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Amnesty International Criticizes Globalization Effects
LONDON, May 30 (IslamOnline & News Agencies) - In its annual report released Wednesday, Amnesty International denounced the detrimental effects of globalization, without questioning the desirability of globalization itself.
The report, coinciding with the organization's 40th anniversary, said that "Globalization ... has been accompanied by growing wealth for some, but destitution and despair for many," quoting the organization's secretary general, Pierre Sane of Senegal.
The report said more than 80 countries had a lower per capita income in 2000 than they had in 1990, and that, "at least 1.3 billion people struggle to survive on less than a dollar a day."
"Deregulation, privatization and the dismantling of social welfare provision have led to widening inequalities in many countries," it said.
"The predictable and almost inevitable consequence of this growth in poverty has been a parallel escalation in violations of all human rights."
Amnesty acknowledged its own "relative neglect of economic, social and cultural rights" and said it had "taken steps to address these rights more directly in it own work."
"In a world where globalization is undermining many nation states and bringing poverty to the forefront of the human rights agenda, the challenge for AI is to remain relevant....
"This means broadening our aim from the protection of civil and political rights to embrace all human rights," the human rights monitor said.
It called on governments to defend people "against the arbitrary actions of multinational corporations or the pressures of intergovernmental financial institutions."
It also appealed to multinational companies to "uphold international human rights in their activities."
The organization said it is "now promoting a set of human rights principles for companies, which covers issues such as security arrangements, community consultation, freedom from discrimination, labor rights and fair working conditions."
Amnesty noted that it has made public appeals to oil companies in Sudan, Nigeria and Colombia, to intervene with their respective governments in respect to human rights issues.
In 2000, Amnesty also led a new effort to eradicate torture around the world and alleged human rights violations in Algeria, Belarus, Haiti, India, Indonesia, The Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), Russia and Sudan.
But last year, as in other years, some human rights tragedies "went virtually unnoticed", it said.
This was the case in Burundi, "where the civilian population paid the price of the civil war," in China where "there was no sign of any relaxation of the 1999 crackdown on fundamental freedoms," in the DRC where the war "was used as a pretext to justify widespread repression of peaceful dissent," and in Iraq, where U.S. and British air strikes resulted in more civilian deaths.
The report stated that human rights abuses around the world were especially high in areas where conflicts are raging, like in the Balkans and the occupied Palestinian territories.
More surprising was that injustices committed by the United States and some European countries were given a rare airing.
The United States was again criticized for its use of the death penalty, incidents of police brutality and ill treatment of prison inmates.
The group particularly mentioned the lack of equity in the application of the death penalty and the practice of some states of executing the mentally retarded and those who were younger than 18 at the time they committed crimes.
The group documented several incidents of police brutality and disputed police shootings - some where racial discrimination was a factor - such as the 1999 killing of African immigrant Amadou Diallo in New York.
Amnesty also noted reports of excessive force, torture and sexual misconduct in U.S. prisons, along with cruel conditions in super maximum-security prisons.
Police brutality and racist abuse, mainly against ethnic minorities and immigrants, were the most widespread human rights violations across Europe.
Few countries were spared from accusations, including many European governments who failed to "investigate police torture and ill-treatment independently and impartially."
This included allegations of "ill-treatment during forcible deportations" in Belgium and Switzerland, citing one case in which an asylum-seeker committed suicide in Frankfurt airport "where conditions of detention are very harsh."
In France, one of the countries cited for racist ill treatment by police, the "effective impunity granted by French courts to police officers, notably with regard to deaths in custody," was also quoted as a cause for concern.
Suspected members of the Basque separatist group ETA were allegedly tortured in Spain while being held incommunicado, the report said.
Authorities in the Czech Republic "ill-treated dozens of people suspected of participating" in anti-globalization protests there during the World Bank and IMF summit in September.
Turkey, in particular, was singled out for widespread torture, rape, and sexual assault by security forces, in which the "perpetrators were rarely brought to justice" while some even "received promotions."
Controversial Turkish jail reforms, aimed at tightening security by isolating inmates, were described as a "breach of international standards." The report said 1,500 to 2,000 prisoners have continued or joined a hunger strike in protest of prison conditions and proposed reforms.
The report also criticized Italian and French prisons for "inhuman and degrading conditions" and "numerous allegations of ill-treatment by prison officers."
Regarding Kosovo, the report said the international presence there failed to ensure that human rights standards were upheld in the province, where violence against minority Serbs, Romas, and Muslim Slavs continued.
Amnesty also said the province's U.N. administrators and NATO-led peacekeeping troops were "responsible for violating the rights of pre-trial detainees."
However, in Yugoslavia, it praised the return of some 82,000 Muslim Albanians to Kosovo since the province came under U.N. administration, but was disappointed that around 220,000 Kosovo Serbs, Roma and other minorities remained displaced within Serbia and Montenegro.
Russian forces in the breakaway republic of Chechnya "continued to target civilians, including medical personnel," despite claims by Moscow to the contrary, and that, "no perpetrator has been convicted of crimes against civilians."
The report also said that Chechens, and other people from the Caucasus, "continued to be ill-treated and tortured in Moscow."
Journalists critical of the government in Bosnia-Hercegoniva "were physically attacked, threatened with death and prosecuted for libel," while freedom of religious expression was criticized in Greece and Turkey.
But on the positive side, Amnesty International highlighted instances in which European courts opened cases against war crimes suspects under international law.
Among those singled was Belgium, which opened criminal proceedings over the 1994 genocide in Rwanda, and Italy, for sentencing two Argentine generals in absentia to life imprisonment for the murder of Italian citizens during military rule in that country.
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