarious intentions behind the front of Islamic charities. Yet, we rarely reserve the same righteous indignation when Americans hide murderous designs behind the veil of evangelical charities.
When Christian extremists plan trips to developing countries, the State Department ought to begin asking what their “mission” is and what they are trying to “revive” during their revivals. If the answer is religious agitation and stigmatizing minorities, their passports ought to be revoked for the sake of national security.
President Barack Obama made a powerful gesture by recognizing Kato’s contributions to humanity.
“In Uganda, David showed tremendous courage in speaking out against hate,” Obama said. He was a powerful advocate for fairness and freedom.”
The next step should be that key members of Congress threaten to cut off funds to Uganda if the Anti-Homosexuality Bill passes. The perfect name for this action would be, “The David Kato Human Rights Bill”.
There certainly is a direct line to be drawn between the work of American Evangelicals like Scott Lively and the brutal murder of Ugandan LGBT activist David Kato.
The three Americans who spoke at the conference — Scott Lively, a missionary who has written several books against homosexuality, including “7 Steps to Recruit-Proof Your Child”; Caleb Lee Brundidge, a self-described former gay man who leads “healing seminars”; and Don Schmierer, a board member of Exodus International, whose mission is “mobilizing the body of Christ to minister grace and truth to a world impacted by homosexuality” — are now trying to distance themselves from the bill.
[...]
Mr. Lively and Mr. Brundidge have made similar remarks in interviews or statements issued by their organizations. But the Ugandan organizers of the conference admit helping draft the bill, and Mr. Lively has acknowledged meeting with Ugandan lawmakers to discuss it. He even wrote on his blog in March that someone had likened their campaign to “a nuclear bomb against the gay agenda in Uganda.” Later, when confronted with criticism, Mr. Lively said he was very disappointed that the legislation was so harsh. Human rights advocates in Uganda say the visit by the three Americans helped set in motion what could be a very dangerous cycle. Gay Ugandans already describe a world of beatings, blackmail, death threats like “Die Sodomite!” scrawled on their homes, constant harassment and even so-called correctional rape.
Then Joe ties it all up with a bow:
Yesterday Scott Lively’s “nuclear bomb” against Ugandan gays went off in the form of the iron bar which crushed the skull of David Kato. In some countries, it’s possible that Lively would be under arrest today. Also complicit in this murder is Peter LaBarbera, who for years has worked to publicize and praise Scott Lively’s evil agenda. Then there’s Tony Perkins and the Family Research Council, who last year paid lobbyists $25,000 to convince members of Congress to block a planned resolution denouncing Uganda’s gay death penalty bill. And let’s not forget Pastor Rick Warren, who supported, funded, appeared with, and publicized the work of Uganda’s leading anti-gay activist, Pastor Martin Ssempa.
Rhetoric matters. And as much as hate group leaders like Lively and LaBarbera bitch, moan and try to create false equivalencies wherein the Left are the “Real Haters,” the fact of the matter remains that there is a bodycount on just one side. Meanwhile, Christian Right stories of victimization are usually somewhere between tall tales and melodramatic crying about having to play by the same rules as everyone else.
Police in Uganda should urgently and impartially investigate the killing of the prominent human rights activist David Kato, Human Rights Watch said today. Kato had dedicated his life to fighting for the rights of lesbians, gays, bisexual, and transgender persons (LGBT) in Uganda, facing threats and risks to his personal safety.
The government should ensure that members of Uganda’s LGBT community have adequate protection from violence and take prompt action against all threats or hate speech likely to incite violence, discrimination, or hostility toward them, Human Rights Watch said.
“David Kato’s death is a tragic loss to the human rights community,” said Maria Burnett, senior Africa researcher at Human Rights Watch. “David had faced the increased threats to Ugandan LGBT people bravely and will be sorely missed.”
“The Anti-Homosexuality bill has already generated hatred before it has even been enacted and it should immediately be withdrawn by its author,” Burnett said. “President Yoweri Museveni should categorically reject the hate that lies behind this bill, and instead encourage tolerance of divergent views of sexuality and protect vulnerable minorities.”
Reports by U.S. and Ugandan news organizations that Uganda’s Anti-Homosexuality Bill had been “shelved” are, once again, incorrect.
This misunderstanding periodically occurs when reporters or editors misunderstand Uganda’s legislative usage of the term “tabled,” which means that a bill has been put “on the table” for eventual consideration, not that the bill has been withdrawn. The misunderstanding also happens when officials in the Uganda leadership anonymously seek to dampen foreign donors’ alarm over Uganda’s worsening human-rights situation with false assurances.
Conservative Christian pundit Warren Throckmorton clarified the bill’s status in a post on Monday.
Today, Mr. Tashobya [member of the committee overseeing the bill] told me that nothing had changed regarding the time table for considering the bill. He said the Parliament will reconvene very soon after the February 18 elections and consider the remaining bills, including the Anti-Homosexuality Bill.
Throckmorton adds:
Jeff Sharlet reported a conversation with [David] Bahati on the matter. CNN interviewed David Bahati who said clearly that the bill would be considered. In November, Bahati told me that the bill would be considered before the Parliament ended in May. He confirmed that again to Rachel Maddow in December when he was in the US. Finally, Stephen Tashobya, the chair of the Ugandan committee which has jurisdiction over the bill, told me that the Anti-Homosexuality would be considered after the nation holds elections in February. Today, he said nothing has changed.
Peter Hargmier: He talks of a youtube clip of Mayor Cory Booker responding to a question about gay marriage.
He nails it!
Enjoy! :D
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y4Z7tl7Vy8U...
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The situation intensified in 2009 when two “ex-gay” activists joined holocaust revisionist 
This misunderstanding periodically occurs when reporters or editors misunderstand Uganda’s legislative usage of the term “tabled,” which means that a bill has been put “on the table” for eventual consideration, not that the bill has been withdrawn. The misunderstanding also happens when officials in the Uganda leadership anonymously seek to dampen foreign donors’ alarm over Uganda’s worsening human-rights situation with false assurances.
