"There is a clear link between anti-terrorism measures and human rights abuses," Khan

LONDON, May 29 (IslamOnline.net & News Agencies) - Amnesty International condemned Wednesday, May 28, U.S. breaches of international law under the cover of the war against terror but Washington dismissed most of the criticism.

Speaking in London, Amnesty's general secretary Irene Khan said a climate of insecurity -- "the worst since the Cold War" -- has led the United States and Europe to adopt an "a la carte" attitude to human rights, according to Agence France-Presse (AFP).

Amnesty's 2003 annual report highlighted the fate of hundreds of detainees from the Afghanistan war and other operations launched since the September 11 attacks on New York and Washington in 2001.

The report said the United States was continuing to refuse internationally recognized rights to detainees of the war on terror being held at the U.S. navy base at Guantanamo Bay in Cuba.

"Powerful governments like the U.S. and the U.K. are so preoccupied by the war against terror that they have chosen to ignore human rights," Khan said in London as she presented the 311-page report.

"There is a clear link between anti-terrorism measures and human rights abuses," she said.

Amnesty said that some 1,200 foreign nationals, mainly Muslim men, were rounded up after September 11. More than 700 were held for "routine violations" and some under immigration regulations.

"By the end of the year (2002), most detainees arrested during the initial sweeps had been deported or released or were charged with crimes which were unrelated to September 11 or to 'terrorism'," said Amnesty.

Asylum-seekers were being subjected to "increasing restrictions," with Britain and the United States creating new laws "allowing people to be detained without charge."

In Europe, anti-terrorism measures have led to an "increase in racism" and "discrimination against Jews, Arabs and Roma people."

U.S. Rejects Amnesty's Criticism

Meanwhile, U.S. government rejected most of the report's criticism, yet said it respected Amnesty's role in reporting rights abuses around the world, AFP reported.

The White House dismissed out of hand charges that U.S. troops in Iraq were violating the human rights of Iraqis and said accusations that prisoners from the war in Afghanistan were being mistreated were "without merit."

The White House spokesman Ari Fleischer suggested that Amnesty uses its resources more to detail human rights abuses in Iraq before Saddam Hussein was ousted by a U.S.-led invasion.

"I think the world is rejoicing in the fact that thanks to the efforts of the coalition, millions of people who were previously imprisoned are now free," he told reporters.

State Department spokesman Richard Boucher said many of the group's allegations were "misplaced" and others were flat out "incorrect," including an accusation that Washington's support for global human rights had diminished because of the war against terrorism.

"We reject any criticism, any allegations that our human rights efforts have diminished," Boucher told reporters. "Amnesty International's particular charges are incorrect."

"There is solid, sustained international cooperation in the war on terrorism and the war on terrorism has not detracted from our strong and steadfast commitment to human rights and democracy," he said.

"The United States has respected due process," Boucher said. "We've respected the international humanitarian law in terms of the way we've treated people who've been in detention."

However, Boucher did note that the State Department often uses Amnesty information when compiling its own annual reports on human rights practices, according to AFP.

"They do an enormous amount of work on human rights around the world, and we take this work very seriously," he said, adding that on further inspection, Washington might agree with Amnesty criticism of other countries.

"It's more with some of the sweeping judgments and some of the examples used to support those judgments (about the United States) that we have differences," Boucher said.

"I suspect that as we go into the details of the report we will find many things that we do agree with."

Amnesty Denounces Russia's Violations In Chechnya

Amnesty International has also criticized Russia for carrying out "serious human rights violations" in Chechnya, and for the routine use of torture by police to extract confessions from detainees and "degrading" prison conditions.

An Amnesty official complained, when presenting the report in Moscow, that representations to the Russian authorities by human rights defenders had been ignored.

The situation in Chechnya was characterized by the absence of the rule of law, with few of the thousands of crimes against civilians committed by Russian federal forces ever investigated and even fewer taken to court, Amnesty aid in its annual report.

Security forces in the breakaway southern republic committed "serious human rights violations and breached international humanitarian law with almost total impunity," but both sides in the nearly four-year-old conflict were guilty of abuses, the report added.

Last September, Amnesty noted, a Russian official reported that 44 members of the Russian forces had been convicted for crimes against civilians, including nine for murder, one for rape and three for causing physical harm or death through carelessness.

At the same time, Chechen fighters intensified their activities in the latter part of the year, and the attitude of the federal forces towards the local population hardened still further.

In particular, last October's hostage seizure in a Moscow theatre was followed by an increase in the number of detentions, while raids by security forces in Grozny were carried out with great brutality, Amnesty said.

In the wake of the hostage-taking, law enforcement agencies cracked down on Chechen civilians throughout Russia, it said.

Russian authorities did little in response to racist statements by public figures in Russia's regions, and anti-Semitic literature was openly on sale, it stressed.

Nicola Duckworth, Amnesty's representative for Europe, However, said that complaints by Amnesty and other non-government organizations about specific cases had drawn no response from Russian officials.

"In Russia, we have seen security speak louder than human rights," Duckworth told a press conference Wednesday.

Moreover the situation in Chechnya will not improve "until the Russian government takes steps to end impunity," she said.

She cited in particular an open letter addressed to President Vladimir Putin concerning "hundreds of thousands" of residents of former Soviet republics who have been denied their right to Russian citizenship "for reasons of discrimination."