so you're issuing on the syrian issue was in late august when the organization put out a statement in which is sad that not gassing children in their sleep is a basic humanitarian norman obviously everybody would agree with you on that but the major disagreement in the world is who actually was gassing children in their sleep and it seems to me that despite positioning itself as an international organization standing up for universal human rights human rights were seen to be taking the position of the american government in assuming that it was the assad regime who actually perpetrated that chemical weapon attack i wonder why is that if you are indeed an international organization why not wait for the united nations which is the main international body concluded its investigation and then decide and what the course of action should be well i should say that you know human rights watch does not represent any government we represent the truth and i would

love it if the u.n. inspectors were going to tell us who they think was the author of this horrible chemical weapon attack but unfortunately that's not their mandate they're going to come back and tell us the obvious which was that chemical weapon was used we all know that we've seen the videos we've seen the pictures their mandate is not to tell us who initiated it now human rights watch has done our own investigation looking at the facts looking at the delivery mechanisms looking at who had those delivery mechanisms we've also reviewed the evidence put forth by a number of governments we've looked at you know the summary denials put out by russia or syria which you know frankly are fairly unconvincing i have to say that. everybody has looked at this the bulk of the evidence points to syrian government forces and human rights watch and we putting out our own report on this shortly but this is based on our facts and that the own investigation this is not based on you know what the u.s. government might happen to be what it what its position might up and it with all due respect your position seems to be pretty similar to the position of be a u.s.

government at this point and i wonder if in your assessment of the situation on the ground in your analysis of the avenues that you've just mentioned whether you have any access to be intelligence reports that are often cited by the american officials you know well first of all you know again you shouldn't assume that we adopt the u.s. government position simply because the u.s. government human rights watch may have come out to the same position on a particular case that even we are very. painted with these years ago and so you know to say that you can't you let me finish please you know to say that you know human rights watch is somehow taking the u.s. government position because we may agree on the interpretation of the facts you know that's that's really sort of taking a political view of that when we're trying to take a factual view of it we're trying to say what does he have it in stem and straighten and frankly and this is not looking at the intelligence reports this is looking at the the material we've been able to collect you know dealing with people on the ground analyzing it to our own arms experts looking at you know what the

capabilities of the syrian government were you know who would have for example the fifty leaders of a parent lease aaron some kind of chemical agent who would even have that quantity and nobody's alleged that the rebels have that quantity you know who would be able to transition to twenty four lashings as easily may have provided the rebels with sarin gas and other other poisonous gases and those allegations were made not just by russia or syria who is reports you called and convincing but also number three european countries traditional u.s. allies are quite quite captive of the claim. means that they said tax was perpetrated by the assad regime and even more skeptical of the proposed course of action it will have to say that the let's if we can get to the proposed course of action in a moment we should focus on the facts first but you know nobody believes this idea that the that somehow the syrian government would let the rebels shoot off you know

eleven different projectiles from government controlled areas in chew only rebel controlled or contested areas you know if this is some kind of hidden conspiracy that just doesn't meet the deadline is there we're going to see if if you live in and there is an advantage to be happy to sell to you can be you can anybody can dream up a while concoctions but you gotta look at the fox only party to the conflict known to have sarin or chemical weapons in this quantity is the syrian government the only government to control the territory from which the attacks were launched was the syrian government the attacks were launched only against areas where the rebels either held the territory or they were contested areas of the government wanted to be able to retake everything including the projectiles you points in the direction of the syrian government that we can just close our eyes and say oh we can imagine in some alternative universe that it might have been somebody else but i don't let's get realistic nobody believes lho i mean mr roth let's get the realistic if

indeed the adventists convincing as they use intelligence and them american officials intelligence why there's evidence i'm not presented to the u.n. security council you just pointed out you know the investigation may not reveal who actually conducted that attack so if your house. persuasive set of evidence and prove down submitted to the united nations submitted to the security council lad there will decide this issue rather than tacitly endorsing which i think is what you are doing the proposed unilateral strikes by the united states again as a way i'd be happy to talk about the military strike question in a moment but your question you know why do we not present. evidence to the u.n. security council on the syria question i'm not such a can't be serious you know the you're obviously your russia today you know everybody when they think about russia in the security council they think about you know it's much. presumption don't even think you're coming why don't you please let me vanish you know or you know are you going to condemn assad's atrocities yet are

you going to condemn you know the the clear widespread bombing in target of civilians in rebel held areas and yet are you going to send perpetrators on both sides to the international criminal court and yet you know of course nobody trusts the security council at this stage because of the russian veto but i wish it were otherwise i wish russia were sitting there as a fair arbiter but they're sitting there as the new nation nothing is going to be enough to satisfy them to give up on their murderous ally assad mr roth but again all due respect if it was only russia who would who would be opposing the proposed intervention that. was being feresten and i think you would agree with me that there is. a lot of discussion on that issue and a lot of disagreement on that issue again not only among the security council members but also around the world many western countries the. flag bearers of

democracy and human rights in europe in asia around a whirl of that contrasting those issues and let's not act like add they want support of the united states the united states is prepared to go along because nobody has an appetite for these type of intervention and not many countries that can verify hellenistic listeners is is the. no no there is clearly considerable dispute about whether there should be a unilateral military response there is no serious dispute about the assad government being responsible for the chemical attack now let's move on because you would. i want to confuse the two let's move on to the supper question given that it's very likely that all the evidence points in the direction of the syrian government as having been responsible for this attack then the question comes up what should you do about it now you know in an ideal world i would say send assad to the international criminal court that way we don't have to bomb anybody we can

just try him in a fair trial in general and we never had saddam anybody see you know so i need a south american government that's that's an interesting phrasing here no i don't align myself with your argument to say that in terms of the watch what what should be done i mean given that that russia is blocking the path to the international criminal court then the question is what else can be done in there basically are two options on the table one is to do nothing to say you know assad you may have just killed fourteen hundred civilians but you know cappy on the wrist please don't do that again you know and we all know where that's going to lead to believe the same direction that we've already seen with assad you know using cluster bombs against civilians bombing civilian breadlines using incendiary while bombs on schools bombing medical facilities you know causing some some two million refugees to flee so you know we know where that route goes in the side just trusting assad we virtually reprimanded him he won't do this again and so so then the question is

how can you punish him hi can you deter him so that we don't get a repetition of this horrible atrocity what's your answer to that well mr also and i don't know what the answer to that but i also think that there is there and i was reading you what are you proposing housing there to offer well there are three options on the table one is the international criminal court with russia blocks one is a little tap on the wrist which won't do anything what do you know one other option would be the geneva conference that diaby united states is that consistently sabotaging bread let me go back to they are some of the options that you just laid out you said that did nothing is the worst thing possible and obviously we have some examples in history when the united states used the same type of rhetoric with . human rights watch support and decided to do something in iraq and afghanistan in libya in mali as a result with. the human rights situation in all those countries and i didn't i don't understand that you're dependent on your for the latest and i understand you're dependent on your briefers but you should please ask your parents to be

a battleground. for the. human rights watch never supported the invasion of iraq we never supported the invasion of afghanistan in fact if you look at the two thousand and four human rights watch world report the entire lead essay was devoted to why bush's intervention in iraq was not a humanitarian intervention so i don't know where you get these ideas that human rights watch the words mr olson if you were there and indeed if you would i read what you put on there and create a lot of. interaction and before out from that intervention i don't understand why do you think these time around you should support the it's not their intervention they don't get another arab. as i said human rights watch has not taken a position for or against the idea of military retaliation for assad's use of chemical weapons but we are very conscious of the fact that if nothing is done if assad gets away with this with impunity we can have every reason to expect that he will expand the use of chemical weapons is he the rhetoric we're getting of will be

united to raise the bill on the economy. but mr off unfortunately we have to take a short break now but when we come back the ultimate dilemma is it worth risking human lives for the sake of human rights that's coming up now on one of the part. wealthy british style. markets why not scandals. find out what's really happening to the global economy in the kinds of reports on. the bible says many times that gold is the father of all forms.

i'm sure he told me to set up these children. in the orphanage that you know in times he just fell nobody needed me. my fellow pilgrims'. my dad is probably the kindest soul in the world. one can't abandon the child emails that they wouldn't survive so he endures to the end. dream can be summed up in just a few what's russia and the world with no wolf and we don't want any children to wake up in orphanages firmly believe that the parents out there every child speedo my ego's.

all the face people. if you're with us your kids today are growing researcher. welcome back to roll the part where we're discussing the painful choice between human rights and human lives with human rights watch executive director ken roth mr all just before we went to break we you were very critical of russia and the dad's

laws in the security council and indeed in many of your statements on syria human rights watch often take specific issue with russia and china. as you call it intransigence on on syria but correct me if i'm wrong i was searching your archives and i was never able to find any statement that was critical of saudi arabia or qatar or turkey or indeed the united states specifically for the involvement in the syrian conflict because we may take different political sides here it's clear but when it comes to war and what fuels war and what all to mckinney leads to such an enormous death toll that you were talking about clearly it's not one dimensional there are two at least two sides to these war and one can one can assume that this war would have gone into its third year and that the death of wouldn't have been so high if the weapons were in weren't flowing and you know

we've been critical really of all sides and i'm glad you raised that because particularly on the point of the weapons flows that is something that we are you know critical of the saudis and critical of the qatari is for for providing weapons particularly to all nusra the highly abusive extremist part of the rebel movement we've been very critical of russia for continuing to supply arms to assad despite the tens of thousands this. billions he has killed we've been critical of the united states for continuing to purchase helicopters from are also boren export the principal russian export or even at the same time is that supplying the killing machine of assad we've been critical of britain and france for allowing boren export to advertise its wearer's the trade fairs outside paris and london while it's supplying the killing machine of assad so yes there's blame to go around i'd like to if i could could i come back to your opening statement though you say we're talking about human rights versus human life and that was a really odd formulation i mean let me just play that out

a little bit you know i guess what you're saying is that in the name of human rights might a military strike be authorized and therefore we have to. think that's many times you have to look into yes but let me let's play that out here because first of all you know even if you take with the u.s. is proposing what they would be doing is to either strike empty buildings like the defense ministry which would probably be worthless or something that would be more significant would be you know bombing the planes in the helicopters on an air base in their midst and i know there have been going to have been to them because just last year and let me just tell you that the ministry of defense is recreated in a very have a republican laded area and there are a lot of civilians and round that area where the ministry is located so your assumption that it would be very easy even for a match you look at first of all i'm not advocating it targeting the defense ministry which is pointless i mean may remember that when the u.s. targeted the belgrade defense ministry and they are totally destroyed it was not any civilian casualties nearby but my point is that doing nothing means many

civilians get killed it means that assad basically continues to use chemical weapons with impunity and we're going to see not just you know fourteen hundred kill but fourteen thousand or one hundred forty thousand so you know where does that stop so you know doing nothing does put human lives at stake the kind of limited military strike that is being proposed i mean yes there may be some civilians whose real whose lives. they're just pretty human rights groups would certainly monitor very closely to see that everything is done this possible to spare civilians but what this is really about is do nothing and see you know second hundred in the third one hundred thousand civilians killed more than trying to stop assad's killing machines despite russia's support for ok mr of just two years ago the international community tried to stop yet another killing machine that machine was operated by more market offie and i know that human rights watch and you personally. rather complimentary of that intervention and you thought that was

a success and i know that many many of your reports have been quite critical of the libyan human rights record but i think the big stand a few men rights violations in libya were very big understated because under gadhafi sure he was a dictator and people were thrown into jail but these time this time around they're you know people are thrown into jail in that thousands they have absolutely no recourse to justice people are being killed on the streets for simply you know expressing dire very political opinion so i wonder if you still think two years down the line if you think the leap in the libyan intervention was a success because back then you had one dictator and you could apply pressure to him but this time around you have thousands of little dictators and you have absolutely no leverage with them not their human rights watch as an organization or the international community as a collective force well i mean what you're describing first of all you know under

gadhafi and i was in libya under khadafi you know it was a terrible regime and while you didn't get the large scale killing of civilians until light at the end when the intervention took place that's what it was designed to stop. it didn't stop there you know its numbers in prison you had then of in other words the you know first of all you know periodically would who commit large scale prison massacres i mean. the summary executions it was a it was a very still generate the executions and mass killing george wanted to believe gaging again you're interrupting again but i'm content to know how many intervention what prompted the intervention was when he was about to take benghazi with every prospect of a massive bloodbath and that's when when nato intervened now what it's come out of there is there's obviously the biggest problem today is there is a posture of militia which the government doesn't control and that's its principal task right now is to build a monopoly of security forces so that you can't have each little militia deciding

the law you know one particular militia is holding the sun here another militias running this or that town obviously you can't build the rule of law with that system and that's the challenge that's ahead of us in libya well mr roth i think the assumption here especially in the west is that dictatorship is the worst thing ever and there could be nothing worse than dictatorship and i can understand that but now i can do it but if we take the issue of we be you just sat there but you know where the main task is to build security and the you know improve government institutions strengthen civil society but. seriously you econ do any of that in libya these days and again back in graphics that gadhafi is times he had some incentives to at please go along receive something that the west and human rights community were demanding the militia on the ground in libya these days have absolutely no incentive to do that and i wonder what would stop the situation

developing in taking the same scenario in syria if those if those strikes that the united states is proposing are carried out of an event assad is indeed eliminated as the had ever stated for his governing structure is limited do you think that will ultimately improve the human rights situation on the ground what will two points i mean first of all i don't think to cheat or ship is the worst possible scenario. it's about women but the worst situation is something like what you have in syria today where you have a series of militias you know nobody controls the terror of the country different parts of the country controlled by different factions one of those factions happens to be the government but you have a mass killing going on so this is not just a dictatorship nobody was proposing military intervention but it's just assad ruling over a unified country the united states wants intervention to get a handle and assad well what are you talking about that was the policy statement by president obama get syria read of president assad let's go back to three years ago

before the war broke out nobody was talking about overthrowing assad he was a ruthless dictator but he wasn't killing five thousand civilians a month and so you know nobody was talking about intervening what is prompting the intervention is not the dictatorship it's the killing of civilians supported by russia so that's what this is about you know obviously you know you have a russian allies that are dictatorships like turkmenistan and uzbekistan these are ruthless countries but nobody start talking about military intervention there what's prompting the talk about military intervention is the slaughter of civilians well i'm sure you are aware of the u.n. death toll figures for each are now over at one hundred thousand people killed in syria what is much less publicized is around eighty percent of the death toll i actually mammals and if they're not female there are no children they are males and there was also a report not so long ago a couple of months ago by the united nations that suppose that at least half of those victims were from the government side so when you're talking about the

killing of civilians i think i think it is likely misrepresenting the figures at least as they're put out by the united nations because. civilians from the women children and their degree because most of the people who are being killed in syria these days i'm males and i wonder why that is because i mean statistically that would be highly unlikely well first. of all your principle point which is that you know try to pretend that the killings on both sides and everybody is equally guilty that it's just not true the vast majority of the killing of civilians has been by the government in rebel held they are contesting the un your driving test doesn't mean if you're going to please you're interrupting me you're contesting if you're going to just look on the reality human rights watch as have people on the ground that you're not calling the un figure misrepresenting the u.n. figures the vast majority of the civilians killed have been in rebel held area killed by. government attacks whether by aircraft or helicopters or artillery or

rockets things that the rebels don't even have now yes you know fortunately many women and children are fleeing not every male in syria is a fighter many males are civilians and they're getting killed as well because you know they're the ones who are standing on the bread lines when assad attacks the bread lines they are the ones who are working in the fields when cluster bombs are dropped so let's not misrepresent the figures human rights watch has been critical of the rebels you can look at the front page of thursday's new york times and see that indeed you know the rebels commit atrocities i'm not covering up that at all but let's not pretend that the two are equal the party to this conflict that has been responsible for the mass slaughter of civilians with the chemical weapons attacks being just the latest example is assad the syrian government well mr roth you have the screen time to see your opinion. one reason why the desolate opinion this is fact you're just making things up i want to get you. in france mean to you

the united nations disagreement isn't well again and i think we were presented to facts facts in the past on the issue of iraq on the issue of libya on the issue of not only ammo how it turned out to be maybe in the united states in washington people have some sort of collective net agnieszka but the rest of the walt has a bit longer memory but since we have just a few minute. let me come back to the issue of the they were a let's let's not you know that this is your let me just finish i mean this is just you know logic to say oh you know the u.s. was was wrong on the weapons of mass destruction in iraq which was therefore we can make anything up we want about civilian casualties in syria that's completely illogical but then i said i'm not doing the wrong thing is he i am harking to vast majority nations taking the initiative the united nations the international community upholding the existing structure that the international more that exists but while what you seem to be arguing is that the united states is above the law

the united states has to do something when the rest and i don't disagree i would love it if we could go to the u.n. security council and it would in force the law the various law against the use of chemical weapons but what happens when anybody goes to the u.n. security council to try to discuss the killing of syrian civilians if you run into the russian yet you have an imperfect legal system here you've got a system that's built up with the permanent five members of the security council can veto to protect their friends that's what russia is doing right now with assad and as a result you've got nobody who's in forcing the last of the u.n. the u.n. is stymied because of the russian veto and so the mystery it's not. even a general ban ki-moon a couple of days ago came out with a statement calling on the united states to wait until the report by being a u.n. inspectors the united states is not interested in listening to or waiting for that report to come out and unfortunately human rights watch an international

organization that positions itself as an international organization doesn't want to hear it to the international community reach again is very divided on that issue but unfortunately we are out of time but i do appreciate your being here and to our viewers please join us again same plane same time here on a while the part. i've . lived. the interview.

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could be in the know. on the. latest news in the week's top stories from the r.t.e. network washington fails to get the world on its side for an attack on syria with scant support from the g twenty and the e.u. russia is taking a firm stance against saying the syrian rebels are provoking a foreign intervention. as he sees the brutality of that civil war first time as the syrian army tries to clear an ancient christian village of al qaeda linked rebels. also headlining officials in afghanistan say a nato air strike has killed civilians including women and children it's something the alliance is denying but take a look at the legacy that coalition troops sent to leave in the war ravaged nation when they withdraw forces next year. moscow alexa new delhi results point to a clear victory for the acting chief leaving opposition.