HUMAN RIGHTS: Amnesty International Turns Spotlight on Impunity

By Mario de Queiroz Reprint | | Print |

Mario de Queiroz

TROIA, Portugal, Aug 23 1999 (IPS) - Uprooting the impunity enjoyed by human rights violators throughout the world will be the central focus of the influential rights watchdog Amnesty International over the next four years.

That announcement was made by the biennial meeting of the International Council, the top authority of the London-based human rights group. Some 400 delegates from 80 countries took part in the week of discussions behind closed doors, on the peninsula of Troia, some 40 kms south of Lisbon.

The four-year-plan approved by consensus at the gathering which ended Saturday stresses the need for Amnesty to step up its campaign to bring to justice those accused of violating human rights, and especially notorious rights violators accused of political assassinations, torture and arbitrary arrests.

The voices of those killed for political reasons, those who have ‘disappeared’ forever, as well as the voices of their families and friends who mourn their absence are calls for these culprits to be brought to justice, said Amnesty International Secretary-General Pierre Sané.

To live up to that aim, which Sané termed fundamental, the Amnesty gathering decided to launch campaigns throughout the world to lobby countries to adopt national laws making it possible for rights abusers to be convicted, independently of where and by whom the offences were committed.

The delegates also unanimously agreed to work against the passage of national amnesty laws allowing those responsible for “disappearances”, political killings and other grave rights violations to get off scot-free.

The International Council agreed to draw up strategies to support the prompt establishment of an International Criminal Court, the creation of which was decided on by a United Nations- sponsored international conference a year ago in Rome.

Seven countries, including the United States, China, India and Israel, voted against the resolution for the establishment of the ICC.

The plan approved by Amnesty entails bolstering the organisation’s working programmes linked to gender issues, particularly domestic violence, the chief victims of which are women and children.

Amnesty also announced that it planned to step up its efforts in support of refugees and asylum-seekers – especially with respect to labour rights – and human rights activists, the targets of abuse in many parts of the world.

Human rights are not only violated when genocide is committed or people are tortured, the rights watchdog underlined. They are also trampled on a daily basis in the workplace, by companies that only rarely recognise the rights of workers, and especially of immigrants.

In his closing speech, the chairman of the International Council, Albert Gans, paid homage to the struggle waged by students almost 40 years ago in Portugal, which inspired the creation of Amnesty International.

In 1960, two University of Lisbon students were arrested by agents of the secret police of Antonio de Oliveira Salazar’s ‘O Estado Novo’ dictatorship (1926-74), after drinking a toast to the freedom of Portugal. They were sentenced to seven years in prison for that “offence.”

British lawyer Peter Benenson read about the case in Britain’s ‘Daily Telegraph’, and a year later founded Amnesty International, which has become the world’s most respected – and most feared, not only by dictators – human rights organisation.

The gathering announced the creation of the new International Executive Committee, comprised of:

– Samuel Zan Akologo (Ghana), – Mahmoud ben Romdhane (Tunisia), – Margaret Bedggood (New Zealand), – Mary Gray (United States), – Paul Hoffman (United States), – Hans Landolt (Peru), – Colm O Cuanchain (Ireland), – Pierre Robert (France), – Jaap Rosen Jacobson (the Netherlands).

Amnesty denounced the continuing climate of terror in the former Portuguese colony of East Timor, where the action of pro- Indonesian militias and police has cost more than 300 lives over the past two months.

East Timor was invaded in 1975 by Indonesia, which Amnesty holds responsible for the deaths of one-third of the territory’s 650,000 inhabitants.

On Aug 30, in a referendum organised by the United Nations, the inhabitants of East Timor will vote either for autonomy regulated by Jakarta or the founding of a new state.

New battles waged by Amnesty, which is not only concerned with “classic” human rights abuses, tackle new issues such as the accountability of transnational corporations which, Sané maintained, must not only respect human rights, but also use their influence in the countries where they operate.