Home>News Center>World
         
 

US leads global attack on human rights
(Agencies)
Updated: 2005-05-25 22:07

LONDON - Four years after the Sept. 11 attacks on New York and Washington, human rights are in retreat worldwide and the United States bears most responsibility, rights watchdog Amnesty International said on Wednesday.

U.S. Army PFC Lynndie England (L) is escorted to the courthouse for the start of her Article 32 hearing at Fort Hood, Texas, May 24, 2005. [Reuters]
From Afghanistan to Zimbabwe the picture is bleak. Governments are increasingly rolling back the rule of law, taking their cue from the U.S.-led war on terror, it said.

"The USA as the unrivalled political, military and economic hyper-power sets the tone for governmental behavior worldwide," Secretary General Irene Khan said in the foreword to Amnesty International's 2005 annual report.

"When the most powerful country in the world thumbs its nose at the rule of law and human rights, it grants a license to others to commit abuse with impunity," she added.

London-based Amnesty cited the pictures last year of abuse of detainees at Iraq's U.S.-run Abu Ghraib prison, which it said were never adequately investigated, and the detention without trial of "enemy combatants" at the U.S. naval base in Cuba.

"The detention facility at Guantanamo Bay has become the gulag of our times, entrenching the practice of arbitrary and indefinite detention in violation of international law," Khan said.

Accused at a news conference of being too harsh on the United States, Khan replied that the facts spoke for themselves.

Hundreds of people were being held in Guantanamo and the U.S. airbase at Bagram in Afghanistan -- some for more than three years -- without either charge or trial and no access to legal representation.

"By actively undermining human rights the United States, the European Union and others have actually made the security situation worse," she said.

She also noted Washington's attempts to circumvent its own ban on the use of torture.

"The U.S. government has gone to great lengths to restrict the application of the Geneva Convention and to 're-define' torture," she said, citing the secret detention of suspects and the practice of handing some over to countries where torture was not outlawed.

"Governments are trying to subcontract torture. Justice is not just being denied it is being diverted," she said. "To argue that torture is warranted is to push us back to the Middle Ages."

The new governmental agenda on human rights and the rule of law was now "erode where you can, select if you must and subvert at will," Khan said.

President Bush often said his country was founded on and dedicated to the cause of human dignity -- but there was a gulf between rhetoric and reality, Amnesty found.

BLURRED DISTINCTION

But the United States was by no means the sole or even the worst offender as murder, mayhem and abuse of women and children spread to the four corners of the globe, Khan said, citing Colombia, Sudan and Zimbabwe among a host of others.

The increasingly blurred distinction between the war on terror and the war on drugs prompted governments across Latin America to use troops to tackle crimes traditionally handled by police, the report said.

In Asia too, the war on terror was blamed for increasing state repression, adding to the woes of societies already worn down by poverty, it added.

Africa too remained riven by regional wars and political repression, and the abject failure of the international community to take concerted action to end the slaughter in Sudan's vast Darfur region was a cause of shame.

Khan also condemned the United Nations Commission on Human Rights for failing to stand up for those supposedly in its care.

"The U.N. Commission of Human Rights has become a forum for horse-trading on human rights," she said. "Last year the Commission dropped Iraq from scrutiny, could not agree on action on Chechnya, Nepal or Zimbabwe and was silent on Guantanamo Bay."



 
  Today's Top News     Top World News
 

Nation and Uzbekistan consolidates ties

 

   
 

Tsang resigns to run in HongKong by-election

 

   
 

EU set deadline on resolving textile dispute

 

   
 

US leads global attack on human rights

 

   
 

Lee: Futile to resist China's growing clout

 

   
 

Boy hiding in gear compartment killed

 

   
  Car bomb in Madrid injures 52
   
  Web posting claims al-Zarqawi fled Iraq
   
  Key oil pipeline launched, breaks Russia grip on Caspian energy
   
  Iran renews nuclear promise, Straw says
   
  US halts recovery effort in North Korea
   
  US, SKorean leader to meet amid guessing game over nuclear stalemate
   
 
  Go to Another Section  
 
 
  Story Tools  
   
  Related Stories  
   
White paper details human rights progress
   
Annan: U.N. needs permanent rights body
   
US human rights violations rebuked
   
China lashes out at US human rights violations
   
Report details US human rights violations
   
Human Rights Record of the US in 2004 (full text)
   
China lashes out at US human rights report
  News Talk  
  Are the Republicans exploiting the memory of 9/11?  
Advertisement