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WASHINGTON
- January 25 - The U.S. may be violating international rules in the inhumane treatment of Afghan soldiers taken prisoner in the war against Afghanistan, said members of the Green Party of the United States. According to reports, prisoners have been shackled, shaved in violation of their religion, blindfolded, held in open-air cages exposed to the elements, subjected to intense interrogation that borders on torture, all of which violate the international Geneva Convention on the treatment of war prisoners.
"Prisoners may also face execution after a secret trial by military tribunal -- which would made the Bush Administration comparable to the regimes of Saddam Hussein and other despots," said Tom Sevigny, a Connecticut Green activist and a member of the party's national steering committee.
Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, who promises "a legal decision soon" on the status of prisoners (Pentagon briefing, Thursday, January 24), has claimed that the prisoners aren't soldiers, but civilian "unlawful combatants." According to Rumsfeld, this disqualifies them from the protections of the 1949 Geneva Convention rules and the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, ratified by the U.S. in 1992, on the treatment of prisoners of war.
But Greens, the Bar Association of Great Britain, and other human rights defenders argue that if the captured Taliban and al Qaeda aren't soldiers, they must be tried according to guarantees of due process, since the Fifth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution makes no distinction between civilians and foreigners.
"There is no justification for treating the prisoners as subhuman because the Taliban didn't give them uniforms," added Sevigny. "The arguments from Rumsfeld that the U.S. is exempt from the Geneva Convention on the treatment of prisoners is sophistry of the worst kind."
The Green Party cites U.N. Commissioner for Human Rights Mary Robinson, who said, "The armed conflict in Afghanistan is of an international nature and the law of international armed conflict applies. That means the Geneva Conventions."
"Article 5 of the Third Geneva Convention provides that should there be doubt as to whether an individual enjoys PoW status, they shall be treated as such until their status has been determined by a competent judicial tribunal." <http://www.independent.co.uk/story.jsp?story=115264>
Greens also note that the Bush Administration isn't likely to rescind its order for secret military tribunals.
"More and more, the only pacts the U.S. considers itself bound to honor are the free trade treaties designed to benefit major corporations," said Jane Hunter, vice chair of the Green Party of New Jersey and an international management consultant. "The result is international instability and a blow to our valued international reputation on matters of democracy and human rights."
MORE INFORMATION
The Green Party of the United States
http://gpus.org
http://www.greenpartyus.org
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