Focus on Rights

The cost of terror
The vestiges of any claim that the United States might have put forward in the past that its authority in the modern world rests on moral rights of any kind whatsoever, have now effectively disappeared. The 'most powerful country in the world' projects its voice, considerable as it undoubtedly is, from a position of brute strength and nothing more, a sad indictment on the years of history during which the country, (with all its lapses), was a beacon of hope with regard to fundamental rights of life and liberty, including most importantly freedom from torture and freedom of speech.

Recognising this transferral from the real authority of the past to the thinly disguised authoritarianism of the present is important for countries such as Sri Lanka in several respects. In the first instance, this calls for greater awareness and agitation among rights advocates in this country when Sri Lanka accedes in a process whereby the United States removes herself more and more from the reach of international human rights law. This was classically seen recently when we were among three SAARC countries which entered into non-surrender agreements with the US early this year, with regard to the jurisdiction of the International Criminal Court (ICC) established by the Rome Statute.

These agreements prescribe that the signatories would not surrender each others' nationals without the consent of the country concerned, if the purpose is to put them in the jurisdiction of the ICC. The agreements accordingly limit the reach of the ICC, giving US citizens immunity from international prosecutions, effectively crippling the broad mandate of the Court.

A similar move in Thailand recently led to protests from Thai citizens and government officials both from a moral point of view and on the basis that the planned agreement offends the principle of sovereignty and must be approved by Parliament. When a like agreement was signed in Sri Lanka however, it passed by without comment, testifying alike to the dismal nature of our activism and our awareness.

In the second instance, the displacement of the United States from its high moral perch means that it is high time and more that State Department Country Reports are received with less than the traditional reverence that they gave rise to in the past.

Interestingly, these Reports are, in fact, compiled by the State Department and submitted to the Congress as required by provisions of the Foreign Assistance Act of 1961 (as amended), and the Trade Act of 1974, (as amended) in force in the United States.

These laws provide that the Secretary of State shall transmit to the Speaker of the House of Representatives and the Committee on Foreign Relations of the Senate, "a full and complete report regarding the status of internationally recognized human rights", in respect of countries that receive assistance under this part. Reports are also compiled with regard to countries which are members of the United Nations and which are not otherwise the subject of a human rights report under the laws.

These Reports, upon release, were earlier looked upon as standard setting in the manner not only in which the United States viewed countries for obvious strategic reasons but also in respect of the observance of internationally recognised rights norms. Sri Lanka, has been, on more than one occasion, the recipient of several stinging comments on her status of rights compliance and has treated such comments with due respect. It does not seem however that such respect is well deserved any more. Instead, the reports should be looked upon purely as a matter of real politik and nothing else.

These shifts in the manner in which the United States is increasingly being regarded by the rest of the world has gathered strength since the war of aggression on Iraq. Whereas earlier, the lapses of the administration with regard to internal or external policy were not paraded openly, now it is a different story altogether.

For example, blatant disregard for human rights governed the manner in which the Bush administration shrugged off persistent complaints from global human rights advocacy bodies that its treatment of detainees in the 'war against terror', in Guantanamo Bay violated fundamental tenets of respect for life. These complaints were supported by the harrowing accounts of victims of these techniques who had been detained, subjected to conditions amounting to torture and degrading treatment and then released after having been found innocent by their captors.

However, the most recent critique of the excesses of the administration in this regard will not be so easy to dismiss, given the fact that it comes from an internal source, none other than the Office of the Inspector General (OIG), an agency watchdog within the Ministry of Justice.

In a report released this Monday, the OIG has faulted officials of the Justice Department, FBI, Immigration and the prisons for their treatment of non-citizens detained ostensibly on immigration charges but under investigation with regard to terrorism crimes. The body has found prolonged detention without charge, denial of access to legal counsel, and excessively harsh conditions of confinement with regard to the detained individuals.

The report had examined the detention of citizens primarily from Middle Eastern, South Asian, and North African countries. At most, no more than a handful of these "special interest" detainees have been charged with a terrorism-related crime. The Justice Department has refused to release the identities of the detainees and has conducted the majority of their immigration hearings in secret.

Commenting on the report, Human Rights Watch, a widely regarded rights monitoring body has called for immediate action by the Bush administration to remedy the human rights violations documented by the Department of Justice's internal investigation. Appropriately, Human Rights Watch has pointed out that the report is a superb exposé of how the Justice Department circumvented people's basic rights after September 11, stating that the Attorney General would now find it harder to circumvent allegations of abuses.

Among the findings set out in the report was a pattern of physical and verbal abuse by federal correctional staff at the detention centers and the extremely restrictive high-security conditions under which the detainees are kept including round-the-clock confinement in small cells that were constantly illuminated. Those responsible for these excesses continue without any inquiry despite having serious charges of rights violations against them.

These allegations of torture and ill-treatment of detainees and impunity for those responsible were exactly the same issues with regard to which the United States had criticised other countries in the past. For example, the US State Department Reports of 2000 and 2002 consistently makes the point that, with regard to Sri Lanka, impunity for those responsible for rights violations remained a problem.

The reports point out that in the majority of cases in which military personnel may have committed human rights abuses, the Government has not identified those responsible or brought them to justice. They also specifically make the point that though the U.N. Committee on Torture sent a five-person mission to Colombo in 2000 to determine whether a systematic pattern of torture exists in the country and, if so, to make recommendations for eliminating the practice, the confidential report of the mission which was submitted to President Kumaratunga in 2001, is yet not available.

Apart from Sri Lanka, other countries rapped over their knuckles on similar counts in the past include Burma, Eritrea, Iran and Jordan. The high mindedness with which these reports are compiled cannot contrast more vividly with the pattern of similar abuses that have now been documented beyond dispute in the ongoing war against terrorism, the responsibility of which has to be borne fairly and squarely by the United States. The costs of such duplicity might however, like the mills of God, be slow to come but when they do, promises to be appropriately high.

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