BY NORM DIXON
The "anti-terrorism" campaign led by the United States is being used as the excuse for attacks on human rights and civil liberties by governments around the world, Human Rights Watch concluded in its annual world survey released on January 16.
The 670-page Human Rights Watch World Report 2002 noted the widespread denial of human rights and democracy by pro-Western regimes in the Middle East and Central Asia. "Many of these authoritarian governments cling to power without challenge from Western governments", HRW said.
Countries such as Russia, Uzbekistan, Egypt, China and Israel are using the "war on terror" to justify abusive military campaigns and crackdowns on domestic political opponents. "For too many countries, the anti-terror mantra has provided a new reason to ignore human rights", said HRW's Kenneth Roth.
The report noted that Russia's President Vladimir Putin has defended escalating military action in Chechnya as a part of the "war against terrorism". "Putin was committing atrocities [in Chechnya] before September 11; he's been committing atrocities since September 11", Roth said. "He just got a great new defence — he's now fighting terrorism".
China's foreign minister Tang Jiaxuan has used the fight against "terrorism" as the pretext to defend his government's repression of political agitation in Xinjiang province.
The report also singled out Uzbekistan's government for the arrest, torture and imprisonment of Muslims who practice their religion outside state-controlled system of mosques. Uzbekistan illustrates how the US and other Western countries have ignored human rights abuses because some countries have become important US allies.
Saudi Arabia, the report noted, imposes strict limits on civil rights, severely discriminates against women and systematically suppresses dissent. Yet Western governments maintain a "shameful silence".
The willingness of Western governments to tolerate abuses by friendly governments in the Middle East and north Africa has undermined human rights, Roth noted. The problems include the West's failure to rein in Israeli abuses against Palestinians and its apparent disregard for grave civilian suffering caused by sanctions against Iraq.
"In societies where basic freedoms flourish, citizens can press their government to respond to grievances", said Roth. "But in Saudi Arabia and other countries where Osama bin Laden strikes a chord of resentment, governments prohibit political debate. As the option of peaceful political change is closed off, the voices of non-violent dissent are frequently upstaged by advocates of violent opposition."
As Ralph Tagern, a researcher for the Institute on Middle Eastern Policy told Associated Press on January 17: "There is no question that terrorism is the flavour of the month and that explaining something as an anti-terrorist action is the quickest way to get the United States on board. But in truth, many of these struggles are not about terrorism. They are about long-standing fights for independence and other matters."
In the US and Western Europe, measures to combat terrorism are threatening long-held human rights principles, the report stated. HRW criticised new restrictions on civil liberties in the US, such as the proposed military commissions to try suspected terrorists which are a blatant denial of fair-trial standards.
The report states that the commissions may result in suspects being "tried, convicted and even executed with no appearance before an independent judicial tribunal, no right to appeal, no right to a public trial, no presumption of innocence, no right to confront the evidence or the testimony against them and with no requirement that proof be established beyond a reasonable doubt".
"Imagine the US condemning military tribunals set up by a tin-pot tyrant to get rid of his political enemies", said Roth. "That kind of criticism ... will ring with hypocrisy."
"Military dictators need do nothing more than photocopy" the Bush administration's measures, the report commented. The USAPATRIOT Act rushed through Congress allows the indefinite detention of "non-citizens" if the attorney general "certifies" he has "reasonable grounds to believe" the individual is engaged in terrorist activities or endangers national security, the report said.
HRW cited the US for detaining more than 1100 people, mostly Arab or Muslim men, as potential terrorists. "Only a small number of those in custody were believed to have links to terrorism", the report points.
Meanwhile, HRW complained that the Bush administration continues to refuse to ratify human rights treaties, including those covering women's rights, children's rights, as well as economic, social and cultural rights. It opposes the establishment of an international criminal court.
The US has not ratified the additional protocol to the Geneva Convention which covers war crimes committed by the use of air power, Washington's "primary warfare tool". This, the report added, meant there were no restrictions on the US use of cluster bombs in Afghanistan, the same notoriously imprecise weapons that caused a quarter of bombing-related deaths in Yugoslavia during the 1999 Kosova war.
Australia did not escape attention. HRW accused Prime Minister John Howard of "stoking post-September 11 fears of foreigners, built his candidacy for re-election ... around his summary expulsion, in blatant violation of international refugee law, of asylum seekers".
[The Human Rights Watch World Report 2002 is available at .]
From Â鶹´«Ã½ Weekly, January 30, 2002.
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