Clinton steps up campaign against governments applying a ’steel vise’ on social activism

Clinton laments a slow ‘crushing’ of civil rights

BAKU, Azerbaijan — On America’s Independence Day, U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton is challenging what she calls a global crackdown on human rights, lamenting a “steel vise” squeezing the life out social activism.

Clinton arrived in this Caspian Sea nation Sunday after declaring in Poland that intolerant governments around the world are undercutting rights groups whose work is vital to the development of democracy. She said the trend is apparent, and growing worse, even in countries that call themselves democracies.

At the palatial residence of President Ilham Aliyev overlooking the vast, glimmering Caspian, Aliyev and Clinton spoke briefly before reporters and TV cameras.

Aliyev wished her a happy Fourth of July and then stressed the urgency of his country’s territorial dispute with neighboring Armenia. The two nations are in conflict over Nagorno-Karabakh, an enclave in Azerbaijan that has been under control of Armenian troops and ethnic Armenian forces since a 1994 cease-fire.

“This is the major problem for us and the major threat to regional security,” he said.

Clinton said the U.S. also is concerned, but she did not elaborate in advance of their private meeting.

On Saturday, addressing an international conference in Poland on democracy and human rights, Clinton recalled Winston Churchill’s warning 60 years ago that an iron curtain was descending across Europe. She noted that with the collapse of the Soviet Union that curtain no longer remains.

“But we must be wary of the steel vise in which governments around the world are slowly crushing civil society and the human spirit,” she said.

Among the offenders she cited: Zimbabwe, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Ethiopia, Cuba, Belarus, Egypt, Iran, Venezuela, China and Russia.

Clinton said her current trip, which began in Ukraine on Thursday and is to include stops in the former Soviet states of Armenia and Georgia, is intended to demonstrate the Obama administration’s commitment to democracy and human rights.

She said her Baku itinerary would include a meeting with youth activists to discuss Internet freedom. And she said that in Armenia and Georgia she would meet with leaders from women’s groups and other nongovernmental organizations.

She also was meeting Sunday with Azerbaijan’s President Ilham Aliyev.

Well traveled as a former first lady and former U.S. senator, Clinton said she had never before been to Azerbaijan, Armenia or Georgia.

In Krakow, Poland, on Saturday, Clinton cited a broad range of countries where “the walls are closing in” on civic organizations like unions, religious groups, rights advocates and other non-governmental organizations that press for social change and shine a light on governments’ shortcomings.

“Some of the countries engaging in these behaviors still claim to be democracies,” Clinton said, adding, “Democracies don’t fear their own people. They recognize that citizens must be free to come together, to advocate and agitate.”

Clinton spoke at the opening of a 10th anniversary celebration of the founding of the Community of Democracies, which has 16 members and is meant to forge international consensus on ways to support and promote democracy.

Noting that Americans were preparing to celebrate Independence Day, Clinton said the U.S. experience more than 200 years ago holds lessons for today’s world.

“It was only through debate, discussion and civic activism that the United States came into being,” she said. “We were a people before we were a nation.”

She recommended that the Community of Democracies set up an independent means of monitoring repressive measures against social advocacy groups, and that the U.N. Human Rights Council do more to protect civil society. She announced that the U.S. would contributed $2 million to support the work of embattled non-governmental organizations.

Poland was a fitting setting for Clinton’s speech, having escaped from decades of totalitarianism in the downfall of the Soviet Union and the collapse of communism across eastern Europe in the early 1990s — thanks largely to the efforts of the Polish labor movement, Solidarity.

Later Sunday Clinton was scheduled to fly to the Armenian capital of Yerevan.