Analysts weigh Obama’s global human rights policies

While President Obama takes plenty of heat over his plans to overhaul domestic policies, critics have also taken aim at his foreign policy approach, particularly as it relates to human rights around the globe. Human Rights Watch advocacy director Tom Malinowski said Wednesday that while the administration appeared to have “gotten the balance right” on Myanmar, the military junta-ruled Asian nation formerly known as Burma, by starting a dialogue while maintaining sanctions, “China is a different matter.” “And that’s where we’ve seen the tension play out in the most acute way, with several signals that have been sent suggesting that the administration is putting human rights issues to one side,” Malinowski said on CNN’s “Amanpour.” “And most recently, the, I think, symbolic mistake of the president declining to meet the Dalai Lama before his own visit to China later next month.” The Tibetan spiritual leader, who fled to India in 1959 and established a government in exile there, visited the United States earlier this month.

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