Thursday, December 11, 2008
US: Human Rights Agenda for the New Administration, by Marie-Êve Marineau
Update November 25th, 2008 A recent New York Times editorial referenced Human Rights Watch’s agenda for how to close Guantanamo Bay.
President-elect Barack Obama will take office at a time when the credibility and effectiveness of the United States in combating human rights abuses abroad has been badly eroded by the US government's own actions. There is an urgent need to remedy abuses on many fronts, but Human Rights Watch here highlights four crucial initiatives that President-elect Obama should take shortly after assuming office:
1. Ensure that US Counterterrorism Efforts Comply with International Human Rights and Humanitarian Law
The Bush administration's methodical disregard for the human rights of those detained in the campaign against terrorism has been disastrous for the global human rights cause, diminishing the moral standing of a government that traditionally was an ally in promoting human rights, and setting a powerful negative example for abusive governments around the world. Undoing the damage done will require a public commitment to a new course and firm measures to implement that policy. As first steps, President-elect Obama should:
Close the Guantanamo Bay detention facility, prosecuting those detainees implicated in terrorism and sending the others to their home countries or appropriate countries of resettlement, including the United States.
Prosecute terrorism suspects in regular federal courts rather than before military commissions, which have failed to provide basic due process.
Reject preventive detention (detention without trial) as an alternative to prosecuting terrorism suspects.
Reject the "global war on terrorism" as a legal basis for detaining individuals outside a recognizable battlefield to deprive them of basic criminal justice rights.
Issue an executive order to implement the bans on torture and cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment by requiring the CIA to abide by the interrogation rules that the US military has now adopted.
Put a definitive end to the CIA's secret detention program in which apprehended individuals are "disappeared" without acknowledgment into unknown detention facilities and without access to anyone but their jailors and interrogators.
Sign and press the Senate to ratify the Convention against Enforced Disappearance to signal an intention to never again engage in such practices.
Stop renditions (returns) of terrorism suspects and others to countries where they are at risk of torture or ill-treatment.
Ensure the establishment of a nonpartisan investigatory commission ("truth commission"), equipped with subpoena powers and adequate funding to investigate and publicly report on post-9/11 counterterrorism-related abuses, recommend how those responsible should be held accountable, and specify steps to ensure that such abuses are never repeated.
2. Make Human Rights a Central Pillar of US Foreign Policy
For eight years, the Bush administration claimed to promote democracy and freedom, usually in the form of democratic elections, rather than a more broad-based human rights agenda. Its criticisms of human rights abuses were strongest with respect to longtime adversaries like Iran and Cuba, and countries of little strategic importance, such as Sudan, Zimbabwe and Burma, but far less consistent when it came to close US allies like Egypt and Pakistan. This selectivity has undermined US credibility, encouraged abusive regimes, and left human rights activists in many parts of the world with weak support from the country that should be their most powerful defender. Some examples of countries where essential change in US policy is needed are:
Pakistan, where the Bush administration uncritically supported President Pervez Musharraf as he staged fraudulent elections, attacked the judiciary, and conducted an abusive and ineffectual counterterrorism campaign. The next US president should insist on full restoration of an independent judiciary and the rule of law, and put the Pakistani military and intelligence services on notice that good relations will require ending and resolving "disappearances," and respecting human rights in tribal areas.
Ethiopia, where the US government has ignored war crimes and crimes against humanity by Ethiopian forces during counterinsurgency operations in Ethiopia's Ogaden region and in Somalia. President-elect Obama should make clear that the United States' substantial military and foreign assistance programs will be curtailed if Ethiopia does not improve its human rights record at home and abroad. The president should also support the establishment by the UN Security Council of a commission of inquiry to examine serious crimes committed by all sides in Somalia since January 2007.
Russia, where other strategic interests made the US government reluctant to criticize the country's deteriorating human rights situation. While the Bush administration has now adopted a different tone, President-elect Obama should develop a strategy with other states to challenge Russia's repression of free expression, association, and assembly, to promote civil society and a free media, and to push for accountability for abuses in Chechnya, Ingushetia, and Georgia.
China, where the Bush administration has lacked a coherent human rights strategy including with regard to continuing arrests of government critics, a crackdown in Tibet, and massive forced evictions and other abuses connected to the Beijing Olympics. President-elect Obama should work with other governments to press China to end torture, restrictions on free expression, arbitrary arrests of civil society activists, violations of labor rights, and repression in Tibet and Xinjiang.
Afghanistan, where the US government has failed to make a sufficient commitment to protect civilians from abuses by warlords and from armed conflict. The next US president should take immediate steps to reduce civilian casualties in military operations, press President Karzai and the Afghan government to crack down on corruption and marginalize warlords, and ensure that US aid promotes progress for women's rights, including equal access to schooling for girls at all levels.
Uzbekistan, where the US government has preferred dialogue to action in confronting systematic torture, arbitrary arrests of human rights activists, and large-scale repression, including the 2005 Andijan massacre. President-elect Obama should work with other governments to formulate concrete benchmarks for human rights progress, and make improvements in their relationship with Uzbekistan contingent on the implementation of these benchmarks.
Colombia, where the Bush administration forged close ties with a government unwilling to rein in brutal paramilitaries. President-elect Obama should support Colombia's judicial institutions in the face of violence from both sides of Colombia's conflict, while conditioning final action on a free trade agreement on measurable progress in ending anti-union violence and dismantling paramilitary mafias.
Egypt, Israel, and Jordan, where the United States supplies considerable military and economic assistance yet is reluctant to criticize human rights violations. President-elect Obama should address, in public as well as through diplomatic channels, serious human rights abuses by all governments and non-state actors in the region.
3. Rejoin the International Human Rights Community
The Bush administration pursued a policy of exceptionalism that extended to the international human rights and humanitarian law framework. The US government has remained an international outcast by failing to ratify important and long-standing human rights treaties, and has repudiated, rather than worked with allies to improve, the UN Human Rights Council. Instead of being a leader in promoting international justice, the US government has adopted a tentative and haphazard approach to prosecuting rights abusers that has been at the expense of global accountability and victims of injustice.
President-elect Obama should reverse course regarding the international human rights framework and international justice. As immediate steps, the next administration should:
Seek a seat on the UN Human Rights Council in May 2009 and work to make it more effective.
Bring US policy in line with the 2008 treaty to ban cluster munitions; urge the Senate to ratify both the Cluster Munitions Treaty and the 1997 Mine Ban Treaty as soon as possible.
Urge the Senate to ratify key human rights treaties that are broadly accepted by the international community, including the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women, the Convention on the Rights of the Child, and the International Covenant on Economic, Social, and Cultural Rights.
Support investigations and prosecutions by the International Criminal Court (ICC); seek repeal of the American Service-Members' Protection Act of 2002; and begin steps to join the Rome Statute of the ICC.
Press for the establishment by the UN Security Council of a permanent mechanism to effectively address and seek to eliminate sexual violence as a weapon of war.
4. Demonstrate Leadership on Human Rights Issues at Home
In addition to restoring its credibility as a human rights leader abroad, the United States should expand human rights protection at home. President-elect Obama should:
Abolish the federal death penalty and pending abolition, declare an immediate moratorium on federal executions, and direct the attorney general not to seek the death penalty in federal prosecutions.
Mitigate some of the most inhumane aspects of current US immigration policy by encouraging Congress to amend US law requiring the immediate deportation of any immigrant with a criminal conviction by restoring individualized deportation hearings in which an immigration judge can weigh the offense's seriousness against the harm caused by deportation.
Address the stark and persistent racial disparities plaguing the US criminal justice system, such as by reforming federal sentencing laws to eliminate the powder/crack cocaine sentencing differential, and convening a presidential commission to recommend steps to end such disparities.
Work to end discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation and gender identity by urging Congress to enact comprehensive anti-discrimination legislation and repeal the Defense of Marriage Act, which prohibits the federal government from recognizing same-sex marriages.
End benighted and ineffective approaches to the fight against HIV/AIDS by: eliminating the anti-prostitution pledge and the emphasis on abstinence-only programs; having the Department of Health and Human Services remove HIV from the list of communicable diseases of public health significance in order to end the ban on entry to the United States of persons living with HIV; and eliminating statutory and regulatory barriers to federal funding for needle and syringe exchange in domestic and international settings.
Promote respect for reproductive freedom, including by: rescinding the "global gag rule," which prohibits family planning organizations abroad from receiving US funds if using their own funds for legal abortion-related activities; submitting a budget with funding for comprehensive sex education in place of abstinence-until-marriage programs; and removing funding for crisis pregnancy centers that do not provide full and accurate information about pregnancy options.
Eliminate statutory and regulatory barriers to federal funding for needle and syringe exchange in domestic and international settings.
Link
Labels: Bush, Human Rights Watch, Marie-Êve Marineau, Obama, United States
Wednesday, August 06, 2008
Bin Laden's driver convicted by Guantanamo military tribunal, by Anne Humphreys
Hamdan was 1st Guantanamo Bay prisoner to face trial
Osama bin Laden's former driver, Salim Hamdan, was found guilty on a terrorism charge Wednesday in the first verdict to come through the controversial U.S. military tribunal process at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.
Hamdan, a Yemeni citizen who was captured in Afghanistan in November 2001, was convicted of providing material support for terrorism but acquitted of conspiring with al-Qaeda. Hamdan was taken to Guantanamo in May 2002.
The Pentagon-selected jury deliberated for about eight hours over three days. After the sentence was read, Hamdan held his head in his hands and wept.
In this courtroom sketch, defendant Salim Hamdan watches as FBI agent Craig Donnachie testifies Thursday about his interrogations of Hamdan before the military tribunal at the U.S. naval base in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. (Janet Hamlin/Pool/Associated Press)
The judge scheduled a sentencing hearing for later Wednesday. Hamdan could get life in prison.
Hamdan was the first Guantanamo Bay prisoner to go on trial. Of the base's roughly 265 other prisoners, including Canadian citizen Omar Khadr, the Pentagon says it intends to prosecute about 80.
The White House released a statement saying it was pleased with the verdict.
"The military commission system is a fair and appropriate legal process for prosecuting detainees alleged to have committed crimes against the United States or our interests," deputy spokesman Tony Fratto said.
"We look forward to other cases moving forward to trial," he said.
Identified al-Qaeda safehouses, U.S. authorities say
U.S. authorities have said that Hamdan identified key Islamist leaders, mapped out bin Laden's escape routes and led them to al-Qaeda safehouses after he was captured at a roadblock in southern Afghanistan in November 2001.
Hamdan's defence lawyers argued that he was a low-level employee who did not materially contribute to militant acts.
The system of military tribunals, introduced under the administration of U.S. President George W. Bush, has come under fire for years from critics who say it is unconstitutional.
In 2006, the U.S. Supreme Court declared the military tribunals illegal and in violation of American and international law.
As a result of that ruling, the Bush administration made changes to the military tribunals, which now have congressional approval.
In June, the top court ruled that foreign suspects held at the high security military jail at Guantanamo Bay have rights under the American Constitution to challenge their detention in U.S. civilian courts.
"This is the first full test of the special tribunal system that was implemented by George Bush shortly after the Sept. 11 attacks," said the CBC's Nahlah Ayed in Washington.
"It is a system that been criticized because, for example, it allows the kinds of evidence that would never be allowed in regular courts — or even military courts — such as hearsay or statements made under interrogation," Ayed said.
"This will be very important not only for the system but also for President Bush."
Besides Hamdan, only one other prisoner has been found guilty at Guantanamo. As part of a pretrial agreement, Australian David Hicks pleaded guilty in 2007 to providing support for terrorism and was sent back to his home country to serve the remaining nine months of a seven-year sentence.
Labels: Anne Humphreys, Bush, Guantanamo, United States
Friday, May 30, 2008
Scott McClellan and "What happened"
Sunday, May 25, 2008
The Truth Behind Hillary’s Faux Pas: Crime Families Kill the Competition
Kurt Nimmo
Infowars
May 24, 2008
Keith Olbermann, obvious Obama partisan, is shocked, just shocked Hillary Clinton would suggest “the inspirational leader” Obama might be assassinated, as RFK was assassinated before him, the Democrat nomination within his reach. Olbermann may be shocked, but Clinton’s remark is simply politics as usual. Assassination is part of the political mix, especially here in the United States. Clinton, in her desperation, made a mistake, a faux pas. She “misspoke,” something apparently only politicians are capable of doing. Now she has backpedaled, apologized.
Here is the reality behind Clinton’s remark — political crime families, like Cosa Nostra crime families, on occasion kill the competition. RFK was not killed by a lone Sirhan Sirhan. Video and photographic evidence reveals that three senior CIA operatives were at the scene of Robert Kennedy’s assassination. “Three of these men have been positively identified as senior officers who worked together in 1963 at JMWAVE, the CIA’s Miami base for its Secret War on Castro,” the BBC reported in 2006. “I was in Dallas when we got the son of a bitch and I was in Los Angeles when we got the little bastard,” boasted David Morales, Chief of Operations.
But the CIA does not act on its own. It simply takes orders. “Any sober examination of any of the assassinations leads directly to the same master list of agencies, political suspects and covert operatives, from the Kennedy killings to the crimes of Watergate and Iran-Contra, to the present day. The system that made the RFK murder and cover-up possible is at its zenith today, with the openly criminal, overtly brutal George W. Bush administration,” writes Larry Chin. “The conspiracy and cover-up of all the 1960s’ assassinations must be understood not as isolated murders, but parts of a long and seamless continuum. To borrow the words of Peter Dale Scott and Jonathan Marshall, authors of The Iran-Contra Connection, they are merely ‘the outgrowth of a long tradition of covert US activities,’” covert activities directed by presidents, who are of course selected minions of the elite.
Last October, the elite’s enthusiasm for Hillary was revealed when Lynn Forester de Rothschild, wife of Sir Evelyn Rothschild, said “Hillary will be good for America,” that is to say good for Rothschild and the elite. Lord Rothschild supports John McCain, but then there really is little difference between McCain and Clinton. As for Obama, he is considered an outsider, never mind he is supported by Zbigniew Brzezinski, the Trilateral Commission, and the Ford Foundation. Call it a New World Order family feud. And like the legendary Hatfield-McCoy family feud, people may end up dead.
It would be more accurate to call it a feud between cosche, or Mafia crime families.
Labels: Bush, Clinton, Keith Olbermann, Obama, United States
Monday, May 19, 2008
U.S. Violated Venezuelan Airspace, Says Defense Minister
Venezuela's Minister of Defense, Gustavo Rangel Briceño, denounced on Monday, May 19, that a U.S. fighter jet violated Venezuelan airspace on Saturday night, one day after Caracas complained about a Colombian army’s incursion into Venezuelan territory.
According to Rangel, who read out loud an excerpt of the conversation between the Venezuelan control tower and a U.S. pilot, explained that the latter was not aware he was in Venezuelan territory and that his course was set to the Caribbean Curaçao island during a flight exercise.
At the same press conference, the Venezuelan Minister of Foreign Affairs, Nicolás Maduro, announced that he talked with his Colombian counterpart, Fernando Araujo, about the incursion of the Colombian military into Venezuelan territory. He said they both agreed on activating diplomatic mechanisms in order to settle cross-border conflicts via diplomatic means.
Regarding the U.S. fighter, Maduro said he will arrange a meeting with the U.S. Ambassador to Venezuela, Patrick Duddy, in order to demand an explanation.
On Saturday, Venezuela protested the Colombian military incursion; however, on Sunday, the Colombian Defense Minister, Juan Manuel Santos, denied it was an “act of provocation” as the Venezuelan government described it.
On March 1, Colombian troops illegally entered Ecuadorian territory in order to bombard a temporary FARC camp.
During the attack, the Colombian army slaughtered over 24 people (guerrilla members and civilians), including the FARC second-in-command, Raul Reyes, four Mexican students and an Ecuadorian citizen.
The violation to Ecuador’s sovereignty led this country to break diplomatic relations with Colombia, whose government defended the attack and justified it as part of its war against “terrorism.”
Labels: Bush, Chávez, Colombia, Ecuador, United States, Venezuela
A great TV moment
Contrary to our has been analysts of Quebec television, I invite you to watch a great moment of television - in USA, on the MSNBC network. The commentator Keith Olbermann analysis an interview given by Bush - the president intellectually inferior, and mentor of Stephen Harper on the Yahoo network. The video commentary is worth to be seen and heard. Bravo.
Labels: Bush, Harper, Keith Olbermann
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