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US 'War on Terror' Eroded Rights Worldwide - Experts
GENEVA - Washington's "war on terror" after the Sept. 11 attacks has eroded human rights worldwide, creating lingering cynicism that the United Nations must now combat, international law experts said on Monday.
An Afghan child peers from the window of his classroom in the village of Surobi in early December. American envoy Richard Holbrooke has held talks with Afghan President Hamid Karzai as part of a review of Washington's fight against extremism, after the Afghan leader warned of a "crisis" with his US backers. (AFP/File/Joel Saget) Mary Robinson, who was the U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights when al Qaeda militants flew hijacked planes into the World Trade Center and Pentagon in 2001, said the United States caused harm with some of the ways it responded.
"Seven years after 9/11 it is time to take stock and repeal abusive laws and policies," the former Irish president said, warning that harsh U.S. detentions and interrogations in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Guantanamo Bay, Cuba gave a dangerous signal to other countries that could easily follow suit.
While new U.S. President Barack Obama has announced he will close Guantanamo to break from the practices of his predecessor George W. Bush, Robinson said sweeping changes needed to take place to ensure Washington abandons its "war paradigm".
"There has been severe damage and it needs to be addressed," she told a news conference in Geneva. "We are not more secure. We are more divided, and people are more cynical about the operation of laws."
Arthur Chaskalson, former chief justice of South Africa, said that the United States should launch an inquiry into its counter-terrorism practices, including acts of torture by individual security and intelligence agents.
Although counter-terrorism issues have faded from the front pages since the change of government in Washington, Chaskalson said such practices have shifted around the world and could keep restricting liberties if they are not confronted head-on.
"We all have less rights today than we had five or 10 years ago, and if nothing happens, we will have even less," he told a Geneva briefing to launch an International Commission of Jurists (ICJ) report on counter-terrorism and human rights.
ABUSE MONITORING
The report found that many undemocratic states have referred to U.S. counter-terrorism practices to justify their own abuses, a trend Robinson said was particularly alarming.
She called on the U.N. Security Council and Human Rights Council to step up their abuse monitoring and to assist poorer nations with police training to better target rights violators.
Counter-terrorism policies worldwide should also be put under the microscope, according to Robinson. "It could warrant a special session of the Human Rights Council," she said.
The 47-member-state body has previously had special sessions on Israel and the Palestinians, Sudan's Darfur region, Myanmar, the Democratic Republic of Congo, and high food prices, and will assess the global financial crisis on Friday.
Robinson also questioned the effectiveness of the Council's universal periodic review, under which every U.N. member has its rights record assessed on a regular rotation.
"We have looked at some of the universal periodic reviews of countries that we know from our hearings have severely abused human rights in their counter-terrorism measures, and it is a soft review, there is no accountability," she said. "There is a necessity now for leadership at the United Nations."
Countries recently reviewed by the Council include China, Russia, Germany, Canada, Saudi Arabia, and Mexico. Hearings for the ICJ report took place in Bogota, Nairobi, Sydney, Belfast, London, Rabat, Washington, Buenos Aires, Jakarta, Moscow, Delhi, Islamabad, Toronto, Ottawa, Jerusalem, Cairo, and Brussels.
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11 Comments so far
Show AllIt is a war on personal freedom, stupid.
Deepa
"She called on the U.N. Security Council and Human Rights Council to step up their abuse monitoring and to assist poorer nations with police training to better target rights violators."
It is ironical Mary Robinson calling on UNSC "to step up their abuse monitoring". US and UK, which are permanent members of UNSC, are accused by the "international law experts" for violating international laws on human rights. Anti-terror measures worldwide have seriously undermined international human rights law, a report by legal experts says. It also said that the UK and the US have "actively undermined" international law by their actions. These included detention without trial, illegal disappearance and torture. Britain's pre-trial detention time limit of 28 days is one of the longest in the world.
There are atleast two underlying premises in Robinson’s statement:
1. Some countries are labeled as DEMOCRACIES and other as HUMAN RIGHTS VIOLATORS. These labels are ETERNAL (like the Christian doctrine of “eternal security of salvation”). No matter what these countries are and do in the present, do not change their status/position. UN Human Rights Commission, sometime ago, found out two states based on race in the US. Illegal wire-tapping, Bush’s signing statements, US torture policies, extraordinary renditions, US torture centers around the world, CIA criminal activities, US overt and covert support to dictators and opposition to democracies (in Pakistan, Palestine, Bolivia…), US funding and supplying of weapons to terrorist organizations…do not change its status as a DEMOCRACY, or even a BEACON OF DEMOCRACY.
2. Categorisation of countries as "democracies" and "human rights violators" based on their economic status: "to assist poorer nations with police training to better target rights violators." In this context one should remember the role being played in the Central and South America by the Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation (WHISC) at Fort Benning, Georgia. Only the ignorant of history and blind to the reality embrace the view that economic richness is directly proportional to moral/ethical richness, and economic poverty is directly proportional to moral/ethical poverty.
Mary Robinson, the “international law expert” (?), is perpetuating the racist and colonial/imperial view of the US and the west. She would do better, if she reads the histories of some of these economically rich countries.
Unfortunately the slow but impressive advance of human rights since the enlightenment has been beaten back by the ascendancy of conservative Christians as the dominant political force for the past 28 years. Warmongering, war profiteering, torture, indifference to civilian casualties, unlawful use of weapons, denial of rights under the Geneva Conventions, forced disappearance, indefinite detention without trial and other practices consistent with the religious right's values have made us a pariah among nations, earning the contempt of our friends and the hatred of our foes.
We've traded our heritage of freedom for an illusion of safety, and the rule of law for the whims of politicians.
Power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely, as Lord Acton warned. The US has the closest thing to absolute military might the world has ever seen, and has allowed itself to be corrupted beyond redemption. Obama is a breath of fresh air compared with Bush, but still in the thrall of neoconservative ethics. Sic transit gloria mundi.
Conservative Christians? You mean conservative Christians such as Gordon Brown? Jacqui Smith? David Milliband?
It is naive, simplistic and lazy, at best, for the left to try to lay all the blame of the erosion of civil rights and democracy worldwide on the religious right or Bush.
Power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely. True. For the left as much as for the right.
Apart from the fact that Mr. Milliband is Jewish and a Zionist, you are quite right.
The USA professes to want to rid the world of Oppression, terror and give it "freedom"............
but actually in order to REPLACE it all with ITS oppression, injustice, exploitation and tyranny.
the USA for almost 2 centuries has used the BAIT of "freedom, justice and liberty"
to SWITCH towards its version of INJUSTICE, OPPRESSION and TYRANNY.
it wants to "remove" tyrannies and oppression from different corners and cultures and histories of the planet in order to
GATHER THEM ALL UNDER ONE Oppression, Injustice and Tyranny...............
THAT of the United States of America.
it is really like the story in the book and movie:
""LORD OF THE RINGS" by JRR TOLKIEN....
where the Dark Lord Sauron created ....
"Rings of Power and Magic......
3 for the elves,
seven for the Dwarves,
9 rings for Men......and in secret....
ONE RING for himself...the ONE ring
" One Ring to rule them all,
One Ring to find them,
One Ring to bring them all
and in the darkness bind them."
J. R. R. Tolkien, The Fellowship of the Ring, 1954, chapter 2
British scholar & fantasy novelist (1892 - 1973)
.
there is also a line in an exchange in that same story ...
where the Hobbit Protagonist Frodo - running from the evil Sauron's agents -- meets for the first time the bad-looking Aragorn ;;;and says to aragorn, who is foul-looking from his travels and sufferings...
""You have frightened me several times tonight, but never in the way that the servants of the Dark Lord would, or so I imagine. I think one of His Spies would.....well......
.....SEEM fairer and FEEL fouler..."
the "fair" United States - with its "fair" capitalism and wealth and its "fair" houses , and its "fair" constitution, and its "fair" democracy, and its "fair" freedom"...and its "fair" this and that.............
as in the words of The little Hobbit Frodo:
"Seems Fairer and FEELS FOULER."
it is really no different from even the favorite "american book" - the Bible's New Testament....where the Devil , Satan, appearsbefore Jesus in the desert and "tempts" jesus with:
"jump into the abyss"...with "I will give you the riches of the world"....
and LOOKS FAIR to all but is FOUL.
it is also the same with the once "archangel Lucifer" who, the bible says -- was the "most beautiful" the FAIREST of God's angels...but was the most FOUL in spirit with his arrogance. ....that is - if one believed in the bible of course..........
but i think the analogies are ......well...quite clear....
that is the USA .
where - as its economic implosion reveals....again , from the Tolkien story , this also applies:
"ALL THE GLITTERS is not gold".
as in "america the Shining City on the Hill"...........
and GLITTERS LIKE gold.........but ISN"T gold.
it's actually revealing itself , behind the "glitter"
as Corroded cheap metal......with FAKE "gold plating".
Where Sauron the Dark Lord created his "ring of power...to find them all., to bring them all, and in the darkness BIND them"........in the volcanic mountain of Mount DOOM....
WASHINGTON - the "heart of darkness" is the USA's MOUNT DOOM where it createst "rings of power" and the ONE RING to rule them all.
I just HOPE for his sake and for america's sake and for the world's sake ....that as OBAMA SLIPS on, momentarily, like the Hobbits Frodo , Samwise Gamgee and Bilbo Baggins...that the LURE of the ONE RING of POWER of washington and US "glitter" --
will not transform him into ANOTHER of the servants of Sauron and his Ring of Power....such as the Nazgul ...or GOLLUM....
he COULD become the United states's "RING OF POWER's"
very own GOLLUM.
hehehe.
Tolkein is fine entertaining reading. But fairy tales based on the old mythological symbols of the imperialist races (British) are hardly a basis for analysis of human affairs.
---USAn---
WELL DUH!!!
Of COURSE, the world has been corroded by our fake "war on terror"! damn! what is with all this sudden realization.
Where have you been sleeping for the last decade or two??
This weird rip van winkel journalism really scares me somehow. Like NOW you can state the obvoious, wheras a couple months ago you could only whisper and infer, for fear the homeland security forces would steal your children?? Or what???
The whole world has been royally screwed by the "aristocracy" or whatever you want to call them. I like to think of them as the rich. FOR A VERY LONG TIME NOW. And now they have poisoned the very place that they live, the old "don't shit where you eat" cliche'.
Of course nothing will be done untill it's all too late... duh. so what's "news" about that?
So the rich aren't so rich..WOW. Wait till we all find out that we cant eat money.
Excellent points. The media and politicians are just following the things Orwell pointed out in various ways.
Someone should take his writings and create three or four "Orwell's laws" in the manner of Newton.
---USAn---
Ragdoll
The United Arab Emirates are refusing to grant a visa to the Israeli candidate to the International Women's Tennis Tournament in Dubai, and it's all over CNN about how unfair that is. Moreover CNN has managed to find several people to query on the subject and surprise, surprise, everyone interviewed agrees how unfair it is. Nobody seems the least concerned by the victims of the hideous human rights violations in Gaza, the 100 to 150 victims of the possibly experimental DIME weapons, the many burned to death or still agonizing from the white phosphorous burns, outright targeting of civilians, utter destruction of homes and livelihoods.
Recalling that Palestinians who have been awarded Fullbright scholarships were forbiodden by the Israelis from leaving their homes until finally Rice intervened to obtain an exception for a handful of students.
The UAE deserves respect for their decision. And true friends of Israel should encourage exactly this kind of exclusion
until Israel behaves like the enlightened democracy it pretends to be with regard to international human rights law, the Geneva conventions, and especially the numerous UN resolutions it has violated for decennies.
Shahar Peer isn't the "Israeli candidate" to the Tournament in Dubai.
She is a tennis player who is an Israeli citizen.
And if individual athletes are going to be excluded from tournaments based on their nationality, because of the human rights records of their countries, why stop with Israel? At which point you might as well stop all international sporting competitions.
What the UAE is doing IS unfair. Both the Association of Tennis Professionals (men), and the Women's Tennis Association (women), state clearly that host countries cannot discriminate. This isn't some arbitrary rule that was just introduced now. By agreeing to host a tournament that is sanctioned by the ATP / WTA, the UAE agrees to the rules of the ATP / WTA. If the UAE wants to discriminate, then it should not (try to) host a tournament under the aegis of the ATP / WTA.