A New and Dangerous Agenda
by ChrisMay 25th, 2005 2:00 pm
A few excerpts from a speech by Amnesty International Secretary General Irene Khan to the Foreign Press Association. Read the whole thing here.
Our report presents a damning picture of failed leadership and broken promises. But of all the promises made by governments, none was as hollow as the promise to make the world a safer place from terrorist attacks.
Attacks by armed groups pose a major threat to human rights in today’s world. Over the past year we have seen unimaginable brutality and barbarity by armed groups in Iraq, Beslan and Madrid.
Yet, the US government and its allies who lead the “War on Terror” continue to persist with politically convenient but ineffective strategies, which undermine human rights.
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In 2004, far from any sign of principled leadership, we saw a new and dangerous agenda in the making, rewriting the rules of human rights, discrediting the institutions of international cooperation and usurping the language of justice and freedom to promote policies that create fear and insecurity.
The US is leading this agenda, with the UK, European states, Australia and other states following.
Under this agenda, accountability is being set aside in favour of impunity; a prime example being the refusal of the US Administration or US Congress to conduct a full and independent investigation of the use of torture and ill treatment by US officials, despite the public outrage over Abu Ghraib and despite the evidence, collected by AI and other, of similar practices in Bagram, Guantanamo and other detention centres under US control.
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The pick and choose approach to international law is being replaced by a “erode where you can, select if you must and subvert where you will” approach.
The US refuses to apply the Geneva Convention for detainees in Afghanistan. It continues to press for bilateral agreements to provide its citizens immunity from prosecution of the International Criminal Court (Congress legislation last year to penalise those who refuse).
But nothing shows the disregard of international law as clearly as the attempts by the US, UK and some European countries to set aside the absolute prohibition of torture and ill treatment by re-definition and “rendering” – or the transfer prisoners to regimes that are known to use torture. In effect sub-contracting torture, yet keeping their own hands and conscience clean.
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In the US, almost a year after the Supreme Court decided that detainees in Guantanamo should have access to judicial review, not one single case from among the 500 or so detained has reached the courts because of stonewalling by the Administration.
Under this agenda some people are above the law and others are clearly outside it.
Guantanamo has become the gulag our times, entrenching the notion that people can be detained without any recourse to the law.
If Guantanamo evokes images of Soviet repression, “ghost detainees” – or the incommunicado detention of unregistered detainees - bring back the practice of “disappearances” so popular with Latin American dictators in the past.
According to US official sources there could be over 100 ghost detainees held by the US.
In 2004 thousands of people were held by the US in Iraq, hundreds in Afghanistan and undisclosed numbers in undisclosed locations.
More info here. Read the whole speech here
