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U.S. Leadership Weakened by Human Rights Violations: Amnesty World Report
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Irene Khan, Amnesty's Secretary General, speaks at a press conference in London at the launch of the 2002 Annual
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By
Ayesha Ahmad, IOL Washington correspondent
WASHINGTON,
May 29 (IslamOnline) – Human rights violations committed by the U.S.
in actions taken after September 11 undermine the credibility and
leadership of the “superpower,” according to a world report
released Tuesday, May 28, by Amnesty International.
Of
the 152 countries covered by the 2002 Annual Report – released 41
years to the day of Amnesty’s founding – the U.S., along with many
other countries, was found to have taken actions in the name of
security that weakened its own foreign policy.
“Citizens
around the world suffer the consequences when the U.S. defaults on its
responsibility to promote human rights,” Amnesty’s U.S. executive
director William Schulz said in a press release anticipating the
report last week.
"How
can we pressure the Saudis to extradite Idi Amin when the U.S.
government fails to prosecute or extradite known torturers on American
soil?,” Shulz said. “How can the U.S. condemn Russia's violations
of the Geneva Conventions in Chechnya after selectively applying them
to detainees in Guantanamo Bay?”
After
the deadly terrorist attacks on September 11, Amnesty was one of many
human rights organizations and other activist groups that urged the
U.S. government to avoid trampling human rights and civil liberties in
its quest for justice at home and abroad, and to maintain
uncompromising standards of human rights with respect to other
governments that also cracked down on their own populations in the
name of “security.”
Amnesty’s
concerns since then, and since the U.S. bombing campaign of
Afghanistan began on October 7, 2001, have ranged from violating
international humanitarian law in the military campaign to specific
violations of the Geneva Conventions in the treatment of Taliban and
al-Qaeda prisoners in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.
Specific
U.S. actions named in the report include “widespread detention of
foreigners post-September 11; use of the death penalty; failure to
prosecute known torturers seeking safe haven in the US; pending use of
military tribunals; export of torture devices; exceptionalism to
international treaties; mistreatment of asylum-seekers; and selective
recognition of Geneva Conventions protections.”
Each
of these, Amnesty contends, limits the U.S. ability to criticize other
countries for similar practices.
"The
U.S. government fails to understand that human rights are far from an
impediment to national security - they are the foundation,"
Schulz said in the press release. "By sacrificing human rights in
the name of national security, the U.S. government loses the moral
authority to criticize blatant transgressions by allies who usually
are responsive to U.S. pressure on human rights.”
Amidst
other concerns about the use of the death penalty and conditions in
U.S. prisons, the report’s U.S. section focused on the aftermath of
September 11, specifically regarding the passage of anti-terror
legislation that enhanced executive and federal powers, the detention
of more than 1,200 non-citizens after the attacks, the authorization
of secret military tribunals to try foreign terrorism suspects and
possible violations of international law during the Afghanistan
campaign.
The
300-page report details many other problems in other parts of the
world as well, but the overriding theme laid out in the foreword,
written by Amnesty’s Secretary General Irene Khan, is a warning not
to trade in human rights for security in the worldwide rush to combat
terrorism after September 11.
“We
must reject the subjective yardstick of terrorism’, by which states
condemn the violence of their opponents and condone that of their
allies,” Khan said. “No cause can justify the abuse of human
rights, regardless of whether the abuses are committed by a
government, an armed political group, international criminals or
people acting in the name of religion.”
She
insisted that human rights are a key rather than an obstacle to
achieving peace and security, and that the examples provided in the
report of the sacrifice of human rights for security prove that such a
sacrifice will never provide security.
“The
challenge to states therefore is not security versus human rights, but
rather to ensure respect for the full range of human rights,” she
said. “There can be no trade-off between human rights and security,
between justice and impunity.
“A
human rights approach – an approach which puts the security of
people, rather than states, first - may seem more difficult at first
glance, but in these troubled times it is the only one that offers any
real hope for the way forward.”
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