Amnesty accuses US of condoning torture

Amnesty said Guantanamo has become the gulag of our time, entrenching the practice of arbitrary and indefinite detention in violation of international law. Picture / Reuters

The United States is condoning torture and abuse in the name of the war on terror, setting up latterday gulags, and creating a new generation of the "disappeared", Amnesty International declared.

In a hard hitting report, Amnesty accused governments from Afghanistan to Zimbabwe of systematic and often brutal erosion of civil rights in the guise of fighting terrorism.

However, it's most scathing criticism was directed towards the US, the world's only superpower, for using the September 11 attacks to ignore international law and creating a network of supplicant nations to "sub-contract" illegal detention and mistreatment.

Britain also comes in for criticism in the report for attempting to put its soldiers in places like Iraq and Afghanistan beyond the reach of human rights laws and, on occasion, "blindly following the United States" down the path of abuse. Amnesty also attacked British government ministers who sought to justify the use of evidence in courts obtained through mistreatment.

Secretary-General Irene Khan said " to argue that torture is warranted is to push us back to the Middle Ages. "We hope that the 'ethical foreign policy' considerations will resurface as this new term begins."

In allowing human rights violations while supposedly confronting subversion, the international community abjectly failed to answer calls for help when mass abuse was taking place, said Amnesty.

Darfur, in particular, was a prime example of how the Western world, as well as the United Nations and countries of the African Union, had failed to come to the aid of the thousands who had been driven from their homes, sexually assaulted and killed. In Darfur, the UN has stopped short of calling violence in the region genocide.

Amnesty said the organisation was "held hostage" to Russian arms-trade interests and Chinese oil interests when it debated Sudan.

"The brutality in Darfur was a critical test of the ability of the UN to respond effectively to major human rights crises," Amnesty said. "The UN failed the test."

There had been a similar lack of action in other parts of Africa, including Zimbabwe and the Democratic Republic of Congo, with the international community seemingly impotent to act despite widespread evidence of crimes being committed against the populations of the countries.

Multinational companies, too, were complicit in mistreating Third World populations, with Bhopal, in India, a prime example. There people affected by the chemical disaster are still awaiting compensation from Union Carbide after 20 years.

Ms Khan said the rest of the world took its lead from the US.

"Guantanamo has become the gulag of our time, entrenching the practice of arbitrary and indefinite detention in violation of international law", she said

" ... The USA as the unrivalled political, military and economic hyper-power sets the tone for governmental behaviour worldwide. When the most powerful country in the world thumbs its nose at the rule of law and human rights, it grants a licence to others to commit abuse with impunity.

" ...The US government has gone to great lengths to restrict the applications of the Geneva Convention and to re-define torture".

Citing the process of 'rendition' under which prisoners captured by American forces are held, and, it is claimed, abused in third countries, Ms Khan continued " Governments are trying to sub-contract torture. Justice is not just being denied, it is being diverted."

Afghanistan and Iraq have experienced significant abuse since being 'liberated' by the US and Britain, said the report.

In Iraq, US and British trained security forces have been involved in torture and killings and in Afghanistan women 'rescued' from the gender apartheid of the Taleban are "being forced to restrict their movements outside the home due to fear of abduction by armed groups.

Even within families, 'extreme restrictions' on women's behaviour and high levels of violence persisted".

- INDEPENDENT