Human Rights Watch criticizes the European Union for putting business concerns ahead of human rights issues.
An excerpt:
In its annual report, Human Rights Watch said the UK in particular was ignoring abuses in Russia and Saudi Arabia to secure business contracts.
And it accused the US of having a deliberate strategy of abusing terror suspects during interrogation.
The US dismissed the report as "based more on a political agenda than facts".
White House spokesman Scott McClellan said the United States did "more than any country in the world to advance freedom and promote human rights".
"We have liberated 50 million people in Afghanistan and Iraq, people that lived under oppressive, brutal regimes, and now they are living in freedom and they have human rights that previously they were denied," he said.
The EU... continued to punch well below its weight
HRW annual reportHe said Human Rights Watch (HRW) should focus on countries that violate and deny people their liberties, not on the US.
There has been little public reaction to the report from European governments.
