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HUMAN RIGHTS: Legal Experts Warn of Global Deterioration
By María Isabel García
CARTAGENA, Colombia, Jun 19 (IPS) - The U.S. fight against
terrorism is undermining human rights around the world, warned
jurists speaking at the World Social Thematic Forum (WSTF) taking
place this week in Colombia.
The ''war on terrorism'' launched in the wake of the Sep. 11,
2001 attacks on New York and Washington has given rise to ''a new
reading of international jurisprudence on human rights,'' said
Ignacio Saíz, deputy director of the Americas programme of the
London-based Amnesty International rights watchdog.
The new vision goes so far as to regard fundamental rights as
perhaps a ''luxury'' enjoyed by people in stable countries, Saíz
said at the opening of a WSTF panel in Cartagena, a Caribbean
resort town on Colombia's northern coast.
Chilean activist José Miguel Vivanco, executive director of the
Americas division of Human Rights Watch (HRW), concurred with Saíz
and other experts that Sep. 11, 2001 marked the birth of ''a new
era'' in international politics and the application of
international human rights law.
Saíz was the opening speaker at the panel on ''War, Terrorism,
Security and Human Rights''.
Other participants were Federico Andreu, an adviser to the
Geneva-based International Commission of Jurists (ICJ), Gustavo
Gallón, the head of the Colombian Commission of Jurists, Marco
Romero, a professor at the National University of Colombia's law
school, and Samuel Moncada, the head of the school of history at
Venezuela's Central University.
Andreu said that in the context of the new division of the
world between ''good'' and ''evil'' - rather than ''capitalists''
and ''communists'' as in the past - ''talk has even arisen as to
whether torture might be a necessary tool'' in the fight against
terrorism.
The adviser to the ICJ said the mere fact that the possibility
of torture being necessary is being toyed with ''is a grave
setback,'' even if the word ''torture'' is not used, but the more
euphemistic ''use of necessary physical pressure'' instead.
In Romero's view, the question is whether ''if in the current
situation, it is possible to talk about political solutions to
conflicts, and if security implies observance of human rights and
respect for coexistence.''
The terrorist attacks on the United States provided an outlet
for ''currents'' that were already vocal within the country, which
he said recalled episodes of the Cold War, and made it possible
for them ''to rationalise a doctrine that is not new,'' said the
law professor.
Those groups had already identified ''enemies including narco-
states like Colombia and rogue-states like Iraq'', and followers
had been won over to the idea that ''imperialism is good if the
empire is good,'' he said.
The government of George W. Bush ''dumped into the sack of anti-
terrorism everything it had in a bunch of other bags,'' in order
to build a policy that was ''lax'' on human rights, under which
''if dictators are friends, they should be supported, as is the
case in Pakistan,'' said Romero.
Andreu pointed to the ''gradual but steady emergence'' of
reforms aimed at suppressing legitimate, peaceful forms of social
resistance.
He cited the case of Peru, where the government recently made
allusions to the ''infiltration of terrorists'' in nationwide
protests by teachers, campesinos and students that led the
president to declare a state of emergency.
According to Andreu, a particularly ''revealing'' development
in this respect was the Sep. 28, 2001 approval of resolution 1373
by the United Nations Security Council, which established wide-
ranging measures to combat terrorism.
The binding resolution required nations to criminalise
terrorist activities, freeze the funds and financial assets of
terrorists and their supporters, ban others from making funds
available to terrorists, and deny safe haven to terrorists -
without ever defining terrorism, Andreu underlined.
Since 1937, the international community has attempted to come
up with a consensus on a definition of ''terrorism'', and 250
proposed definitions have been debated, but agreement has not been
reached, he noted.
In a world where everything is seen in terms of black and
white, and ''greys are not accepted,'' more and more civil
liberties are being restricted, and the rights of the most
vulnerable are being violated, said Andreu.
To illustrate that, he cited a European Union framework
decision on the extradition of wanted criminals within the bloc,
which limits guarantees for people who are extradited, by
abolishing the requirement that the offence of which the person is
accused must be classified as a crime in both countries in
question.
The jurist also pointed out that the Algiers Convention, the
African Union Convention and the Arab League's Anti-Terrorism
Convention all include disturbances or upsets in any key sector,
such as public water or electricity utilities, as a form of
terrorism.
With that approach, ''legitimate forms of the exercise of trade
union rights have formally begun to be criminalised in the
international sphere.''
Vivanco argued that while the international community agrees on
the need to successfully fight terrorism, states ''must not resort
to the same methods they say they are combatting.''
It is erroneous to see ''human rights as an obstacle'' in the
fight against terrorism, which must not be reduced to ''fear and
intimidation, but requires moral supremacy on the part of the
state, as well as the support of the people,'' added the spokesman
for the U.S.-based Human Rights Watch.
He also said that although the United States was a pioneer in
incorporating human rights into its foreign policy, its legitimacy
and credibility in that sense is being damaged by the way the war
on terrorism is being waged.
The most disturbing case, he said, is the violation of the
human rights of prisoners accused of terrorism who are being held
at the U.S. naval base in Guantánamo, Cuba.
Vivanco pointed out that prisoners in Guantánamo have been sent
by the United States to Jordan and Egypt for interrogation,
because the laws of those countries allow the use of torture to
extract information.
In addition, the activist referred to the human rights
situation in Cuba. ''Cubans also have the right to freedom,'' he
said, stating that the socialist government of Fidel Castro has
failed to live up to internationally accepted human rights
standards.
Vivanco's remarks drew an angry response from the Cuban
Ambassador to Colombia, Antonio López, who was in the audience.
López, who cast aspersions on Vivanco, said that no one in Cuba
was ''forcibly disappeared or tortured,'' and that the country's
prisons ''are open'' to observers - a claim that the Human Rights
Watch activist disputed.
The experts sitting on the panel also issued warnings of the
implications of a draconian counter-terrorism law that has almost
made its way through the Colombian Congress, and which will
generalise measures which up to now have only been adopted during
a state of emergency.
The controversial bill will broadly authorise phone-tapping and
surveillance of mail and e-mails, and will grant powers of
prosecution to the police and army.
(END/2003)
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