The West way ahead of other offenders in mass murder

4 July 2006

Re an OpEd by a Queensland law professor on non-Western human rights offenders:

If you are implying that the United States, Australia, the UK and other members of the broad 'Western alliance' do not practise such serious human rights abuses as the nations you name, I suggest that you look at the studies of deaths in Iraq: 655,000 dead as a result of the US-led invasion according to the most credible. Mostly from 'US munitions', and 'mostly women and children'.

That is more people than are killed by the governments of Egypt, Saudi Arabia, China, Cuba, Angola and Azerbaijan put together. You could throw in Osama bin Laden and the claim would still stand.

I realise standards of legal probity in Queensland are 'different'; and being a professor of law there is perhaps akin to being a professor of women's studies in Saudi Arabia.

Notwithstanding, I would not have thought it was beyond you to reach the following conclusion:

If you happen to count mass slaughter as a human rights abuse, the coalition of the willing - that's us - leads the world by a country mile.