By IPS Correspondents
LONDON, Jul 25 2001 (IPS)

Amnesty International has called upon governments to adopt new plans to tackle racism and to redress injustices. The international human rights group has sought specific measures ahead of the world conference against racism in Durban, South Africa.

Amnesty launched a report, ‘Racism and the Administration of Justice’, Wednesday, targeting the Jul 30 – Aug 10 final meeting, in Geneva, of the committee preparing for the racism talks, scheduled to begin at the end of month.

One of the thorniest issues raised ahead of the summit relates to Palestinian demands against Israeli occupation. Israel must accept its responsibility for these under its international obligations, Amnesty said. At the same time Amnesty said the Holocaust cannot be denied. “There are victims of the Holocaust still living today,” Claudio Cordone, programme director for Amnesty’s International Secretariat told media representatives at the launch of the Amnesty report.

Amnesty also supported demands for compensation from states where violations were carried out in the past. “States cannot avoid responsibility for such violations because they were committed by past governments,” Amnesty said. “Recognising historical wrongs is essential, both as acknowledgement of past injustice and in order to avoid repetition in the future.” Where individual perpetrators cannot be traced, “the most effective form of reparation is to eliminate contemporary manifestations of discrimination.”

Many governments including Israel are opposed to such proposals for historical correction. Organisers fear that these disputes can lead to a boycott of the Durban conference. “If at all that happens the world will have missed a unique opportunity to make a difference in the fight against racism,” Amnesty said.

The Amnesty report says that unchecked racism can lead to large- scale tragedies. The worst in recent years was the massacre of up to a million people in just 13 weeks in Rwanda in 1994.

Some of the continuing forms of racism relate to the administration of justice, Amnesty says in its report. In the US, the report says, blacks and whites are the victims of murder in almost equal numbers, yet more than 80 per cent of prisoners executed since 1977 were convicted for the murder of a white person.

Amnesty spoke in its report of India’s “hidden apartheid”. It said that more than 160 million Dalits, formerly known as “untouchables” are vulnerable to a whole range of human rights abuses because of their caste.

Amnesty is seeking correction of administrative processes in Britain, which has seen a summer of racial rioting in the north. “The police who are guilty must be brought to justice,” Kate Gilmore, chief executive of Amnesty ‘s international said. Speaking of Asian violence directed at white people she said “Amnesty cannot condone violence against anyone but that has come in a context of racial discrimination in and by the police force.” Such rioting can be prevented only through eradication of racist practices and systems, she said.

Amnesty said in its report than “an estimated 300 million indigenous peoples worldwide face impoverishment and cultural marginalisation as well as widespread discrimination and other human rights abuses.” Such discrimination has been reported particularly in Australia, Guatemala ad against Roma in Europe.” Discrimination against Roma continues widely in Europe based on the lifestyle or relative poverty of the Romani communities, Amnesty said.

Its report paints a grim picture of racial discrimination around the world: against the Chinese in Indonesia, against Serbs, Croats and Muslims in one or the other area of the Balkans, against Kurds in Europe and the Middle East, particularly in Iraq and Turkey, northerners against southerners in Sudan, minorities in Myanmar, and Tibetans and Uighurs in China.

“Around the world asylum-seekers, refugees and migrants are facing xenophobic environments, sometimes directly encouraged by the authorities or political parties and almost always reflected in the administration of justice,” the Amnesty report says. In Austria, Belgium and Switzerland “foreign nationals have died during deportation as a result of dangerous methods used by the police,” the report says. In Japan detained workers have been “beaten and humiliated”. In Saudi Arabia, of 889 executions recorded between 1990 and 2000 more than half were migrant workers, the Amnesty report says.

“And all over the world the vulnerability of women to human rights abuses is heightened when they belong to ethnic or racial minorities suffering discrimination,” the report says. Rape and sexual abuse of women is “deliberately used to systematically intimidate and traumatise women, families and whole communities.”

Amnesty said it wants governments to: become party to the International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination; ensure that members of state agencies reflect the diversities of their societies; provide protection against racist attacks; ensure the rights of and due assistance for asylum- seekers and detainees; and root out racial discrimination in the justice system.

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