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REPORTS: HUMAN RIGHTS |
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Legal
Experts Warn of Global Deterioration
María
Isabel García
CARTAGENA, Colombia, (IPS) - The U.S.
fight against terrorism is undermining
human rights around the world, warned
jurists speaking at the World Social
Thematic Forum (WSTF) taking place this
week in Colombia.
The ''war on terrorism'' launched in the
wake of the Sep. 11, 2001 attacks on New
York and Washington has given rise to
''a new reading of international
jurisprudence on human rights,'' said
Ignacio Saíz, deputy director of the
Americas programme of the London-based
Amnesty International rights watchdog.
The new vision goes so far as to regard
fundamental rights as perhaps a
''luxury'' enjoyed by people in stable
countries, Saíz said at the opening of
a WSTF panel in Cartagena, a Caribbean
resort town on Colombia's northern
coast.
Chilean activist José Miguel Vivanco,
executive director of the Americas
division of Human Rights Watch (HRW),
concurred with Saíz and other experts
that Sep. 11, 2001 marked the birth of
''a new era'' in international politics
and the application of international
human rights law.
Saíz was the opening speaker at the
panel on ''War, Terrorism, Security and
Human Rights''.
Other participants were Federico Andreu,
an adviser to the Geneva-based
International Commission of Jurists (ICJ),
Gustavo Gallón, the head of the
Colombian Commission of Jurists, Marco
Romero, a professor at the National
University of Colombia's law school, and
Samuel Moncada, the head of the school
of history at Venezuela's Central
University.
Andreu said that in the context of the
new division of the world between
''good'' and ''evil'' -- rather than
''capitalists'' and ''communists'' as in
the past -- ''talk has even arisen as to
whether torture might be a necessary
tool'' in the fight against terrorism.
The adviser to the ICJ said the mere
fact that the possibility of torture
being necessary is being toyed with ''is
a grave setback,'' even if the word
''torture'' is not used, but the more
euphemistic ''use of necessary physical
pressure'' instead.
In Romero's view, the question is
whether ''if in the current situation,
it is possible to talk about political
solutions to conflicts, and if security
implies observance of human rights and
respect for coexistence.''
The terrorist attacks on the United
States provided an outlet for
''currents'' that were already vocal
within the country, which he said
recalled episodes of the Cold War, and
made it possible for them ''to
rationalise a doctrine that is not
new,'' said the law professor.
Those groups had already identified
''enemies including narco- states like
Colombia and rogue-states like Iraq'',
and followers had been won over to the
idea that ''imperialism is good if the
empire is good,'' he said.
The government of George W. Bush
''dumped into the sack of anti-
terrorism everything it had in a bunch
of other bags,'' in order to build a
policy that was ''lax'' on human rights,
under which ''if dictators are friends,
they should be supported, as is the case
in Pakistan,'' said Romero.
Andreu pointed to the ''gradual but
steady emergence'' of reforms aimed at
suppressing legitimate, peaceful forms
of social resistance.
He cited the case of Peru, where the
government recently made allusions to
the ''infiltration of terrorists'' in
nationwide protests by teachers,
campesinos and students that led the
president to declare a state of
emergency.
According to Andreu, a particularly
''revealing'' development in this
respect was the Sep. 28, 2001 approval
of resolution 1373 by the United Nations
Security Council, which established
wide- ranging measures to combat
terrorism.
The binding resolution required nations
to criminalise terrorist activities,
freeze the funds and financial assets of
terrorists and their supporters, ban
others from making funds available to
terrorists, and deny safe haven to
terrorists -- without ever defining
terrorism, Andreu underlined.
Since 1937, the international community
has attempted to come up with a
consensus on a definition of
''terrorism'', and 250 proposed
definitions have been debated, but
agreement has not been reached, he
noted.
In a world where everything is seen in
terms of black and white, and ''greys
are not accepted,'' more and more civil
liberties are being restricted, and the
rights of the most vulnerable are being
violated, said Andreu.
To illustrate that, he cited a European
Union framework decision on the
extradition of wanted criminals within
the bloc, which limits guarantees for
people who are extradited, by abolishing
the requirement that the offence of
which the person is accused must be
classified as a crime in both countries
in question.
The jurist also pointed out that the
Algiers Convention, the African Union
Convention and the Arab League's
Anti-Terrorism Convention all include
disturbances or upsets in any key
sector, such as public water or
electricity utilities, as a form of
terrorism.
With that approach, ''legitimate forms
of the exercise of trade union rights
have formally begun to be criminalised
in the international sphere.''
Vivanco argued that while the
international community agrees on the
need to successfully fight terrorism,
states ''must not resort to the same
methods they say they are combatting.''
It is erroneous to see ''human rights as
an obstacle'' in the fight against
terrorism, which must not be reduced to
''fear and intimidation, but requires
moral supremacy on the part of the
state, as well as the support of the
people,'' added the spokesman for the
U.S.-based Human Rights Watch.
He also said that although the United
States was a pioneer in incorporating
human rights into its foreign policy,
its legitimacy and credibility in that
sense is being damaged by the way the
war on terrorism is being waged.
The most disturbing case, he said, is
the violation of the human rights of
prisoners accused of terrorism who are
being held at the U.S. naval base in
Guantánamo, Cuba.
Vivanco pointed out that prisoners in
Guantánamo have been sent by the United
States to Jordan and Egypt for
interrogation, because the laws of those
countries allow the use of torture to
extract information.
In addition, the activist referred to
the human rights situation in Cuba.
''Cubans also have the right to
freedom,'' he said, stating that the
socialist government of Fidel Castro has
failed to live up to internationally
accepted human rights standards.
Vivanco's remarks drew an angry response
from the Cuban Ambassador to Colombia,
Antonio López, who was in the audience.
López, who cast aspersions on Vivanco,
said that no one in Cuba was ''forcibly
disappeared or tortured,'' and that the
country's prisons ''are open'' to
observers -- a claim that the Human
Rights Watch activist disputed.
The experts sitting on the panel also
issued warnings of the implications of a
draconian counter-terrorism law that has
almost made its way through the
Colombian Congress, and which will
generalise measures which up to now have
only been adopted during a state of
emergency.
The controversial bill will broadly
authorise phone-tapping and surveillance
of mail and e-mails, and will grant
powers of prosecution to the police and
army.
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