HRW Still Ducks Garlasco and Stork Questions

By Published On: March 29, 2010

The revelations in September 2009 that Human Rights Watch military investigator Marc Garlasco is an avid collector of Nazi memorabilia and author of a book on the subject prompted notable defensiveness and stonewalling by an organization devoted to challenging the conduct of others — and expecting corrective action. A March 28, 2010 story in the Times Online by Jonathan Foreman revisits the issue:

The vehemence of Human Rights Watch in defending Garlasco surprised many. But it made sense for two reasons. Though HRW relishes complaints from infuriated dictatorships, it is not used to its personnel and methods being questioned at home. And it coincided with a series of less-well-publicised criticisms of the group. Suddenly, when its own practices came under scrutiny, it became very touchy.

On September 14 last year the organisation suspended Marc Garlasco with pay “pending an investigation”. But as the months went by, HRW said nothing about the investigation — and nothing about Garlasco’s status.

Finally, the organization removed his name from the staff list on their Web site on March 5, 2010. Foreman notes Garlasco is far from the only dubious staff member, citing the case of Joe Stork. As CAMERA originally reported on Feb 19, 2009, deputy head of HRW’s Middle East department Joe Stork is a radical who spoke at a conference on “Zionism and Racism” in Saddam Hussein’s Iraq in 1976 and who, in a volume based on that conference,

refers to the “Zionist colonization of Palestine” (p 209), the “Zionist settler-colonial enterprise” (p 214), the “infamous Balfour declaration” (p 214), and the “Zionist theft of the property and productive resources” (p 218). (Zionism, Imperialism and Racism, A.W. Kayyali, editor, Croom Helm Ltd.,1979)

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