Global, Global Geopolitics, Headlines, Human Rights

RIGHTS: Monitoring ‘Urgent’ in War on Terrorism – Groups

Gustavo Capdevila

GENEVA, Oct 23 2003 (IPS) - In Russia, the bodies of those who have carried out terrorist attacks are not returned to their families, who may not be informed of the burial location, according to a law passed a year ago by the upper house of the Russian parliament after less than an hour of debate.

"A terrorist is not only an assassin, but also a member of a political organisation pursuing specific aims. The sole act of burial is a political act… which must be prevented from the outset," said Alexander Kotenkov, President Vladimir Putin’s representative before parliament.

This is one of the examples that the International Commission of Jurists (ICJ) cited in a meeting in which it called on civil society groups to press the United Nations to establish a mechanism to monitor compliance of counter-terrorism measures with international obligations to protect human rights.

Federico Andreu-Guzmán, an ICJ legal adviser, says that many of the measures adopted in the national and inter-governmental sphere to fight terrorism seriously undermine human rights, international humanitarian law and the right to asylum.

Participating in the ICJ campaign for a monitoring mechanism are several of the world’s leading independent human rights organisations, such as Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, the International Service for Human Rights (ISHR) and the International Federation of Human Rights Leagues (FIDH).

Morris Tidball-Binz, director of the ISHR defenders office, said it in the clearest terms: the underlying political objective is to convince the U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights "to get moving".

It is essential "to identify the holes" in the international legal system, said Juan José Gómez Camacho, director of human rights for Mexico’s Foreign Relations Secretariat.

This means reviewing existing mechanisms and determining what can be used appropriately in the fight against terrorism, he said.

During the 2002 sessions of the U.N. Commission on Human Rights, the Mexican delegation proposed establishing a body for monitoring respect for human rights in the implementation of anti-terrorism policies.

That initiative failed due to the veto by Algeria, although behind the move was pressure from the United States, which that year did not hold a seat on the commission, participating only as an observer, said Tidball-Binz.

In this year’s sessions of the Commission on Human Rights, the members approved a vague resolution on the matter, counselling the use of existing mechanisms to ensure protection of human rights and basic freedoms in the context of the fight against terrorism.

But the non-governmental organisations specialising in human rights want the 53 members of the commission at the next sessions, in March 2004, to establish the special mechanism proposed by Mexico, or something similar.

The U.N. human rights system already allows for special procedures, consisting of the designation of rapporteurs or representatives of the secretary-general for investigation and follow-up of specific issues.

Another approach is to create a body of several individuals to carry out the same task.

The NGOs prefer the appointment of a rapporteur, but would accept another "viable" solution, one that ensures that the monitoring is conducted effectively and efficiently, said Tidball-Binz.

No matter which approach is taken, say these human rights groups, it is urgent and indispensable to establish a special mechanism.

Leila Zerrougui, U.N. expert and chairwoman of the commission’s working group on arbitrary arrest, said the urgency of the matter is due in part to the fact that countries are deliberately confusing war crimes with acts of terrorism.

In these cases, governments invoke the state of ongoing war to override certain items of international law, including arbitrary arrests, the focus of the working group.

For example, the United States claims that the people it has imprisoned at its base in Guantánamo, Cuba, most of whom are from Afghanistan, were arrested during an armed conflict and are therefore not covered by the mandate of the working group, Zerrougui said.

The U.N. special rapporteur on torture, Theo Van Boven, referred to the situation of the Guantánamo prisoners as "legal and jurisdictional limbo" and described such detention locations as "human rights no-man’s-lands".

"The biggest political problem we’re facing on the international level are the attacks against the legitimacy of the U.N. itself," says Rachel Brett, representative of the Quakers Office at the U.N.

Brett, a U.S. citizen, wondered about her government and its role in "undermining everything we have tried to create since 1945."

The activists convened by the ICJ mentioned the pressures on countries to adapt their national laws to the new anti-terrorism policies promoted by the world’s powers.

Françoise Hampson, an expert on the U.N. Sub-Commission on the Promotion and Protection of Human Rights, commented that Kenya and Hong Kong had been exemplary in that their lawmakers refused to submit to such pressures.

Indonesia, "a fragile democracy", was leaned on to pass anti-terrorism legislation, said the new ISHR director, Chris Sidoti.

Through such behaviour by the powerful countries, "we are seeing the rebirth of colonialism," said Sidoti, and Australian.

Van Boven said that in a visit to Uzbekistan, where the government has aligned itself with the major powers in the fight against terrorism, "It became clear that belonging to certain traditional religious groups or movements carried the label, in the perceptions and the actions of the authorities, of being terrorists."

In this regard, Hampson pointed out that the United States removed Uzbekistan from the list of countries that violate freedom of religion.