you're watching bbc news. the latest headlines coming up, after hardtalk. welcome to hardtalk. i'm stephen sackur. across the world, freedom and democracy are in retreat. almost a third of the world's people live under authoritarian rule. that number is rising and that has grave implications for basic human rights. it's not that liberal democracies can't be abusive of rights, but generally their safeguards against

oppression are stronger. my guest today is kenneth roth, just retired after 30 years leading the campaign group human rights watch. he's been banned in a host of countries. is it time to acknowledge his brand of human rights campaigning isn't working? kenneth roth in cambridge, massachusetts. welcome to hardtalk. great to be back, stephen. it's good to be with you. it's good to have you on the show. it is indeed quite something, leading one of the world's highest profile human rights advocacy groups for some three decades.

did you leave thatjob with a sense of defeat? no, not at all. infact, i mean, maybe i should start with your introduction, because, you know, your introduction was the common wisdom. you know, that democracy is in decline, that autocracy is ascendant. in fact, i think it's a bit more complicated than that. i mean, we are seeing the rise of autocratic voices, you know, the trumps of the world, in western democracies. but if you look at the leading autocratic countries and you put yourself in the shoes of one of their dictators, it's a pretty hostile environment out there. and just in the last year, you know, we've seen the dangers of autocratic rules, because autocrats, you know, they surround themselves with sycophants, they suppress debate, they make all the decisions by themselves. and that's how you get bad decisions. so we had, you know, putin sitting in his covid—induced isolation, deciding to invade ukraine, thinking it'd

be a piece of cake. and, you know, we see where that went. we have xijinping, you know, insisting and insisting on zero covid, suddenly in the face of popular protest changing his mind, but with zero preparation, opening up the country without investing in vaccination of older people, without letting in the mrna vaccines, without investing in intensive care units and hospitals, it was a disaster. and, you know, this is what you have when you've got autocratic rule. you know, they like to say, oh, autocrats are better than democracies because democracies are messy and divisive and slow and short—term oriented. and, you know, that's all true, but democracies also can self—correct because of debate. autocrats don't do that. and indeed, ithink... well, let me... that's such an interesting opening gambit. i'm going to stop you. you see, you sound like a classic glass half full kind of guy. but the direction of travel surely is what matters. i mean, you took over human rights watch in that period after the berlin wall came down, when some in the west were thinking that this was the ascendency,

the triumph of liberal democracy. and what we've seen over the last 30 years is that many of those assumptions were wrong, and that quite literally, right now, many countries are actively leaning much more toward authoritarianism than they were 15 years ago. yeah. well, i mean, first, if you take that 30—year span that you note, i mean, the world has gone from, say, eastern europe being a bunch of communist soviet dictatorships to european union democracies. you know, latin america has gone from being mostly military dictatorships to mostly democracies. so, i mean, the overall trend in many ways is positive. but you're right, there has been this backsliding in recent years. but, you know, what i look at is in a series of countries over the last few years, there has been a huge popular outpouring of support for democracy, against autocracy. and you see that in, you know, in hong kong, in myanmar, russia, belarus, sudan, uganda, nicaragua, cuba.

i mean, in many, many parts of the world, people make absolutely clear we want democracy. and the latest is iran. just before that was sri lanka. now, these don't always work. you know, sometimes you get rid of the autocrats. sri lanka did that. sometimes electoral processes work. you know, trump was not re—elected, bolsonaro was not re—elected. but you're right that this is a challenging moment. what i've noticed, though, is thatjust a few years ago, autocrats had confidence that they could pursue what they would call managed democracy, so they would tilt the playing field just enough. you know, they would suppress some speech, they would restrict some political parties, they would stifle some civil society. and on that tilted playing field, they could win. they no longer have confidence in that working because of these popular uprisings. and so we've seen this resort to what is basically zombie democracy. you know, they have an electoral charade. that's what lukashenko did in belarus. that's what putin did in russia. that's what ortega did in nicaragua.

that's what museveni did in uganda. these are complete charades. yes, the autocrat stays in power, but with none of the legitimacy that even that managed democracy would have brought. that is not a great long—term strategy for survival. as you talk to me about what you see happening in the world, i'm kind of struggling to understand what you meant when, during your tenure at human rights watch, you always said, "our organisation has to be neutral. in a sense, we have to be like the international committee of the red cross based in switzerland. we have to be able to work in countries and approach countries with the sense that we don't take sides. we are neutral." i mean, in your last answer, you sure as hell were taking sides. where we stress that neutrality is when there's an armed conflict. that's where the red cross operates. that's where, part of where we operate. and so in a war situation, we don't take positions between the two sides. we don't say, you're the aggressor, you're the defender.

you know, you're right, you're wrong, but we rather look to what extent are both sides complying with international humanitarian law, basically. really? so, kenneth roth, you, still a powerful voice in international human rights, you can look at the camera talking to me today and say you are not prepared to define russia as the aggressor in the current war with ukraine inside ukrainian territory? i mean, look, obviously, russia was the aggressor. i'm not, i'm not denying that. but human rights watch, in the way it operates in a situation like that, we always report on both sides. in fact, human rights watch recently reported on ukrainian use of land mines, even though, you know, the vast majority of the war crimes are by the russians. but we adopt that position of neutrality because we see it as the best way to promote respect for humanitarian law. so when we approach one side, they don'tjust dismiss us and say, "oh, you're the partisan for the other side." they understand that we are factually reporting on what's happening and we are trying to hold both sides to the standards designed to protect... but isn't that deeply problematic?

again, this is really important, because i think most of us believe that advocating for human rights around the world is really important. but doesn't that, what you've just outlined as the approach, doesn't it lead to terrible problems? for example, amnesty international, admittedly not the group you worked for, but obviously a very closely associated organisation, they issued a report last year on the ukraine war in which they explicitly criticised ukrainian forces for firing from civilian areas, including close proximity to schools and hospitals. now, that was a report that absolutely infuriated not just president zelensky and the ukrainian government, but many other independent observers and, you know, supporters of a fight for freedom who felt that this sort of both sides—ism by one of the world's most important human rights groups was actually playing right into vladimir putin's hands. i mean, let me, if i could distinguish two parts of what you just said. i mean, amnesty was 100%

correct to report on both sides, because if you only report on one side, the one you're criticising just dismisses you. you know, you're a partisan. why do we have to listen to you? if you are reporting on both sides, you have that credibility of neutrality to be able to press both sides to respect humanitarian law. sure, but the ukrainians were only firing from civilian areas because their civilian areas were being attacked and indeed occupied by the russian military. but what you're doing, you're getting into the substance of the report, and i'm not prepared to get into those details here. but that's very different from attacking the principle. amnesty was completely right on the principle to report on both sides. human rights watch does that as well. now, if i could, let me come back to your autocracy point, because this neutrality that human rights watch maintains in the context of armed conflicts, we don't pretend to be neutral about whether there's a democracy or not. you know, a democracy is, you know, is basically a government respecting human rights. you know, if you don't have respect for human rights, you don't have a democracy. so in that context, i mean, to say we're neutral

or we don't really care what kind of government is there, no, that's not true. you know, we want a government that fully respects human rights, and by definition, that's a democracy, it's not an autocracy. so that's what i mean, this concept of neutrality in a war context doesn't mean we're neutral about whether there's democracy or not. we want democracy. understood. what about defining certain leaders and commanders as warcriminals? again, it's a very active conversation because vladimir putin is seen by some to be a war criminal, or perhaps better put, as a man who needs to be tried in a court for war crimes. would human rights watch take that view? i mean, we actually did take that view in idlib, the northwestern province in syria, which is actually one of the epicentres of the earthquake right now. but human rights watch did a report a few years back looking at how both the syrian government and the russian government were deliberately bombing hospitals, schools,

apartment buildings, marketplaces. i mean, the same kind of stuff we're seeing in ukraine today. but at that point, we actually did a chain of command analysis and went all the way to the top, to assad and to putin, and basically said, "these people are overseeing war crimes, they should be charged and prosecuted." and we take that exact same position in ukraine. i hope the international criminal court, the chief prosecutor karim khan, moves quickly. he's had a0 investigators in ukraine collecting this evidence. you know, it shouldn't be too long before he charges and his responsibility is to move up the top of the chain of command. you know, not to get the low—level soldier who might have committed a war crime, but to get the commanders who are overseeing these atrocities. and it's very clear that putin is the top of that chain of command. i mean, overand over and over again, he's making clear that he's in charge of the military effort. he is, you know, defending and trying to obfuscate the war crimes that are reported from ukraine. he's doing just the opposite of what a responsible commander would do to try to rein

in war crimes. he is pursuing a war crimes strategy. now that you've finished your tenure at human rights watch and you can kind of look back over the three decades, do you think you got some things wrong? and do you think that what you've just outlined as the responsibility to tread very carefully when it comes to being political, do you think you sometimes got that wrong? and i'm particularly thinking about how you spoke out against china, and paraphrasing you slightly, described china as the greatest threat to global democracy. i mean, that put you on a collision course with beijing, didn't it? well, i mean, what i said is that, you know, china is the greatest threat to the global human rights system. i completely believe that. in fact, you know, when i went to hong kong to hold a press conference releasing a report where that was the thesis, they blocked me at the airport injanuary 2020 and sent me back to new york. maybe that's, maybe that's partly because you did some pretty amazing things.

i mean, you tweeted a cartoon. ijust checked the timeline. and january 1st, 2020, i thinkjust before you got blocked at hong kong airport, you tweeted out a cartoon which portrayed the grim reaper dressed in the chinese flag where the stars had been rearranged into a swastika and where he was about to enter a door marked "the world," having already entered other doors marked uyghurs, tibet, hong kong, with blood pouring out of those doors. i mean, there couldn't have been a more graphic illustration of your complete disgust with china and the association of china with nazism. well, look, i do believe that china is a severe threat both domestically, if you look at the way they've treated uyghurs and other turkic muslims. you know, to lock up a million muslims, to force them to abandon islam, their language and their culture, i mean, that is horrible. yeah, sure, but no, i get that, but it's all about the way a leading human rights advocate approaches his work. i mean, to tweet that cartoon

and then expect to be allowed to enter hong kong to engage in research about the human rights situation in territory which is, of course, a sovereign part of china, it seems a somewhat strange way of going about your work. yeah, i mean, well, china has blocked us from entering for some time in terms of doing research. but my point is that, you know, there is this serious threat, not just domestically, but china is really actively trying to undermine the global human rights system. because, you know, if you put yourself in the shoes of xijinping, you know, if somebody says, well, you know, "why are you president of china?" he can't say, "well, the chinese people freely elected me." i mean, that's preposterous. so he has to say, "well, you know, i'm giving them prosperity and they've given up their freedoms and they're happy with this." now, you know, we saw a massive refutation of that in the one part of china that was free to speak out. that was hong kong. you know, hundreds of thousands of people took

to the street and said, "no, we don't want the chinese communist party dictatorship, we want democracy." he also, xijinping, puts great emphasis on being received as a respectable leader by the rest of the world. and that's why he fights us tooth and nail when we try to, you know, introduce a resolution on xinjiang at the united nations human rights council. he cares desperately about not being stigmatised, about not being shamed, because that's such a central part of his legitimacy. he wants to say to the people in china, "look, everybody else thinks i'm a legitimate leader, you should accept me, too." and indeed, more and more, the world is not accepting his mass atrocities at home. and so that is what we're trying to highlight and we're not nice about it. we spotlight that every chance we can. one thing that i want to discuss with you, which i've never had a chance before, is what emerged in 2020 as your decision, i think back in 2012, to take money from a very wealthy saudi businessman who was prepared to sponsor some of the human rights watch work in saudi arabia,

but only on the understanding that you didn't dig into saudi treatment of lgbtq issues in that country. you took, i think, over $160,000 from this saudi businessman. do you regret that? let me, let me just change your facts a little bit, because it's not quite right what you said. i did take that money. the condition he put is that he didn't want his money used to promote lgbt rights in the middle east. right. and i took it knowing that i was going to put massive amounts of money into promoting lgbt rights in the middle east from other donors. so in no sense was this impeding our work. i never would have taken it if i thought it would impede our work. now, in retrospect... am i right in saying that this individual had actually been investigated by human rights watch? i don't know if the investigation was ongoing. again, itjust seems like a very strange decision you took, given that, you know, integrity and condemning those who lack integrity and who indulge in hypocrisy is central to what

your organisation does and did. no, no, and i've, you know, i've said it was a mistake. i mean, when i look back, i mean, i rememberthe first time i went into egypt, it was actually before this meeting with a saudi donor, to promote lgbt rights. the cairo police at that stage were picking up gay men, you know, pretending to be gay men, picking them up, torturing them. and so i remember going to cairo and saying, "we want to do a report on this." and our biggest local partner, the egyptian human rights organisation, said, "no, don't take on lgbt rights." you know, "it'll undermine our efforts to fight for human rights under mubarak," the president at the time. and that's kind of where the middle east was. we did it anyway. we found other partners and went forward. but there was, you know, it was still a very delicate process to promote lgbt rights in the middle east. i was completely dedicated to doing this, but i was used to our partners even being reluctant to act. so that's why i mistakenly accepted this limited condition from this donor, knowing that it would not impede our work. but, you know, i regret it in retrospect because it sent

a signal that i was somehow endorsing this view, which i completely was not. you ended up, i think, correct me if i'm wrong, banned from egypt, as you've said. you were blocked from entering hong kong. so your organisation's relationship with china certainly soured. another country with which human rights watch developed a very difficult relationship was israel, and i do need to talk to you about that. do you believe in hindsight and with some sort of retrospect that you focused too heavily on human rights issues concerning the israel—palestine conflict, given everything else that was happening in the middle east and the wider world? no, not at all. i mean, first of all, you know, the israel—palestine situation is one of 100 around the world that human rights watch regularly reports on. so, you know, it's a tiny percentage of the organisation's work. and even within that, as a matter of principle, you know, we talked about this earlier, we look at all sides. so we look at not only israeli government abuses, but also abuses by hamas,

the palestinian authority, you know, hezbollah when there's a conflict in northern israel, southern lebanon. so, you know, we follow the same principles in israel—palestine, the same investigative methods, apply the same human rights standards. right, but do you actually apply the same level of focus? and what you've just said, that actually, in the global terms, it represented a small, small portion of what hrw is doing is an interesting point, but, challenge this if you want to, but a group called the un watch, ngo based in geneva, which i think it's fair to say, has a pro—israel slant, they analysed 18 months of ken roth's personal tweets. they looked at the different countries you'd made allegations of illegal behaviour about, and they concluded that 74% of your tweets alleging illegal acts concerning nation states were actually directed at israel. 74% of them. yeah, no, i mean, this is a classic. there are all these little micro groups that, you know, act as if the israeli government has never committed a human rights violation

in the history of the world. so they epitomise bias and then they charge anybody who criticises israel with bias. this is classic sleaziness on their part, because if you look at where i was saying it was illegal, it was always a preface, an adjective to a description of the settlements. so it came up in the context of the settlements because a lot of people don't realise that the settlements are a violation of article 49 of the fourth geneva convention. they're actually war crimes, notjust illegal, you know. so i put that adjective in there and then they say, "oh, well, you're picking on israel," when, you know, there was a reason for that adjective. i didn't need to say, oh, you know, "russian bombardment of cities is illegal." we all know that. i didn't say, you know, need to say that, you know, locking up a gazillion uyghurs is illegal. you know, there are certain things that are obvious. people didn't know that about this. but, you know, you know that that some of your harshest critics in israel said that your positioning on the israel—palestine conflict smacked notjust of being anti—israel, but being anti—semitic. and ijust wonder, again, with hindsight, now that you can sit there at harvard,

what impact did that have on you? i mean, you're obviously born ofjewish parents and here you are being accused of anti—semitism. i did grow up with hitler stories. i grew up very aware of the evil that governments could do, and that's a lot of what launched me into my career. now, you know, i can put up with them calling me anti—semitic because it's just so preposterous. it doesn't stop me from continuing to report on israel. but i do worry about this growing tendency to try to silence criticism of israel by claiming that every critic is anti—semitic. and i mean, it's obviously not true. i mean, you can have some anti—semites who criticise israel, but there are many, many people who legitimately criticise israeli repression who are just labelled anti—semitic. and that is, you know, it's bad for free expression, for the defence of human rights, but it's bad foranti—semitism, because... well, if we may then... no, let me explain. i just want to refer to where you're sitting today in harvard university, because you were offered this fellowship at the kennedy school of government within harvard university. and you seem to believe that that offer was briefly

rescinded because the leaders of the university had pressure put upon them by pro—israel groups who were donors to harvard university. you've made that allegation. i've not seen any evidence that you've provided to back it up. are you still sticking to that? well, what i said is, i mean, the dean himself said he initially vetoed my fellowship because of my criticism of israel. so he's on the record on that. he said he did so because of people who mattered to him. he's denied that they were donors. you know, were these people who were worried about what donors would say? you know, who knows? he doesn't really have a personal record on israel—palestine. i need, i do need, for all sorts of reasons, i need to be clear that dean elmendorf has said that donors did not play a role in a decision to withdraw the fellowship. he said the decision was based on his evaluation of your potential contributions to the school. that's his position. yeah, that's his position. i mean, it's kind of

preposterous because i actually just gave a talk last night to 700 students in the main forum. i mean, there was massive interest. you know, i was offered a human rights fellowship. i've just led one of the two leading human rights organisations for 30 years. i wasn't qualified in dean elmendorf�*s view? you know, this was not about that. this was about israel. he even said so much to faculty members. but then how can you sit in that office at harvard university if you really feel that about the dean? i mean, you're essentially saying the dean is misrepresenting what happened, you still believe that pressure was applied. admittedly, the fellowship was eventually handed back to you, but i'm just wondering how in all good conscience you can now happily sit at harvard university. well, once he reversed himself, ifelt obliged to come to harvard. i met with the dean monday morning and i said, "i really want, you know, two things from you now." because this is, you know, it's notjust about me. i mean, i was able, i have enough visibility i was able to make a media, you know, fury about this. so the dean relented. there were, you know, protests by students, by faculty.

but there are many less visible critics of israel who feel penalised, who feel stifled. and so i asked the dean, one, to affirm his commitment to academic freedom, not just abstractly but explicitly in the context of israel—palestine for people on both sides of the debate. and second, i asked for some transparency about what happened in my case. you know, he's hiding behind the so—called confidentiality of the appointment process. but he says, "oh, but it wasn't donors." so he's breaching that confidentiality. you know, was it people who were worried about donors? we don't know. so if i could come back to the anti—semitism point, because i think it's very important, i'd like to bring this up. anti—semitism is a very serious threat to jews around the world. and my concern is that if some of these partisan defenders of the israeli government throw around the term anti—semitism to try to silence criticism of israel, people are going to take the threat of anti—semitism less seriously. they're going to think, "oh, this isjust another censorship effort," rather than the genuine problem. and so this may be, you know, in the short term, good for the state of israel. it is terrible forjews around the world who do face a serious

problem of anti—semitism. i wish we had more time, but ken roth, thank you very much forjoining me on hardtalk. hello there. the weather was pretty disappointing with regards to sunshine amounts over the weekend. many places did stay rather grey and cloudy. now we start the new week off with high pressure still nearby and with more of a breeze, we could see more sunshine around. so that will make it feel a little bit warmer. but then the second half of this upcoming week will turn more unsettled. the weather fronts and low pressure systems out in the atlantic start to make inroads as our area of high pressure begins to pull away. now, monday starts off fairly cloudy, some sunshine in the north, but with this breeze coming up from the south, it should break up the clouds more. so we should see more sunshine around across england and wales. a little bit of cloud for the east coast of england may be around the north channel, but some good sunny spells through the afternoon. temperatures responding up to 12 or 13 degrees, but double figures across the board so very mild this time of february.

for tuesday, our area of high pressure still brings a lot of dry, unsettled weather. but this first weather front starts to make inroads across scotland and northern ireland. that'll bring more cloud and a few showers. 0urairsource coming in from iberia. so it's going to be very mild, quite a fresh breeze as well. so, again, we shouldn't see any problems with too much cloud around. could start a bit foggy across the far south east where winds will be lightest to begin with. it'll clear, though, as the winds pick up plenty of sunshine for england and wales, a bit cloudier for scotland, northern ireland with one or two showers but very mild. could be up to 15 degrees in north wales with some shelter from the southerly breeze. then as we head into wednesday, a more substantial frontal system starts to work its way into scotland and northern ireland. some heavy rain there for a time, followed by some blustery showers. this band of rain will weaken as it moves across england and wales, barely anything on it. and on either side we should continue to see some sunshine. it'll be very mild in the south east, 1a degrees there, but even 9 to 12 further north. and then for the end

of the week, thursday and friday look more unsettled with rain at times and some strong winds, too. one area of low pressure pushes through on thursday, followed by a deeper system on friday that will bring some rain and some gales to the north and the west. initially, it'll scoop up some very mild air across england and wales before the cooler, wetter, windy weather spreads southwards later on friday. so an unsettled end to this new week. but for both days, it's going to remain pretty mild.

welcome to newsday, reporting live from singapore, i'm karishma vaswani. the headlines... over 33,000 people are now known to have died in the earthquakes in turkey and syria, but a week after the disaster survivors are still being pulled from the rubble. we report from inside syria, where the united nations says many people feel forgotten. these were people's homes. they were newly built. but look at it now. 80% of this village is gone, and they have had hardly any help. the us has reportedly shot another object out of the sky, the second within 2a hours. e—a—g—l—e—s, eagles! and excitement as the biggest event in america's sporting