inside the glass house

Exit Ashcroft, enter rights buster
NEW YORK - John Ashcroft, the US Attorney-General who stepped down as the country's chief legal officer last week, was not only a right-wing conservative but also a prude who ordered a nude statue in his office complex be fully clothed -- perhaps with a giant fig leaf.

The openly fundamentalist, Bible-toting Ashcroft was certainly not a reader of 'Playboy' magazine whose motto is a variation of the New York Times' legendary catch phrase on its masthead: "all the news fit to print."

Hugh Hefner, the founder of Playboy, opted for a more colourful phrase to fit the description of his magazine: "all the nudes fit to print." If Ashcroft had his way, he would have banned 'Playboy' -- which by today's standards is considered less raunchy and less sexually explicit than 'Penthouse' or a slew of other hardcore magazines on newsstands across the US.

As a New York Times columnist pointed out last week, Ashcroft thought he had a mandate ''to throw blue curtains over every naked statue in town and hold Bible study for government employees in a federal office." But prudishness apart, Ashcroft had a more sinister agenda: curtailing civil liberties as part of a war against terrorism.

In his letter of resignation, he told President Bush that "the objective of securing the safety of Americans from crime and terror has been achieved". But has it?

Last week's appointment of Alberto Gonzales, Bush's longtime legal counsel, as the new Attorney-General replacing Ashcroft, is an equally lamentable choice.

In the now-infamous memo to the White House in January 2002, Gonzales argued that captured members of the Taliban in Afghanistan were not protected under the Geneva Convention which stipulates the treatment of prisoners of war.

The same rule applied to prisoners in the Abu Ghraib prison in Baghdad who were tortured and humiliated by US troops, raising outrage among human rights activists.

The US, which is a signatory to the Geneva Conventions, obviously thinks it has a right to flout international law and UN conventions in the name of fighting terrorism.

Gonzales has described UN conventions governing prisoners of war, including the Geneva Conventions, as "quaint" and "obsolete." By a coincidence, a new UN report released last week is emphatic that no country can justify torture, the humiliation of prisoners or violation of international conventions in the guise of fighting terrorism.

Although the report does not identify the US by name, it catalogues the widely-publicised torture and humiliation of prisoners and detainees in Iraq and Afghanistan by US troops.

"The condoning of torture is per se a violation of the prohibition of torture," says Theo van Boven, a UN special rapporteur on human rights, and author of the 19-page report titled 'Torture, and other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment'.

The study points out that "legal argument of necessity and self-defence, invoking domestic law, has recently been put forward, aimed at providing a justification to exempt officials suspected of having committed or instigated acts of torture against suspected terrorists from criminal liability."

But Van Boven says that "the absolute nature of the prohibition of torture and other forms of ill-treatment means that no exceptional circumstances whatsoever, whether a state of war or a threat of war, internal political instability or any other public emergency, may be invoked as justification for torture."

In the aftermath of the September 11 terrorist attacks on the US in 2001, he says, "thousands of persons suspected of terrorism, including children, have been detained, denied the opportunity to have legal status determined and prevented from having access to lawyers."

That was in the Ashcroft era. But Gonzales is expected to continue with the same policies judging by his own track record. In view of the position taken by the UN, the appointment of Gonzales as the new US Attorney-General is a slap in the face of the international community, says Matt Rothschild, editor of 'The Progressive' magazine.

"Bush is thumbing his nose at the international community and all those who respect human rights by nominating Gonzales," Rothschild said. Professor Francis A. Boyle, who teaches international law at the University of Illinois, was equally critical of the appointment. He sees Gonzales as a person, who originated, authorised, approved, and aided and abetted grave breaches of the Third and Fourth Geneva Conventions of 1949, which are serious war crimes.

"In other words", said Boyle, "Gonzales is a prima facie war criminal. He must be prosecuted under the Geneva Conventions and the US War Crimes Act.'' Should Gonzales travel around the world as US Attorney-General, he said, "human rights lawyers such as myself will attempt to get him prosecuted along the lines of what happened to General Augusto Pinochet of Chile".

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