RIGHTS: Amnesty Points to New Pattern of Abuses

By Sanjay Suri Reprint | | Print |

Sanjay Suri

LONDON, May 28 2002 (IPS) - The Amnesty International annual report for 2001 shows a marked deterioration in the rights of non-nationals in several countries following the events of September 11.

“The year 2001 witnessed a direct challenge to long-accepted human rights standards by the very governments that campaigned for their establishment,” the annual report says. Some of the strongest moves denying rights to non-nationals came in the United States and in Britain, the report says.

“A number of governments jumped on the ‘anti-terrorism’ bandwagon and seized the moment to step up repression, undermine human rights protection and stifle political dissent,” the report says.

The new measures included “indefinite detention without trial, special courts based on secret evidence, or cultural and religious restrictions – sometimes creating shadow criminal justice systems,” the report says.

“Human rights and national security are not incompatible,” Amnesty secretary-general Irene Khan told media representatives at the launch of the report in London Tuesday. “The human rights system was not created by human rights organisations, but by governments,” she said. “By creating this they showed the compatibility of the two aims.”

Within Europe, she said “the United Kingdom is the only state that derogated from the European Commission of Human Rights to introduce legislation to allow detention without charge.” Khan called it “a pretty severe measure to take, one that is unparalleled.”

Amnesty International “acknowledges that in an emergency some measures can be taken to suspend some rights,” Irene Khan said. “But some like the right to life are so fundamental that they override all other concerns.”

Angela Wright, Amnesty researcher for the U.S. told IPS that the pattern of abuses had changed significantly within the U.S. from earlier years. “Our concerns earlier were mostly over matters of custody and prisoners, most of them concerning U.S. nationals,” she said. After September 11 people who looked like Muslims, Arabs and South Asians had been attacked, and the government had brought new legislation directed at non-nationals.

The Attorney-General has the right now to order indefinite detention of an alien on mere suspicion that he or she could be a threat to national security, she said. The new provisions “have been used very widely over the past few months,” she said.

Whipped up by politicians more concerned with popularity than with respecting international human rights obligations, a racist backlash has generated a climate of suspicion and mistrust, exaggerated by the way in which foreigners are being portrayed as a source of ‘terrorism’, the report says.

“The world has undoubtedly changed radically since September 11,” the report says. “Yet many things remain the same: a disregard for human life and human dignity, as well as for economic, cultural and social rights; an escalation of old and festering situations such as the Middle East, Afghanistan and Colombia,” the report says.

The report documents extrajudicial executions in 47 countries, judicial executions in 27 countries, “disappearances” in 35 countries, cases of torture and ill-treatment in 11 countries and prisoners of conscience in at least 56 countries. But Amnesty says the true figures are likely to be much higher. The report covers violations in 152 countries.

The report says that “in Israel and the Occupied Territories, unlawful killings, both by the Israel defence forces and by Palestinian armed groups, torture of detainees and unfair trials continued unabated.”

In Afghanistan religious and ethnic minorities were targeted in mass killings and executions, and amputations were carried out while the Taliban were in power, the report says. But “an unknown number of civilians were killed or had their homes or property destroyed during the U.S.-led bombing campaign which started in October,” the report says. “The U.S. and its allies may have breached the rules of war.”

The report points to “chilling” statistics in Colombia: more than 300 people ‘disappeared’, more than 4,000 civilians were killed outside combat, the majority by army-backed paramilitaries, and more than 1,700 were kidnapped, mostly by guerrilla groups.

The Amnesty report records widespread violations of human rights by “armed groups”. Khan said “Amnesty does not like the word ‘terrorism’ because there is no internationally agreed definition, and one man’s terrorist is another’s freedom fighter.” The word ‘terrorist’, she said, has “a certain political connotation behind it.”

The report for 2001 came with a short update on events from January to April 2002. It says the Indian authorities failed to protect people from communal violence “which led to the deaths of hundreds of people and displacement of thousands.” In Zimbabwe the human rights situation deteriorated markedly in the run-up to the March 2002 presidential poll, the report says.

Irene Khan said “the climate is now a lot less hospitable for human rights activists than it was before.” Governments now cite security as their primary concern. But support for Amnesty has grown from civil society, and the organisation has the “authority of the people,” she said.

But it was not all bad news. The report points to some positive developments last year on the human rights front. In Pakistan all juvenile death sentences were ordered commuted to life imprisonment following a meeting between Irene Khan and General Pervaiz Musharraf. The decision saved the lives of about 100 child offenders.

Prisoners of conscience, Juma Duni Haji and Machano Khamis Ali, were freed in Tanzania. Jigme Sangpo – Tibet’s longest serving prisoner of conscience – was freed after serving most of the last 40 years behind bars. He is now 76. Prisoners of conscience were released in Angola, Burundi, in the Democratic Republic of Congo, Cuba, Honduras, Uruguay and several other countries.