Replies to post #109508 on Zeev's Turnips Talk Politics (ZTTP)

[ergo sum]

‘Terror’, ‘counter-terror’ and the rule of law

“Then [the guard] brought a box of food and he made me stand on it, and he started punishing me. Then a tall black soldier came and put electrical wires on my fingers and toes and on my penis, and I had a bag over my head. Then he was saying ‘which switch is on for electricity?’”
Iraqi detainee, Abu Ghraib prison, 16 January 2004 (statement given to US military investigators, obtained by The Washington Post)

US President George W. Bush has repeatedly asserted that the USA was founded upon and is dedicated to the cause of human dignity. It was a theme of his speech to the UN General Assembly in September 2004. Yet during his first term of office, the USA proved to be far from the global human rights champion it proclaimed itself to be.

These double standards were perhaps most vividly captured by the appalling photographs from Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq – a detainee, hooded, balanced on a box, arms outstretched, wires dangling from his hands with electric torture threatened; a naked man cowering in terror against the bars of a cell as soldiers threaten him with snarling dogs; and soldiers smiling, apparently confident of their impunity, over detainees forced into sexually humiliating poses.

The Abu Ghraib photographs prompted official investigations and reviews by the US authorities, but none was comprehensive in scope or had the independence or reach needed to investigate the role of the Secretary of Defense or agencies, departments or individual office holders outside the Pentagon. Moreover, a series of government memorandums that emerged after the Abu Ghraib scandal broke – which suggested that the administration was discussing ways in which its agents could avoid the international ban on torture and cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment – indicated that the US administration’s stated opposition to torture and other cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment was paper-thin.

Throughout 2004, violence was endemic in Iraq, whether in the form of unlawful killings, torture and other violations by US-led Coalition troops and Iraqi security forces, or attacks against civilians and others by armed groups. Delivery of aid and reconstruction assistance was debilitated by the violence. Millions suffered the consequences of destroyed infrastructure, mass unemployment and uncertainty about their future. Dozens of hostages were brutally killed, some beheaded on film that subsequently received worldwide media attention. Criminal gangs kidnapped scores of Iraqis, especially children, for ransom. And there was little or no progress in bringing to justice those responsible for past and present human rights abuses.

Meanwhile, the main human rights body of the UN ignored the crisis in Iraq. In April, the UN Commission on Human Rights decided to discontinue its review of the situation in Iraq at a time when monitoring, assistance and cooperation were of crucial importance to a successful transition from a brutal dictatorship to a government respectful of human rights. By doing so, the Commission showed yet again it had no stomach for confronting grave abuses of human rights in the face of intransigent governments.

In June, in a resolution unanimously adopted on the transfer of power in Iraq, the UN Security Council included a commitment by all forces in the country to act in accordance with international law, including their obligations under international humanitarian law. However, a crucial opportunity to make clear the specific obligations of the multinational force and the Iraqi authorities under international human rights and humanitarian law was missed. A proposal to state these obligations in unambiguous terms and include them in the binding part of the resolution was blocked by the drafters of the resolution – the USA and the UK – even though a majority of Security Council members supported the proposal.

Meanwhile, Afghanistan slipped into a downward spiral of lawlessness and instability. Anti-government forces, which were aligned to the Taleban, carried out violent attacks on election staff and aid workers. Throughout the country, levels of violence against women were extremely high, and there were ongoing allegations of human rights violations including torture and ill-treatment by the US military in US-managed detention facilities.

The human rights abuses in Iraq and Afghanistan were far from being the only negative repercussions of the response to the terrible events of 11 September 2001. Since that day, the framework of international human rights standards has been attacked and undermined by both governments and armed groups.

The USA continued to hold hundreds of foreign detainees without charge or trial in the US naval base in Guantánamo Bay in Cuba. The refusal of the US authorities to apply the Geneva Conventions to the detainees and to allow detainees access to legal counsel or the courts violated international law and standards and caused serious suffering to detainees and their families. The ruling by the US Supreme Court in June that the US courts have jurisdiction to consider challenges to the lawfulness of such detentions appeared to be a step towards restoring the rule of law for the detainees, but the US administration sought to empty the ruling of any real meaning in order to keep the detainees in legal limbo. The USA also failed to clarify the fate or whereabouts of detainees that it held in secret detention in other countries.

Such serious abuses carried out by a country as powerful as the USA created a dangerous climate. The US administration’s unilateralism and selectivity sent a permissive signal to abusive governments around the world. There is strong evidence that the global security agenda pursued since 11 September 2001, the US-led “war on terror”, and the USA’s selective disregard for international law encouraged and fuelled abuses by governments and others in all regions of the world.

In many countries, new doctrines of security continued to stretch the concept of “war” into areas formerly considered law enforcement, promoting the notion that human rights can be curtailed when it comes to the detention, interrogation and prosecution of “terrorist” suspects.

The “security excuse”, whereby governments curtailed and abused human rights under the cloak of the “war on terror”, was particularly apparent in a number of countries in Asia and Europe. For example, thousands of members of the ethnic Uighur community were arrested in China as “separatists, terrorists and religious extremists”. In Gujarat, India, hundreds of members of the Muslim community continued to be held under the Prevention of Terrorism Act. In Uzbekistan, the authorities rounded up and detained hundreds of people said to be devout Muslims or their relatives, and sentenced many people accused of “terrorism-related” offences to long prison terms following unfair trials. In the USA, there have been reprehensible attempts by officials to argue that torture was not torture, or that the USA bore no responsibility for torture carried out in other countries, even if it had sent the victim there.

Despite widespread “counter-terrorist” measures aimed at securing nation states and their citizens, armed groups in many countries launched appalling acts of violence designed to increase levels of insecurity. The massacre of hundreds of people on their morning train journey to work in the Spanish capital Madrid in March, or the taking hostage of hundreds of families, including children, in the
middle of a festive school event in Beslan, Russian Federation, in September, showed complete contempt for the most fundamental principles of humanity.

Governments have a duty to prevent and punish such atrocities, but they must do so while fully respecting human rights. Not only is it a moral and legal imperative to observe fundamental human rights all the more stringently in the face of such security threats, in practice it is far more likely to be effective in the long term. Respect for human rights and fundamental freedoms is not optional in efforts to defeat “terrorism”. States’ efforts to combat “terrorism” must be firmly and unconditionally grounded in the rule of law and respect for human rights.

The establishment of the International Criminal Court opens a number of new avenues for pursuing international criminal prosecutions, including against armed groups, although it will only be able to investigate and prosecute a limited number of cases itself. The continued opposition of the US administration to the International Criminal Court is therefore counter-productive to its own stated aim of countering “terrorism”. The International Criminal Court needs strong political and practical support to be able to deliver justice for international crimes committed by armed groups or governments

http://web.amnesty.org/report2005/intro-index-eng

[w0zz]

"But, in any event, as far as we can tell, out of 108 prisoner death in US Military custody, at least 27 of them, or 25% appear to be murders committed mainly by US Military personnel"

I'm curious to know what percentage of deaths under Al Qaeda's custody are due to murder? Of all they have taken prisoner, what % have been released, what % are still being held alive and what % were murdered?