{"id":404269,"date":"2010-03-05T12:02:52","date_gmt":"2010-03-05T17:02:52","guid":{"rendered":"15682 at http:\/\/www.amnesty.org"},"modified":"2010-03-05T12:02:52","modified_gmt":"2010-03-05T17:02:52","slug":"daily-injustice-immeasurable-damage","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/404269","title":{"rendered":"Daily injustice, immeasurable damage"},"content":{"rendered":"
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\n Friday 5 March 2010<\/span> <\/div>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<\/div>\n

Twelve weeks ago, US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton made a speech proclaiming the USA\u2019s commitment to human rights. When injustice anywhere is ignored, she said, justice everywhere is denied. <\/p>\n

Justice denied for one day is bad enough. <\/p>\n

It is now more than 400 days since President Barack Obama ordered his administration to resolve each and every case of the detainees held at the US Naval Base in Guant\u00e1namo Bay in Cuba, and to close the detention facilities there \u201cas soon as practicable\u201d and in any case no later than 365 days after his order. Today more than 180 detainees remain held at the base, with an interagency review having apparently concluded that nearly 50 of them should continue to be held in indefinite detention without charge or trial. <\/p>\n

Amnesty International reiterates that the Guant\u00e1namo detainees must immediately be brought to fair trials \u2013 which should be before civilian courts not military commissions \u2013 or released. Where detainees for release cannot be returned to their home countries because of the risk of human rights violations they would face and no other appropriate state is willing to receive them immediately, they should be released in the USA, at least until another solution is found. <\/p>\n

Justice denied for one day is bad enough.<\/p>\n

More than 100 days have passed since Attorney General Eric Holder announced that the Department of Justice would prosecute in US federal court five Guant\u00e1namo detainees accused of involvement in the attacks of 11 September 2001, reversing the policy decision of the Bush administration to try them before military commissions. However, the five are today still in Guant\u00e1namo, with the issue becoming bogged down in domestic politics, including efforts within Congress to have all such trials conducted before military commissions. <\/p>\n

Now it seems that President Obama\u2019s advisers may be about to recommend that the trial of the five be returned to the military commissions, as part of a political deal \u2013 as opposed to a human rights solution \u2013 to win congressional funding and legislative support for closing Guant\u00e1namo. President Obama and the Attorney General should reject any such recommendation.  <\/p>\n

Justice denied for one day is bad enough. <\/p>\n

It is now more than 600 days since the UN Committee on the Rights of the Child called on the USA to conduct any criminal proceedings against children detained in armed conflict promptly and in accordance with minimum fair trial standards, and not before military tribunals. Today, Canadian national Omar Khadr, now in his eighth year in Guant\u00e1namo, is still facing a military commission trial for acts he is accused of committing when he was 15 years old or younger. <\/p>\n

It is also over 600 days since the US Supreme Court ruled that the Guant\u00e1namo detainees had the constitutional right to a \u201cprompt\u201d habeas corpus hearing to challenge the lawfulness of their detention. Most of those who have sought such a hearing have still not yet had one.<\/p>\n

More than 1,200 days have passed since President George W. Bush confirmed for the first time that the USA had been operating a secret detention program for the previous four and a half years. No one has yet been brought to account for authorizing or perpetrating the enforced disappearances at the core of that program, that, like torture, constitute crimes under international law. <\/p>\n

More than 400 days after President Obama committed his administration to an \u201cunprecedented\u201d level of transparency in order to promote accountability, the administration continues to block release of information about who was held in the secret program, where they were held, and what interrogation techniques and conditions of detention they were subjected to.<\/p>\n

Some 500 days have passed since the Director of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) confirmed publicly for the first time that the agency had used \u201cwater-boarding\u201d against three detainees held in secret custody, and more than 2,000 days have gone by since the CIA Inspector General found that two of the detainees had been subjected to this technique more than 150 times between them. <\/p>\n

Again, no one has been brought to justice for authorizing or carrying out this torture or other interrogation methods and detention conditions employed in the CIA program that violated the international prohibition of torture and other cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment. This failure flies in the face of an explicit and absolute obligation under international treaties such as the UN Convention against Torture to carry out full investigations into human rights violations and ensure accountability, including specifically by referring for prosecution every case of torture where the accused is not extradited.
The failure \u2013 by all branches of the US government \u2013 to address these issues under a human rights framework are continuing to leave the USA on the wrong side of its international obligations.<\/p>\n

President Obama said in his Nobel Lecture on 10 December 2009, the 61st anniversary of the adoption of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR), \u201cAmerica \u2013 in fact, no nation \u2013 can insist that others follow the rules of the road if we refuse to follow them ourselves. For when we don\u2019t, our actions appear arbitrary\u2026\u201d The drafters of the UDHR, he also noted, had recognized that \u201cif human rights are not protected, peace is a hollow promise\u201d. Human rights are the route to security, not the obstacle to it.<\/p>\n

Four days later, Secretary Clinton cited President Obama\u2019s speech, asserting that the USA\u2019s values were at one with the principles articulated in the UDHR, but that the gap between the promises of the UDHR and reality meant that \u201cnow, we must finish the job\u201d. Six decades ago, she said, \u201cthe world\u2019s leaders proclaimed a new framework of rights, laws, and institutions that could fulfill the vow of \u2018never again.\u2019 They affirmed the universality of human rights through the Universal Declaration and legal agreements.\u201d<\/p>\n

Then, at the UN Human Rights Council in Geneva on 1 March 2010, the USA reasserted its commitment \u201cto apply consistently international human rights law to all countries in the world, including ourselves. We seek to lead by example, by meeting our own obligations under both domestic and international law.\u201d About 300 days earlier, in support of its bid for a seat on the Human Rights Council, the USA had committed itself, among other things, to \u201cmeeting its UN treaty obligations\u201d. <\/p>\n

On almost every front \u2013 fair trial of those accused of involvement in attacks on civilians, immediate release of detainees at Guant\u00e1namo whom US courts have found to be held without justification, and accountability of US agents for human rights violations and crimes under international law \u2013 measures enacted by Congress are only throwing up further obstacles to even the most modest efforts to bring US practices in line with its international obligations.<\/p>\n

On 4 March 2010, US Senators John McCain and Joe Lieberman introduced a bill \u2013 the Enemy Belligerent Interrogation, Detention, and Prosecution Act of 2010 \u2013 into the Senate. The USA is engaged in a \u201cwar\u201d against terrorism, Senator McCain\u2019s statement emphasised, while avoiding the phrase \u201cwar on terror\u201d. He said that the bill would authorize detention without charge \u201cfor the duration of hostilities\u201d of anyone labelled as an \u201cunprivileged enemy belligerent\u201d. It would prohibit any such individual from being provided a lawyer after arrest \u2013 \u201cwe should not be providing suspected terrorists\u201d with defence lawyers, Senator McCain said. If it eventually was decided to hold a criminal trial in such a case, he added, his bill would mandate military commissions as the forum. Criminal prosecution \u201cmust be secondary\u201d in such cases, Senator McCain asserted. He could have said \u201csecond-class\u201d, for that is what military commissions are.  He urged his fellow Senators to support the legislation. <\/p>\n

But injustice for one day is bad enough. <\/p>\n

Each day that passes without accountability, remedy and resolution of detainee cases in line with US human rights and humanitarian law obligations compounds the damage done to the vision of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights already wrought by actions taken by the USA in the name of \u201ccountering terrorism\u201d over recent years. An end to the injustice is long overdue. The US administration and Congress must do the right thing now.<\/p>\n

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More than 180 detainees remain held at Guant\u00e1namo despite President Obama's pledge to close the camp<\/a><\/div>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Friday 5 March 2010 Twelve weeks ago, US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton made a speech proclaiming the USA\u2019s commitment to human rights. When injustice anywhere is ignored, she said, justice everywhere is denied. Justice denied for one day is bad enough. It is now more than 400 days since President Barack Obama ordered his […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5354,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-404269","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/404269","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5354"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=404269"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/404269\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=404269"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=404269"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=404269"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}