RIGHTS: Terrorism Leads Debate as UN Commission Begins Sessions

By Gustavo Capdevila Reprint | | Print |

Gustavo Capdevila

GENEVA, Mar 18 2002 (IPS) - The United Nations Commission on Human Rights launched its annual sessions Monday with marked concern about the impacts of the war against terrorism being waged by the United States.

Human rights and security, as well as terrorism, themes of the Commission’s six-week sessions, predominated in the official opening speeches and in the statements issued by non-governmental groups specialising in human rights issues.

The UN High Commission for Human Rights, Mary Robinson, said that as a consequence of the Sep 11 attacks in New York and Washington, international human rights norms “are at risk of being undermined.”

It is up to the Commission on Human Rights (CHR) to vigorously defend those standards, Robinson said.

The chairman of the outgoing CDH, Leandro Despouy, commented in reference to terrorists that, even if they are individuals who do not abide by any law beyond their criminal motives, governments must still respect international human rights law when dealing with such people.

Despouy, an Argentine national, pointed out that in the 1970s and 1980s, many Latin American governments attempted “to combat the demon with the weapons of the devil and the only thing they achieved was to turn the region into hell.”

Robinson invited the CHR to establish an oversight mechanism for the application, from a human rights perspective, of the decrees issued by the UN Security Council in the wake of Sep 11 to fight terrorism.

The High Commissioner, who said the terror attacks in the United States were “a crime against humanity,” had predicted from the first moment that the civilian population in Afghanistan would suffer abuses during the military actions in that country.

She has also condemned the conditions and the legal situation in which the prisoners captured in Afghanistan and taken to the U.S. naval base in Guantánamo, Cuba, are being held.

Addressing the representatives of the Commission’s 53 member countries Monday, Robinson stressed the need to respond to terrorism not just with legislative and security measures, “but with the armoury of common values, common standards and common commitments on universal rights that define us as one global community and which enable us to reach beyond our differences.”

Amnesty International, a London-based human rights watchdog, declared concern last week that some countries “have introduced special measures for the prosecution of cases of ‘terrorism’ by special courts or special rules of evidence that violate fair trial rights.”

Human Rights Watch (HRW), another non-governmental organisation, based in New York, stated that “a number of governments have cynically tried to take advantage of the anti- terrorist struggle to justify or intensify their own crackdowns on political opponents, armed insurgencies, or religious groups.”

Reed Brody, advocacy director at HRW, backed Robinson’s urging of the UN Commission to monitor the consequences of the anti- terrorist measures as far as their impacts on respect for human rights.

The effects of the Sep 11 attacks were also studied during the “Symposium on Human Rights in Islam,” held over the weekend in Geneva, under the auspices of the Organisation of the Islamic Conference (OIC).

Abdelouahed Belkeziz, OIC secretary-general, denounced what he said is a “slander campaigns against Islam which portray it as a faith that underrates human rights.”

He commented that some countries that were committed to the “defence of human rights and public freedom have turned their back to these very principles when they came under a horrendous terrorist attack that was universally condemned by the whole world, led by all Islamic countries.”

Those states, said Belkeziz, “have even committed violations and reprisals against innocent people in a way that is unjustified by any measure of justice.”

Alloui M’Daghri, Morocco’s Minister of Islamic Affairs, condemned terrorism, which he said is the result of the exaggerated materialism of civilisation and which requires the world to re-establish a balance among values.

Robinson confirmed to the CHR her decision not to seek another term as High Commissioner, and will end her mandate in September. She agreed last year to stay on one more year at the request of UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan.

Sources from the human rights community had said last week that Robinson would accept a renewal of her mandate. Her refusal, they said Monday, is due to the fact that her re-election does not have the support of the most powerful countries.

The High Commissioner has been an outspoken defender of national groups and minorities who have been subjected to serious human rights violations, around the world, and has won the ire of more than one government official.

Robinson has criticised the actions of Russian troops against the Muslim separatists of Chechnya. In her speech Monday, she insisted on the need for greater and continued effort to defend human rights in that region.

The UN official said that in her conduct at the helm of the human rights office she has always followed the advice of Annan himself, who upon her appointment said, “Stay an outsider within the United Nations.”