Western governments also have been reluctant to exert pressure for human rights on governments that they count as counterterrorism allies, the report declares.
For example, it says, the Obama administration and the Friends of Yemen, a group of states and intergovernmental organizations established in January 2010, have not conditioned military or development assistance to Yemen on human rights improvements, "despite a worsening record of abusive conduct by Yemeni security forces and continuing government crackdowns on independent journalists and largely peaceful southern separatists."
According to HRW, "One common rationalization offered for engagement without pressure is that rubbing shoulders with outsiders will somehow help to convert abusive agents of repressive governments."
It says the Pentagon makes that argument in the case of Uzbekistan and Sri Lanka, and the US government adopted that line to justify resuming military aid to Indonesia's elite special forces (Kopassus),"a unit with a long history of severe abuse, including massacres in East Timor and "disappearances' of student leaders in Jakarta.
With respect to Kopassus, HRW says that while the Indonesian government's human rights record has improved dramatically in recent years, "a serious gap remains its failure to hold senior military officers accountable for human rights violations, even in the most high-profile cases."
In 2010, the report says, "The US relinquished the strongest lever it had by agreeing to lift a decade-old ban on direct military ties with Kopassus. The Indonesian military made some rhetorical concessions -- promising to discharge convicted offenders and to take action against future offenders -- but the US did not condition resumption of aid on such changes."
As a result, the report says, "Convicted offenders today remain in the military, and there is little reason to credit the military's future pledge given its poor record to date."
Trivializing the significance of pressure, US Defense Secretary Robert Gates justified resuming direct ties with Kopassus:
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