War on Terrorism Leads to Rights Abuses: Watchdog
KAMPALA - Torture, beatings, executions, racist stereotyping and intrusive surveillance are among the abuses countries are committing in the name of fighting terrorism, a rights watchdog said on Monday.
The Commonwealth Human Rights Commission said since the 9/11 attacks, many nations had been using the military for police work in the so-called “war on terror”, leading to brutal policing techniques, including extra-judicial killings.
The Commission made the allegations in a report which reviews human rights in the 53-nation body before the biennial Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting (CHOGM).
“Until recently, torture was condemned as a gross violation of human rights … fear of terrorism and the desire to respond to it is steadily undermining this absolute prohibition,” the report said.
Among the offenders it named was Pakistan, which risks suspension from the Commonwealth because of President Pervez Musharraf’s imposition of martial law. Also mentioned was Uganda, where military police this year raided the High Court to seize bailed opposition supporters accused of treason.
“The extra-judicial killing of ‘terrorists’ provides an easy way of eliminating suspects … often, these ‘terrorists’ turn out to be children, dissidents, unarmed and peaceful protesters,” the report said.
It said the right not to be jailed without charge was slowly being eroded. In Tanzania and Bangladesh, suspects can be held indefinitely without trial.
In Malaysia, Singapore and Brunei they can be detained for longer than 700 days, while Britain is considering an extension of the 28-day period suspects can be held without charge.
“The consequences of taking people into custody without cause, for long periods of detention, are made even direr by laws that restrict access to counsel,” the report said.
“Positive profiling” of terror suspects has spawned racist stereotypes, it said. In Britain, people of south Asian descent are 30 percent more likely than others to be stopped by police.
“Anti-terrorism has resulted in the deepest compromises of our member states on human rights,” Yash Ghai, an expert on rights and law at Hong Kong University, told delegates at a Commonwealth People’s Forum.
Uganda will host CHOGM on Friday, after a state visit from Britain’s Queen Elizabeth, the head of the Commonwealth.
The report notes that despite 13 international counter-terrorism conventions and resolutions, countries have failed to agree on a definition of terrorism.
(Editing by Tim Pearce)
© 2007 Reuters
Terrorism is what you want it to be, just like evil, just like god.
“Among the offenders it named was Pakistan” - I guess the U.S. was not named? We don’t torture, beat, execute, etc.? If CHOGM doesn’t name the U.S., it is just a blowhard, worthless group of nincompoops who are cowed by the neocons.
We do not need to define everything down to the last little meaning as people will never agree totally with one another. One thing is for sure, most good, well meaning people know EVIL when they see or hear about it, and it is not always what our great leaders say it is. They know they have to keep blabbing about terrorism and rogue nations everywhere but here to keep enough people scared into accepting their policies.
Kernel, I think most good, well meaning people know torture or pornography when they see it, but, like C.S. Lewis in many of his writings on christianity..I’m not sure we all know evil when we see it… actions by one person can be well intended, the same action by another can come from evil roots…I think a good example of this is Lewis’s Screwtape Letters. Slippery Slopes often look begnign in the beginning…and are ultimately evil.
People who really have the mentality of thugs, will use any excuse they can find to “act out.”
This so-called “War on Terrrorism,” is just an excuse to pound on others. Puny, unimportant, powerless, little minds are handed the tools to brutalize; and that’s exactly what they’re doing.
It makes them feel powerful and vindicated. These are the same kinds of people that would have burned others at the stake during the Dark Ages and the Middle Ages. They would have enjoyed presiding at the Spanish Inquisition, or the Salem Witchcraft Trials. Same mentality; sad and old mentality, as well. Mankind has not made much progres in all these years.
Homeland Security employees spend taxpayers’ money on flat screen TVs, I-pods, etc. for themselves, and are they held accountable? This “war on terrorism” is BS.
The Commonwealth Human Rights Commission has an excellent track record of issuing highly accurate and informative reports. I particularly like their reports, published last year, confirming that bears do, indeed, defecate in temperate deciduous forests and that Pope Benedict XVI is, in fact, a Roman Catholic.
Not to mention the United States as an abuser of human rights makes this article a farce………….
It’ll just get “meetinged” to death. Same old, same old, and the gangs of thugs will continue to brutalize citizens everywhere - that’s MY definition of terrorism.
Remember, you saw it here first.
Terrorism is when you have bombs but no military industrial complex. Our leaders are more excited about a few nut jobs with some bombs than we are about China. China is using wealth from our trade imbalance to crush their own people and others.
Then again undeserved abuse is respected by Bu$h the inferior and Shotgun Dick.
Torture in the guise of strong, anti-terrorist measures or in any guise is indefensible.
The people who engage in it in every country always create a program of recrimination for scores of years to come.
Besides not being very bright, they are cowardly, manipulative criminals/creeps at the lowest rung of “humanity” if that term even applies.
I have thought that the Americans engaged in our most recent, morally bereft plague of torture should be deported, with admirable, courageous, illegal immigrants who have crossed the Sonora Desert given full citizenship in their stead.
But after reading former Representative Elizabeth Holtzman, I realize my proposal is too mild. The existing laws are at least very clear whether one believes in capital punishment or not.
There is no statute of limitations, for instance, for prosecution of a condoning
national leader in a case of torture that
lead to a victim’s death.
This is one of the laws which the Bush administration has worked so hard to subvert. What is the statutory penalty? Death.
Last week, the House passed HR 1955, a law that would add another (!!!) division to the monster that is the Dept. of Homeland Security. It would be tasked with preventing “homegrown terrorism” by countering extremist ideologies that could lead to the radicalization of folks who then became terrorists.
By the next day, a Los Angeles Assistant Police Chief in charge of terrorism announced that city’s plan to map all Muslims in the LA area so the police could “reach out” to vulnerable young people. The outcry against this flagrant piece of profiling was such that the plan was dropped. (They’ll have to find another way to “reach out.”) I think this legislation was another of those Prove You’re Tough on Terror and Islamofascism or We’ll Call You a Wuss laws. Only 3 Dems and 3 Republicans voted against it, although 10 or so Dems were absent and might have voted No.
The FBI crime figures for 2006 list 7,772 hate crimes and 1,417,745 crimes of violence. I believe the number of crimes classified as “terrorism” was zero.
The House COULD HAVE enacted Dennis Kucinich’s Department of Peace legislation, an extremely well thought-out plan to, with education, address all the forms of violence that cost America tens of thousands of deaths and untold billions of dollars each year.
Is CHOGM just what the name suggests? cHOGm HOGWASH? Any condemnation without the US a the prime perpetrator is nothing but hogwash.
As the name implies commonwealth, perhaps it only refers to states that are in the British Commonwealth. The USA is not part of the organization, hence why would they talk about you. I would also not expect the CHOGM to talk about other countries like Saudi Arabia, Japan, Russia or Brazil.
There are times when I wonder if some think the earth revolves around the usa rather than the sun…
What we think about expands. A war on terrorism, drugs and poverty expands terrorism, drugs and poverty. What about a war on tranquility? Perhaps developing a quiet mind is the real answer.
The War on Terrorism is a big fraud to prop up the Military-Industrial-Infotainment Complex. It is a war for oligarchs and empire, ultimately a war on We the People, in the US and everywhere. We should reject all wars, whether the “war on drugs” or the “war on terrorism,” because they are all bogus, perpetrated by Machievellian manipulators whose only agenda is to enslave everyone for their own unending greed and ignorance.