Legal experts warn of global deterioration in human rights
The Manila Times, Saturday, June 21, 2003 By María Isabel García
THE US 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 September 11 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 program 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 September 11 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.
Defining terrorism
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 rationalize 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 US President George W. Bush “dumped into the sack of antiterrorism 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 September 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 criminalize 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.
No more greys
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 offense 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 Antiterrorism 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 criminalized in the international sphere.”
HRW’s 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 combating.”
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 US-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.
Cuba’s case
The most disturbing case, he said, is the violation of the human rights of prisoners accused of terrorism, who are being held at the US 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 counterterrorism law that has almost made its way through the Colombian Congress, and which will generalize measures which up to now have only been adopted during a state of emergency.
The controversial bill will broadly authorize phone-tapping and surveillance of mail and e-mails, and will grant powers of prosecution to the police and army.
-- Inter Press Service