Low marks from the Canadian judge

The January 18 Washington Post had this unsettling news from Canada:

In Canada, the United States has joined a notorious group of countries -- Iran, Saudi Arabia, Syria, Afghanistan and China, among others -- as a place where foreigners risk torture and abuse, according to a training manual for Canadian diplomats that was accidentally given this week to Amnesty International lawyers.

The manual is intended to create "greater awareness among consular officials to the possibility of Canadians detained abroad being tortured." Part of the workshop is devoted to teaching diplomats how to identify people who have been tortured. It features a section on "U.S. interrogation techniques," including forced nudity, hooding and isolation.

The story includes a quote from a Canadian spokesperson denying that this reflects Canadian policy -- after all, it is merely a training manual.

The January 20, The New York Times reports that Canada will rewrite the manual:

“I regret the embarrassment caused by the public disclosure of the manual used in the department’s torture awareness training,” Mr. [Maxime] Bernier [the Canadian minister of foreign affairs] said in a statement. “It contains a list that wrongly includes some of our closest allies. I have directed that the manual be reviewed and rewritten.”

Canada currently has a conservative government; Amnesty's lawsuit is seeking to stop Canada from handing prisoners seized in Afghanistan over to that government.


Visit this blog's homepage.

Bloggers against torture

Amnesty International and other organizations have declared June Torture Awareness month.

The Bloggers against torture website is here.

I've joined their blogroll -- for a number of very good reasons.



Visit this blog's homepage.

Filed as: Bloggers against torture

Sujiatun

Does the Chinese government operate a death camp called Sujiatun, where thousands of Falun Gong followers are taken to be tortured and killed? China banned Falun Gong as a cult in 1999. Allegedly, prisoner organs are "harvested" at Sujiatun and sold by the Chinese government. I recently received an email making these allegations -- complete with disturbing photographs. Most of the charges are made by two eyewitnesses, said to be the wife of a doctor who worked at the facility and an investigative journalist.

Reuters had this report on March 31:

THE United Nations is looking into allegations by the Falun Gong group that thousands of its followers are being held at a Chinese "concentration camp" and some had been killed.
The spiritual movement banned in China has alleged that up to 6000 people at a time were being kept at a state-run camp in the Sujiatun district of the northern city of Shenyang, where it said some had been killed and their organs sold.

"The allegation is Falun Gong practitioners are being used for the sale of organs and human tissues ... According to the allegation nobody has so far left this concentration camp," said Manfred Nowak, UN special rapporteur on torture and other cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment.

"I am presently in the process of investigating as far as I can these allegations ... If I come to the conclusion that it is a serious and well-founded allegation, then I will officially submit it to attention of the Chinese government," he told a news briefing in Geneva today.

China denies the allegations. Nowak is a law professor from Austria.

The U.S. State Department says it does not know whether the charges or accurate or not. This is from a press briefing with State Department deputy spokesman Adam Ereli, March 31:

QUESTION: About the recent revealed Sujiatun concentration camp where it is said thousands of Falun Gong practitioners were killed for their organs, what is the State Department's comment about that?

MR. ERELI: Well, obviously, any such reports are taken very seriously by us. We haven't been able to confirm them. We have contacted the Government of China about them. The Chinese have publicly denied the allegations. We've made the point that a further investigation would be helpful. We urge that it be done. So at this point, they are basically unconfirmed reports and we've raised them and we've urged a full investigation.

QUESTION: Did you suggest any international investigation or a third party --

MR. ERELI: No. We've raised it with the Chinese and urged them to investigate.

Amnesty International frequently criticizes China for its use of the death penalty -- the Chinese state kills more people than the rest of the world's governments combined -- and notes that there have long been allegations of "organ harvesting" in this "strike hard" context. Those about to be killed are forced to surrender organs without their consent.

U.S. exports to China totaled nearly $42 billion in 2005, while imports topped $243 billion. That $200 billion deficit likely has economic implications, but U.S. government officials have essentially stopped talking about the human rights dimensions of trade since China was admitted to the WTO and granted permanent normal trade relations.

Perhaps the U.S. should think of that $200 billion trade deficit with China as a very large amount of negotiating leverage -- to demand a thorough investigation of Sujiatun by international human rights authorities.


Visit this blog's homepage.

Filed as: Sujiatun

The Consequences of Truth: Durbin edition

Illinois Senator Richard Durbin came under some heat this past week for going on the Senator floor and calling attention to some of the abuses at the Guantanamo Bay prison. The Chicago Tribune reported his words today:

Durbin read aloud from an FBI agent's detailed e-mail complaining about the "torture techniques" visited upon one Al Qaeda prisoner.

That e-mail described how the agent entered interview rooms to find "a detainee chained hand and foot in a fetal position to the floor, with no chair, food or water. Most times they had urinated or defecated on themselves and had been left there for 18 to 24 hours or more. On one occasion, the air conditioning had been turned down so far and the temperature was so cold in the room that the barefooted detainee was shaking with cold."

The Tribune did not report the rest of the Senator's paragraph (read the entire speech if you'd like), also taken from the FBI agent's email:

On another occasion, the [air conditioner] had been turned off, making the temperature in the unventilated room well over 100 degrees. The detainee was almost unconscious on the floor, with a pile of hair next to him. He had apparently been literally pulling his hair out throughout the night. On another occasion, not only was the temperature unbearably hot, but extremely loud rap music was being played in the room, and had been since the day before, with the detainee chained hand and foot in the fetal position on the tile floor.

Durbin then delivered a powerful punchline, not unlike the one recently delivered by Amnesty International:

"If I read this to you, and did not tell you that it was an FBI agent describing what Americans had done to prisoners in their control, you would most certainly believe this must have been done by Nazis, Soviets in their gulags or some mad regime--Pol Pot or others--that had no concern for human beings," Durbin said.

For these words, Durbin has been crucified by the right.

Fellow Senator John Warner of Virginia said that he had demonstrated "a grievous error in judgment." White House Press Secretary Scott McClellan called the speech "reprehensible." Talk radio host Rush Limbaugh called for his resignation!

Vice President Cheney also joined in this attempt to shoot the messenger:

I thought Durbin was totally out of line. I watched some of his comments on the floor of the United States Senate. For him to make those comparisons was one of the more egregious things I'd ever heard uttered on the floor of the United States Senate....it was so far over the top that I'm just appalled that anybody who serves in the United States Senate would even think those thoughts.

Now, apparently, Durbin has backed off a bit:

"More than 1700 American soldiers have been killed in Iraq and our country’s standing in the world community has been badly damaged by the prison abuses at Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo. My statement in the Senate was critical of the policies of this Administration which add to the risk our soldiers face."

"I will continue to speak out when I disagree with this Administration."

"I have learned from my statement that historical parallels can be misused and misunderstood. I sincerely regret if what I said caused anyone to misunderstand my true feelings: our soldiers around the world and their families at home deserve our respect, admiration and total support."

I can understand that Durbin may fear that his words will be taken out of context and used against him, just as John Kerry's famous testimony during the Vietnam War was during the 2004 campaign season.

However, in his speech, Durbin pointed out that the Supreme Court eventually stood up to Abraham Lincoln when he suspended habeas corpus during the Civil War and that the US now very much regrets the internment of Japanese-Americans during World War II.

America needs more people of conviction like Senator Richard Durbin. Contact his office and tell him that you support his attempt to speak truth to power. It appears he could use the boost.

Solzhenitsyn and Orwell: Still Relevant

Since 1991, I've been the faculty sponsor for the University of Louisville campus chapter of Amnesty International. Some years the students are very active, other years there really isn't much of a chapter.

In any case, I have a long-time interest in AI and have a lot of confidence in their human rights work. Needless to say, Amnesty has been unhappy with some Bush administration policies and practices against suspects in the "war on terror." From a CNN report:

"The U.S. is maintaining an archipelago of prisons around the world, many of them secret prisons, into which people are being literally disappeared, held in indefinite, incommunicado detention without access to lawyers or a judicial system or to their families," [William] Schulz [Executive director of the Washington branch] said.

"And in some cases, at least, we know they are being mistreated, abused, tortured and even killed."

...Amnesty International's report, released May 25, cited "growing evidence of U.S. war crimes" and labeled the U.S. detention facility at Guantanamo Bay as "the gulag of our times."

Because of my faith in Amnesty, I was more than a little dismayed by President Bush's remarks about the AI report when questioned about them during a Press Conference, May 31:

THE PRESIDENT: Terry.

Q Thank you, sir. Mr. President, recently, Amnesty International said you have established "a new gulag" of prisons around the world, beyond the reach of the law and decency. I'd like your reaction to that, and also your assessment of how it came to this, that that is a view not just held by extremists and anti-Americans, but by groups that have allied themselves with the United States government in the past -- and what the strategic impact is that in many places of the world, the United States these days, under your leadership, is no longer seen as the good guy.

THE PRESIDENT: I'm aware of the Amnesty International report, and it's absurd. It's an absurd allegation. The United States is a country that is -- promotes freedom around the world. When there's accusations made about certain actions by our people, they're fully investigated in a transparent way. It's just an absurd allegation.

In terms of the detainees, we've had thousands of people detained. We've investigated every single complaint against the detainees. It seemed like to me they based some of their decisions on the word of -- and the allegations -- by people who were held in detention, people who hate America, people that had been trained in some instances to disassemble -- that means not tell the truth. And so it was an absurd report. It just is.

Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld called the "gulag" charge "reprehensible." Vice President Dick Cheney said he was offended.

Did any of these men address the specific claims? No, of course not.

Yesterday, I was reminded by Susan Nossel of Democracy Arsenal that the White House favorably and frequently cited Amnesty International reports during the buildup to the Iraq war. She linked to this appropriately titled Think Progress post: "The Bush Administration Was For Amnesty International Before It Was Against It." Blogger Faiz references several anti-Iraq statements by Rumsfeld that cited AI reports.

There's plenty more: Amnesty is referenced at least six times in Decade of Deception and Defiance, which the White House Press Office called a "background paper for President George W. Bush's September 12th [2002] speech to the United Nations General Assembly."

Amnesty International reported that, in October 2000, the Iraqi Government executed dozens of women accused of prostitution.

According to Amnesty International, the victims' heads were displayed in front of their homes for several days.

Amnesty International reported that Iraq has the world's worst record for numbers of persons who have disappeared or remain unaccounted for.

In August 2001, Amnesty International reported that Saddam Hussein has the world's worst record for numbers of persons who have disappeared and remain unaccounted for.

Obviously, there was some redundancy.

Given what has been revealed about Abu Ghraib and Gitmo, there's a certain irony in this one:

In August 2001 Amnesty International released a report entitled Iraq -- Systematic Torture of Political Prisoners, which detailed the systematic and routine use of torture against suspected political opponents and, occasionally, other prisoners. Amnesty International also reports "Detainees have also been threatened with bringing in a female relative, especially the wife or the mother, and raping her in front of the detainee. Some of these threats have been carried out."

I'm thinking about assigning 1984 for my US Foreign Policy class this fall.

World's Worst Dictators

Last Sunday, Parade magazine released its latest annual list of the world's 10 worst dictators.

Don't laugh, as reported in the Times of India, it was "compiled by writer David Wallechinsky in consultation with Human Rights Watch, Freedom House, Amnesty International and Reporters Without Borders - human rights groups that 'have not hesitated to expose the policies of dictatorships of both the left and the right.'"

1. Kim Jong Il of North Korea
2. Omar al-Bashmir of Sudan
3. Than Shwe of Burma
4. Hu Jintao of China
5. Crown Prince Abdullah of Saudi Arabia
6. Col. Muammar al-Qaddafi of Libya
7. Pervez Musharraf of Pakistan
8. Saparmurat Niyazov of Turkmenistan
9. Robert Mugabe of Zimbabwe
10. Teodoro Obiang Nguema of Equatorial Guinea

As pointed out by AlterNet, this is an interesting list because it brings these issues into the mainstream. After all, Parade has a "huge circulation of 35 million weekly with 77 million readers." Note: not everyone on the left is excited by this annual list.

How do these dictators figure into American foreign policy?

In a recent op-ed from The Australian, Texas A&M Professor Michael Desch pointed out that China is America's top trading partner and "the countries that have been among the US's closest allies in the global war on terrorism have been authoritarian regimes such as Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Uzbekistan and Pakistan."

The President mentioned a couple of those states in the State of the Union address a few weeks ago:

The government of Saudi Arabia can demonstrate its leadership in the region by expanding the role of its people in determining their future. And the great and proud nation of Egypt, which showed the way toward peace in the Middle East, can now show the way toward democracy in the Middle East.

He sure told them, eh? I'll bet the dictators in those allied states can barely sleep at night.

Bush said nothing about Pakistan, other than to praise them for helping to win the war on terror. China wasn't mentioned, save indirectly as a source of assistance in the ongoing effort to convince North Korea to abandon its nuclear program.

Human Rights Day

Just over a week ago, I appeared on local TV because the station wanted someone to explain Amnesty International's (AI) position on police department acquisition of taser weapons.

As the campus faculty sponsor of the student organization, I agreed to appear and explain the policy.

In honor of Human Rights Day, let me quote from an Amnesty press release:

Many US police agencies routinely use tasers to subdue unarmed, non-compliant individuals who do not pose a serious danger to themselves or others. For example, police have used tasers against unruly schoolchildren; mentally disabled and elderly people; and people who simply argue with officers. Often, individuals have been subjected to repeated shocks, sometimes while in restraints...

AI is calling on the US state, federal and local authorities to suspend all use of tasers and other electro-shock weapons pending a rigorous, independent inquiry into their use and effects.

Where US agencies refuse to suspend tasers, the organization urges that they limit their use of tasers strictly to situations where the alternative under international law would be use of deadly force, with strict guidelines and monitoring.

Sometimes, suspects have mysteriously died in police custody after the use of a taser.

In my college debate days, I researched and often presented a case on the police use of deadly force. Often, in those days, departments could shoot at "fleeing felons," effectively acting as judge, juror and executioner. Hundreds of suspects died annually from police use of deadly force and a disproportionate number were minorities.

It is my understanding that policies have mostly changed to reflect what was then the FBI policy (also employed in NYC and some other localities). Police can now use force in self defense, or to defend others directly threatened by a suspect.

Hey, that's kind of like like international law on military force!

It is happening again

As reported in the Christian Science Monitor, Colin Powell said something today that no member of the Bush administration has said before:

US Secretary of State Colin Powell, testifying in front of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee Thursday, said the situation in Darfur [Sudan]...qualified as "genocide." It was the first such declaration by a member of the Bush administration

Is it happening again?

And by that, I mean is the US (and the rest of the world) sitting back and watching a genocide, without doing much of anything to stop it?

The UN set Aug. 30 as a deadline to get the Sudanese government to disarm the Janjaweed and bring them to justice, but so far the international community has not levied any sanctions. Thursday, Powell upped the ante.

"The US will propose that the next UN Security Council resolution on Sudan request a UN investigation into all violations of international humanitarian law and human rights law that have occurred in Darfur, with a view to ensuring accountability," he said.

The State Department said in a report released Thursday that the 1,136 interviews by US officials with Darfur refugees revealed a "consistent and widespread pattern of atrocities committed against non-Arab villagers." He said the evidence corroborates the specific intent of perpetrators to destroy a "group in whole or part" - using language from the 1948 genocide text.

Short version: we know enough to call it genocide, but we are still only going to recommend more study rather than action to stop it.

"Accountability" means paying for crimes after they are committed. Dick Cheney just argued that Bush administration foreign policy was pro-active, and wouldn't rely upon dated legalistic approaches regarding "criminal attacks." Of course, he was talking about terrorists striking the US, but really, what's the difference?

Innocent civilians in the Sudan are being brutally terrorized.

In the Presidential debates in 2000, Al Gore said that he regretted that the US didn't send more US troops in faster to provide "humanitarian relief measures" while hundreds of thousands of people were killed in Rwanda.

Asked the same question, George Bush said he would not have intervened to save even 600,000 people because no vital American interest was at stake. Sadly, the Clinton/Gore administration seemed to agree with this perspective at the time of the killings -- but Clinton apologized for the tardy action in March 1998.

In March 2004, Kofi Annan also apologized for the international community's "sins of omission."

As the neocons in the Bush administration have long argued, the US is the most powerful state in the world. If it says genocide is occurring, then it has a moral obligation to do something with that power to stop the crimes against humanity, even if the international law is too weak to force such action.

Visit the Amnesty International website for more information about the scope of the problem:

The reality in Darfur is that war crimes and crimes against humanity are committed with impunity and attacks by government-supported militias and government troops have led to the displacement of at least 1.2 million civilians within Darfur and an additional 200,000 refugees in Chad.

While humanitarian workers struggle to save the lives of the displaced, men, women and children remain at risk of attacks, including killings, rape and torture, by the very militia and government troops that forcibly displaced them.

The International Crisis Group provides an outline of what must be done:

History has shown that Khartoum will respond constructively to direct pressure, but this pressure must be concerted, consistent and genuine. Its sixteen-month ethnic cleansing campaign has elicited a slow-motion reaction, which is having a negligible positive impact and in some ways has made matters worse. Despite a series of high level visitors to Khartoum and Darfur, including UN Secretary General Kofi Annan and U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell, the Sudanese government has yet to fulfil its repeated commitments to neutralise the Janjaweed militias responsible for much of the violence. The international community has yet to make clear, as it must, that there will be a decisive cost to Sudan for that failure.

At minimum, tens of thousands of lives are at stake.

It is truly a global emergency of the first-order.

The Human Rights Watch webpage has a collection of very troubling photos.

Is the US Violating the Geneva Conventions?

While many analysts ask this question in respect of the prisoners at Guantanamo, I'm following Billmon's lead and asking this in terms of US practices in Iraq.

The AP reported Wednesday that the US had arrested the family of one of Saddam's Deputies. Apparently, the US has previously held the families of Iraqi scientists as well.

In a nutshell, these arrested people are hostages. As the AP story indicates:

The detention of the relatives of Izzat Ibrahim al-Douri, a lifelong Saddam associate who is No. 6 on the list of most-wanted Iraqis, was an apparent attempt to pressure his surrender or gather intelligence that might lead to him.

[Lt. Colonel] MacDonald gave no details on why the wife and daughter were seized, but American forces have frequently arrested relatives of fugitives to interrogate them on their family member's whereabouts and as a way of putting pressure on the wanted men to surrender.

The media director of the Amnesty International USA, Alistair Hodgett, questioned the tactic, saying if the women were arrested to pressure al-Douri to turn himself in, they were being used as "bargaining chips."

"At a minimum, the U.S. should clarify on what legal basis (they) ... have been detained. If the purpose of their arrest is to exert pressure on Izzat Ibrahim al-Douri and force his surrender, then it is cause for grave concern," Hodgett said in a statement

Billmon points out that this is a pretty blatant violation of the Geneva Convention:

Persons taking no active part in the hostilities, including members of armed forces who have laid down their arms and those placed hors de combat by sickness, wounds, detention, or any other cause, shall in all circumstances be treated humanely, without any adverse distinction founded on race, colour, religion or faith, sex, birth or wealth, or any other similar criteria.

To this end, the following acts are and shall remain prohibited at any time and in any place whatsoever with respect to the above-mentioned persons...

Taking of hostages

In Billmon's comments, someone else has quoted the part of the Geneva conventions that makes the same activity illegal for occupying powers, which is the official international status of the US in Iraq.

My readers might also recall the recent bulldozing of family residences in Iraq, which is also apparently illegal -- and the State Department has criticized it when Israel has done it.

It's awfully difficult for the US to argue in behalf of the rule of law and against the targeting of civilians by terrorists if its activity isn't a hell of a lot different.