Russia Wasn't the Only Bad Guy at G20

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With its incursion into Ukraine, arming the separatists that shot down MH17, and its treatment of LGTB citizens, Russia was the kid everyone picked on at this weekend's G20 in Brisbane. Not even the Prime Minister of Canada, one of the friendliest places on earth, could manage to be polite. In fact everyone was so mean to Putin he left the party early. In fairness he might have been tired rather than angry, but with all the focus on Putin and his delegation, other countries with similarly atrocious records managed to slip through the conference unnoticed. We thought we'd take a look at two such countries who, by not drawing any attention to themselves, were the unheralded winners of the G20.

Myanmar is the newest kid on the democracy block and it hasn't quite got the hang of it yet. From refusing to kerb deadly violence against its ethnic Rohingya people, to rewriting the constitution to prevent opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi from running for president, Myanmar's much-lauded transition to democracy has hit a few bumps in the road. Just last week high-ranking officials including a current government minister were accused of war crimes committed when the military junta still held absolute power.

The Queensland Rohingya Community held a rally in Brisbane's King George Square on Saturday to draw attention to their plight. The group's president, Noor Zaman, said Burmese authorities have done everything in their power to persecute them. "Family members have been killed, our sisters and wives raped by military personnel, our land is being confiscated, homes burnt, and with it our livelihood." Myanmar is not a member of the G20 group and was invited to the summit as the 2014 Chair of ASEAN. VICE attempted to contact the delegation from Myanmar during the summit but received no response.

Mauritania is know around the world for one thing: slavery. The North African nation was the last country in the world to outlaw slavery in 1981. However little is done to enforce the ban, in fact it even arrests anti-slavery activists. When the Unrepresented Nations and Peoples Organisation (UNPO) conducted a fact finding mission in Mauritania earlier this year, it found "about 20 percent of Mauritania's 3.5 million residents living in enslavement, almost exclusively coming from the Haratin ethnic group".

Jonathan Lis from the UNPO told VICE only last Tuesday that Haratin activist Biram Dah Abeid, who was a recipient of the 2013 UN Human Rights Prize, was attacked and arrested whilst protesting against the what he calls "the government's ongoing tolerance and in some cases pursuit of this barbaric practice." Lis said, "if Mauritania is to be welcomed as a full participant in high-profile international summits such as the prestigious G20, it must do more to demonstrate concrete action in combating slavery." Mauritania is not a member of the G20 either but was invited to the summit as 2014 Chair of the African Union.

Lis told Vice he hoped the G20 was an opportunity to raise the broader issues of slavery, racism and exploitation at the highest level. It remains unknown if anyone raises these issues with Mauritania's delegation, they held no press conferences and refused to respond to our requests for comment.

So is it best to exclude these countries from summits like the G20 or invite them and use the opportunity to put pressure on them to treat their citizens more humanely? Putin can simply ignore the world leaders and just go home, but surely these smaller countries are more easily influenced by more powerful G20 countries. Professor Andrew O'Neill, the Head of the School of Government and International Relations at Griffith University, told VICE that Australia could not invite countries like Mauritania and Myanmar on the basis of their human rights performance, but economic concerns tend to override moral principles. Myanmar is a resource-rich state that is beginning to open up economically and Mauritania is also rich in mineral resources attracting the investment of multinationals. Besides, as Professor O'Neill points out, many of the G20 countries like China, Russia, America, and Australia "don't exactly have stellar human rights records either".

Follow Lauren on Twitter: ​@theljg