Murphy Grills Tillerson On Human Rights

Connecticut U.S. Sen. Chris Murphy declared Donald Trump’s nominee for secretary of state unfit for the job after grilling him Wednesday at a Senate Foreign Relations Committee hearing.

Murphy questioned the nominee, Rex Tillerson, on human rights abuses in Phillipines and sanctions against Russia over Vladimir Putin’s military actions in Syria and alleged hacking on the recent American presidential election. Tillerson declined to take a stand on the widespread extrajudicial killings in the former or to support sanctions (including current sanctions) on the latter.

Their exchange covered how the government should confront those issues — and how even to establish that they exist in the first place.

The exchange follows:

MURPHY: Chairman, thank you for sticking this out.

Mr. Tillerson, I know this is a long day. I want to come back to the issue of human rights because I do worry that there are going to be a lot of human rights advocates, a lot of people who are hoping that the United States maintains its leadership role on maintaining and promoting human rights around the world, who are going to be very worried by some of your testimony here today.

Asked about the 3,500 extrajudicial killings in the Philippines, you weren’t yet ready to say that you have enough evidence to call that a violation of human rights. Similar answer on Saudi Arabia and a similar answer with respect to the war crimes perpetuated by the Russians inside Syria.

So I guess the simple question for you is this: if you’re not ready to say today that what’s happening in the Philippines is a human rights violation despite the fact that the president brags about killing people without trial, or the denial of rights to women in Saudi Arabia as a named human rights violation, or what’s happening in Syria as a war crime, can you maybe give us a little bit of a sense of what countries today you would consider to be violators of human rights? Or how you are going to make judgements about where the U.S. pursues human rights violators and where we don’t?

Because I think it will be a surprise to a lot of people coming out of this hearing that you aren’t ready today to call President Duterte a violator of human rights or to call what’s happening in Saudi Arabia a named violation of human rights under international law.

TILLERSON: Well, I think somewhere in your question there, Senator Murphy, was in fact the answer. I’m going to act on factual information. I’m not going to act on what people write about in the newspapers or even what people may brag they’ve done. Because people brag about things that they may or may not have done. I’m going to act on the facts, and if confirmed, I’m going to have access to a lot of information that I don’t have access today.

It’s just my nature to not prejudge events or prejudge and make conclusions, or conclude that someone has in fact violated this norm, or in fact now meets the standard to be labeled this until I have seen those facts myself. That should in no way suggest that if those acts that you described are backed up by the facts, I would agree with your labeling and characterization. I’m just not willing to do that on the record today because I’m not seeing that information. So please don’t confuse that with my – my standards are no different than yours.

MURPHY: But let’s take the Philippines as an example. I mean, I don’t know that there’s anybody on this committee that would deny that there are extrajudicial killings happening in Philippines. That’s been widely reported, our embassy has reported it, the president himself talks about it. What more information do you need before deeming the Philippines to be a human rights violator? What’s happening there is a massacre that’s there for everyone to see.

TILLERSON: I’m sure the committee has seen a lot of evidence that I have not seen. I’m not disputing your conclusion. You’re asking me to make a judgement on only what I’m being told. That’s not how I make judgements.

MURPHY: So what information in that case would you need? Who would you need to hear from?

TILLERSON: I would want to see the factual basis behind the statistics and the factual connection as to who is committing those acts?

MURPHY: But we don’t – a lot of times the factual evidence is reporting by objective observers on the ground. I’m not initially sure you’re going to get a video tape of an extrajudicial killing, so oftentimes the evidence is the objective reporting we get from sources on the ground, inside a place like the Philippines.

TILLERSON: I will rely on multiple sources to confirm what I am being told. That is – you can blame it on me being an engineer. It’s just the engineer in me that I deal with facts, and then I analyze, and then I conclude, and I’m sure that there’s a lot of credible information out there that I simply haven’t seen.

MURPHY: This is a question that often gets asked of members of Congress to judge their view of politics and conflict in the Middle East. It’s a pretty simple one: do you believe that the Iraq war – not the conduct of the war, but the war itself – was a mistake?

TILLERSON: I think I indicated in response, I believe it was to Senator Paul’s question, that I think our motives were commendable, but we did not achieve the objectives, we did not achieve greater stability, we did not achieve improved national security for the United States of America, and those – and that’s just the events have borne that out.

And at the time, I held the same view, that I was concerned, just as I was concerned before the decisions were made to go into Libya and change the leadership there. It’s not that I endorsed that leadership, but that leadership had – had the place somewhat stable with a lot of bad actors locked up in prison. Now those bad actors are running around the world -

MURPHY: Just- just-

TILLERSON: So it’s a question of, it is a question that our ultimate goal has to be to change that type of oppressive leadership. It has to be though that we know what is coming after, that we have a high confidence that we can control what comes after, or influence it and it will be better than what we just took out.

MURPHY: But in this case, which motives are you referring to, that were commendable?

TILLERSON: I think the – the concerns were that Saddam Hussein represented a significant threat to stability in that part of the world, and to the United States directly. And so – I understand that people had – were looking at information that was available to them, information that was not available to me, at least at this point, so I’m making this — I’m making this comment as a casual observer.

MURPHY: One last question, going back to Russia you’ve said earlier and answered an earlier question that you wouldn’t commit today to continuation of sanctions against the Russians for their involvement in the U.S. presidential election, but could you make a commitment to us today that if you deem sanctions to be the inappropriate policy, that you will recommend and argue for a substitute response for the interference in U.S. elections? Will you argue for a U.S. response, even if you don’t believe sanctions is the right policy?

TILLERSON: Yes. Yes, the – if – and all I’ve read is again, the unclassified portions, but it is troubling, and if – and if there is additional information that indicates the level of interference, it deserves a response.

MURPHY: Thank you.