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Amnesty Attacks US "Disappearances"    [
Amnesty Attacks UK Over Torture    [

    War Provoking Terror, Amnesty Says
    By Sanjay Suri
    Inter Press Service

    Tuesday 23 May 2006

    London - The war on terror is provoking more terror, Amnesty International secretary-general Irene Khan told IPS in an interview Tuesday at the launch of the human rights group's 2005 annual report.

    "The war on terror and the way it has unfolded actually is premised on the principle that by eroding human rights you can reinforce security," Khan said. "And that is why as part of the war on terror we see restrictions being placed on civil liberties around the world."

    That has led to the establishment of the Guantanamo Bay prison camp "where people that are considered to be dangerous by the U.S. Administration are being locked up without any charge, without any trial, indefinitely," Khan said. "That cannot be the best way in which you fight terrorism. Because it plays straight into the hands of those who would want to destroy human rights."

    Khan added: "The proof of what I am saying is that the world is not safer today. The number of attacks by armed groups has been going up according to research, and empirical evidence."

    Irene Khan had controversially spoken of Guantanamo Bay as the Gulag of today, referring to the infamous Soviet concentration camp. But that comparison now stands vindicated, Khan said.

    "Last year when we called for the closure of Guantanamo, there was a lot of negative reaction from the U.S. Administration, but today a year later you even have President Bush saying he would like to close Guantanamo."

    Last week the UN committee against torture called for the closure of Guantanamo, she said. "So what we had said last year about Guantanamo being the Gulag of our times was really that Guantanamo is the symbol of blatant superpower abuse, just as the Gulag was the symbol of superpower abuse during the Soviet times. And from that perspective we have been vindicated because more and more people see Guantanamo as an iconic symbol of human rights abuse, and want to close it."

    But that dispute did mean a political brush for a human rights group. Human rights and politics may not always be easy to separate.

    "We are not a political organisation, we do not promote any particular ideology or any particular party," said Khan. "What we are doing is we are holding all governments to account for their international obligations on human rights."

    But are the two issues easy to separate in Iraq? "What we are looking at is the situation of the Iraqi people, the human rights of Iraqi people, and whether those that are responsible for upholding them are doing so, and that means looking at the Iraqi government, looking at the coalition forces, U.S., UK and others, and looking at the armed groups in Iraq. In every case there has been a dismal failure to protect the human rights of Iraqi people."

    In Iraq, she said "we judge what is happening not on the basis of political or military strategies, but on the basis of international standards of human rights that have been ignored, eroded and violated."

    But is this not the consequence of political decisions? "Of course, governments are political beings, and the decisions governments make are made for political reasons. But it is those same governments that also have legal obligations to respect human rights. You have to look at the human rights consequences of political decisions."

    And are Western governments talking of human rights violations only where it suits them? "Of course, we see that very much happening, we see that for example in the context of the European Union which has been looking at human rights abuses elsewhere in the world, but not necessarily within the European Union, and we see it now with the information that is coming out about renditions and the CIA flights carrying prisoners to countries where they could be tortured."

    The European Union is often silent on abuses by its own member states, Khan said. "So clearly there are double standards, but those double standards apply also to governments like Russia and China. Darfur is a very good example of where they have miserably failed, because of their own oil interests, and the arms trade with the Khartoum regime."

    Despite such human rights failures, the Amnesty report points to a brighter side of the human rights story last year.

    "One of the most interesting things about last year is the contradiction that on the one hand we have seen abuses, and despair and hopelessness, but on the other we are also seeing some remarkable progress and signs of hope," Khan said.

    On the issue of impunity, she said over the last year both former Peruvian president Alberto Fujimori and former Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet are now on way to being tried. And the International Criminal Court issued the first indictment against armed groups in North Uganda and the Democratic Republic of Congo.

    "We have also seen that though governments basically rejected the UN reform package put forward by the UN secretary-general, they actually accepted his proposals on the UN human rights machinery," Khan said. "We have a new human rights council in place, we have seen a doubling of the budget of the UN high commission on human rights."

    In Britain, she said, the House of Lords threw out the government's claim that they could use evidence obtained by torture by foreign officials in British courts. "We have seen parliament question the anti- terrorism legislation of the government, forcing the government to modify some of the provisions there."

    One of the most positive developments of last year was the mobilisation of global civil society, she said. "Think of last year's campaign against poverty, think of the changing public mood on issues of torture. We have seen a number of very positive things happening, but the question is the way in which governments are still in denial."

 

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    Amnesty Attacks US "Disappearances"
    By Peter Walker
    The Guardian UK

    Tuesday 23 May 2006

    The United States reported use of secret CIA-run prisons for terrorism suspects amounts to a policy of "disappearances", human rights watchdog Amnesty International said today in its annual report.

    In a sometimes scathing assessment of Washington's rights record, the London-based group also raised serious concerns about detainees held without trial in Guantanamo Bay, Iraq and Afghanistan.

    Washington had failed to bring to account those potentially guilty of war crimes or crimes against humanity, it added.

    Britain also faced condemnation, with Amnesty saying the government had "continued to erode fundamental human rights" through new anti-terrorism laws and the possible use of evidence obtained through the torture of suspects in other countries.

    The 238-page report for 2005 carries a lengthy catalogue of abuses in dozens of countries, with some of the most-criticised including China, North Korea, Zimbabwe and Russia.

    While Washington traditionally dismisses such complaints - President Bush labelled last year's Amnesty report "absurd" for likening Guantanamo Bay to a gulag - it remains embarrassing for the US to be bracketed in such company.

    The latest document considers widespread reports that the CIA has run a network of secret detention centres in countries including Afghanistan, Poland and Romania, transporting suspects via unlisted 'rendition' flights.

    "Such facilities were alleged to detain individuals incommunicado outside the protection of the law in circumstances amounting to 'disappearances'," Amnesty noted, saying it had spoken to three Yemeni detainees held in secret locations for up to 18 months.

    "Their cases suggested that such detentions were not confined to a small number of 'high value' detainees as previously suspected."

    Amnesty also warned of increasing evidence of torture and ill-treatment of detainees in Iraq, Afghanistan and the US-run prison in Guantanamo Bay, which the rights group has repeatedly demanded be closed.

    "Despite evidence that the US government had sanctioned interrogation techniques constituting torture or ill-treatment, and 'disappearances', there was a failure to hold officials at the highest levels accountable, including individuals who may have been guilty of war crimes or crimes against humanity," Amnesty said.

    In an almost equally lengthy entry for Britain, Amnesty condemned the Prevention of Terrorism Act passed by Tony Blair's government last year, saying it "allowed for violations of a wide range of human rights" such as control orders against terrorism suspects.

    "The imposition of 'control orders' was tantamount to the executive charging, trying and sentencing a person without the fair trial guarantees required in criminal cases," Amnesty noted.

    It also raised concerns at the death last July of Jean Charles de Menezes, the young Brazilian electrician shot dead by police at Stockwell Underground station in south London after being mistaken for a suicide bomber.

    "Evidence emerged giving rise to suspicion of an early attempt at a cover-up by the police," Amnesty said.

    There were also harsh words for the US and Britain over the actions of their troops and allies in Iraq and Afghanistan.

    "Both the US-led Multinational Force (MNF) and Iraqi security forces committed grave human rights violations, including torture and ill-treatment, arbitrary detention without charge or trial, and excessive use of force resulting in civilian deaths," Amnesty said, while noting that insurgents were "responsible for grave human rights abuses".

    In Afghanistan, US forces "continued to arbitrarily detain hundreds of people beyond the reach of the courts and their own families".

    More generally, almost five years after the Taliban regime was ousted, "the (Afghan) government and its international partners remained incapable of providing security to the people".

    China - which routinely dismisses allegations - was heavily condemned for no real change in its appalling rights record, despite some limited legal and judicial reforms.

    "Tens of thousands of people continued to be detained in violation of their human rights and were at risk of torture or ill-treatment," Amnesty said.

    Freedoms were especially restricted in Tibet and Xinjiang, the Muslim-majority region in far-west China where dissent has been severely repressed under the guise of a "war on terror", the report noted.

    Widespread abuses in long-time dictatorships North Korea and Burma were also listed at length, while the regime of Robert Mugabe in Zimbabwe was condemned for "widespread and systematic violations of the rights to shelter, food, freedom of movement and residence, and the protection of the law".

    Sudan's government was cited for allowing "grave abuses of human rights" by both government forces and government-allied militias in its western region of Darfur.

    Russia was also given a long entry, listing complaints ranging from racist attacks and ill-treatment in prisons to "serious human rights abuses" such as torture and killings in Chechnya. "Impunity remained the norm for those committing human rights violations," Amnesty noted.

 

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    Amnesty Attacks UK Over Torture
    BBC News

    Tuesday 23 May 2006

The UK has damaged fundamental human rights by trying to undermine the ban on torture and the independence of judges, says Amnesty International.

    The group's annual report attacks the government for trying to deport terror suspects to nations which use torture.

    And it welcomes a Lords ruling that evidence that might have been obtained by torture cannot be used in UK courts.

    Amnesty's Irene Khan said, of using torture to fight terrorism: "You cannot extinguish fire with petrol."

    The governments says it does not use evidence it knows or suspects has been obtained through torture overseas.

    But Amnesty fought a court battle last year over how far the government must go to show improper methods had not been used.

    Kate Allen, Amnesty's UK director, said the world's leading democracies would surrender the moral high ground if they entertained the use of torture or "outsourced" torture as the Americans were doing.

    Worthless?

    Amnesty director Ms Khan attacked the UK for signing deals with countries such as Jordan, Libya and Lebanon to deport terror suspects without fear they would be tortured or killed.

    She asked people to look at the human rights records of such countries and decide "whether these diplomatic assurances are worth the paper they are written on".

    Amnesty is pressing the US to close the Guantanamo Bay detention camp and reveal the details of its secret prison camps elsewhere.

    It also wants European Union nations to do more to investigate claims that the CIA is flying suspects through their airspace to countries where they could be tortured.

    The Amnesty report, which covers 150 countries, attacks the "duplicity and double speak" of the war against terror. The campaign is also proving a distraction from key human rights abuses, it claims.

    Iraq Prisoners

    In its verdict on the UK, the report says: "The government continued to erode fundamental human rights, the rule of law and the independence of the judiciary, including by persisting with attempts to undermine the ban on torture at home and abroad..."

    Ministers have also tried to introduce measures which are odds with human rights law at home and internationally, it says.

    Counter-terror measures led to serious human rights violations, it argues, and there was widespread concern about the impact of these measures on Muslims and other minority communities.

    The report also says the UK has broken human rights laws through its role in detaining 10,000 people without charge in Iraq.

    UK officials sat with US and Iraqi officials on the boards which review the cases of all those interned by multi-national forces in Iraq.

    Amnesty says most of the people are detained by US troops but at the end of October the UK was itself holding 33 "security internees" without charge or trial.

    Justice Balance

    The prime minister last week called for a "profound rebalancing" of the criminal justice system, saying it was currently "distant" from the public.

    Ministers have suggested they could reform the Human Rights Act, which came into force in 2000.

    Ms Khan praised the act and said there was no split between the human rights of the individual and the rights of the public at large.

    "We believe the prime minister is actually diverting attention from other issues by bringing this kind of a debate into human rights," she said.

    In the wake of the controversy over foreign prisoners being released without being considered for deportation, Ms Khan urged people not to give the impression that all immigrants had criminal records.

    "We fear that the immigration debate is too often polarised, is exploited by governments and other political parties for short term political gain," she said.

    "No Precedence"

    The prime minister's official spokesman said Downing Street had not seen the report and would not give a "knee-jerk" response.

    He said the Human Rights Act was an important piece of legislation.

    "But we do have problems with issues like deportations that other countries do not have," he said.

    "We cannot have a partial view, we cannot say the rights of the individual can take precedence over the rights of the community."

    The Home Office and the Department of Constitutional Affairs were studying the act because there was a problem of "interpretation", he added.

    On Iraq, the spokesman said Mr Blair had seen on this week's visit to Baghdad how free elections had produced a national unity government representing all Iraqi people.

    Liberal Democrat foreign affairs spokesman Michael Moore MP said the 0areport exposed the "selectivity, faltering progress and inconsistency of 0aour approach to human rights".