LMNOP | Roundup: 04.25.03

The Geneva Convention states: "Protected persons are entitled to respect.

"They shall at all times be humanely treated, and shall be protected against insults."

AMERICA was at the centre of a new human rights row last night after four alleged Iraqi thieves were paraded naked in a Baghdad park by US troops.

The degraded prisoners had the words "Ali Baba, Haram" - "Thief, Unclean" - scrawled in Arabic on their chests.

The humiliating spectacle of young men running to hide their shame was captured by a photographer for Norway's Dagbladet newspaper, which quoted a US officer as saying the deterrent was effective.

Last night Amnesty International in London criticised the inhumane treatment and promised to raise the matter urgently with the United Nations next week.

Director Kate Allen said: "If these pictures are accurate, this is an appalling way to treat prisoners. Such degrading treatment is a clear violation of the responsibilities of the occupying powers.

"Whatever the reason, these men must at all times be treated humanely. The US authorities must investigate this incident and publicly release their findings."

The four victims had their clothes burned before being publicly humiliated in the Zawra Park which is said be plagued by thieves trying to reach US weapons stores.

The Americans claim that over the last few days several hundred Iraqis have tried to get into the park and US troop patrols have been stepped up around the clock.

Group Commander Eric Canaday, of 10th Engineer Corps, is quoted in Dagbladet saying: "I think our job is to keep people out of the park to prevent theft of weapons.

Lt Canaday added: "We have talked with the Iraqi inhabitants. Some of them gave us the idea so we took the clothes and burned them before we pushed them out with thief written on their chest. It was quite successful."

The US soldiers were seen chasing the Iraqi men shouting "Ali Baba, Ali Baba". All four ran as fast as they could to hide their nakedness, according to onlookers.

Three of the young men got away but 20-year-old Zian Djumma came back with his head bowed down after he put on grey shorts which he found in a looted house.

He told Dagbladet: "This was terrible. Now I only want to go home and find a hand grenade and throw it at the soldiers. Not only against those who did it to us but at everybody. I hate the Americans for this."

Djumma said the four friends had gone into the park through an open gate looking for a missing 15-year-old boy.

But the Americans said the four were carrying a bag with spare parts for weapons.

"They shall at all times be humanely treated, and shall be protected against insults."

Washington DC, The administration of President George W. Bush is steadily and systematically working to reverse longstanding civil rights policies and impede the enforcement of U.S. civil rights laws, according to a new report released Thursday by the Leadership Conference on Civil Rights Education Fund (LCCREF).

"For defenders of civil rights, this is a perilous time," warned the LCCREF, a coalition of rights and religious groups whose members include the National Council of Churches, the National Organization for Women, and the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, among other grassroots groups.

The groups charge that Bush and his aides appear determined to impose what the report called "a radical view of the Constitution in which states' rights are paramount" both through the adoption of policies and regulations that undermine the basis on which federal civil-rights protections stand and by packing the federal appeals courts with "right-wing ideologues."

"While the public's attention has been focused on the threat of another terrorist attack after 9/11 and the war in Iraq, the Bush administration's efforts to undermine civil rights enforcement have received scant notice," said Karen McGill Lawson, LCCREF's executive director.

"As this report demonstrates, the combination of below-the-radar regulations, little-noticed litigation, and severe budget cuts illustrates a pattern of hostility toward core civil rights values and signals a diminished commitment to the idea of non-discrimination," she added.

The report, entitled 'The Bush Administration Takes Aim: Civil Rights Under Attack,' charges that the administration is not only rejecting the next generation of civil-rights protections, such as providing more sanctions for racial profiling by police, it is also actively eroding existing civil rights protections.

First, the administration is approving new regulations that weaken the civil rights of U.S. workers by dismantling existing rules designed to reward companies that demonstrate compliance with civil-rights and other laws relating to worker safety, the environment, and consumer protection.

For example, immediately after assuming office President Bush began suspending the package of measures known as the "Responsible Contractor" rules that ensured that government contracts were awarded only to companies that enforced such laws. They were finally repealed altogether on December 27, 2001, a date which, according to LCCR, suggested a deliberate effort to limit public scrutiny of a potentially controversial measure.

In the same way, the administration has reduced educational equity for women and girls through new Title IX policies and rejected changes in regulations that were designed to reduce racial disparities in federal sentencing rules.

Second, it has worked to reverse civil rights advances through litigation, most notably in the University of Michigan affirmative action cases in which the Justice Department filed amicus briefs aimed at persuading the court that the university's admission policies were unconstitutional.

Similarly, the administration abruptly abandoned a decade of U.S. government support for litigation designed to increase the representation of minorities and women among custodians working in New York City schools. Currently, some 96 percent of custodians are men and only a small fraction are members of minority groups. A similar reversal by Washington took place with respect to a case related to the Pittsburgh Police.

Finally, the administration has undercut anti-discrimination efforts through its budgetary decisions, according to the report. Key civil rights enforcement initiatives have been systematically under-funded, it said, while federal programs to promote education, housing, and health care for low-income minority communities are also languishing due to "Bush tax cuts and multi-billion increases for the Pentagon."

"Civil rights are illusory in a society without quality public education, decent housing, and affordable health care for all citizens," the report noted.

"Leading advocates in the new states' rights movement now control or dominate all three branches of the federal government. They are prepared to move forward toward their extremist goals, even though those goals cannot be reconciled with the bipartisan civil rights consensus of the past fifty years," the report warned.

This year's session of the United Nations Commission on Human Rights has proved even more disappointing than last year, Human Rights Watch said on the last day of the six-week meeting in Geneva.

In 2002, the world's only known executions of juvenile offenders were carried out by the U.S. state of Texas, and the United States is the only country worldwide that continues to execute people who were under eighteen at the time of the offense.

An "abusers club" of governments hostile to human rights has further consolidated its position and blocked several important country initiatives, while the United States and to a lesser extent, the European Union have not exerted positive leadership.

"The commission appears to be in a really serious decline," said Joanna Weschler, U.N. representative for Human Rights Watch. "Governments this year were even less outspoken in criticizing the worst human rights violators worldwide."

Human Rights Watch criticized the United States, which rejoined the commission this year, for playing a destructive role on many issues. The European Union also failed to take firm and principled stand on many important votes, Human Rights Watch said. In a sudden about-face, the United States for the first time refrained from cosponsoring a resolution condemning Russia's abuses in Chechnya (the resolution was defeated by 21 votes against, to 15 votes in favor, with 17 abstentions). The United States also abandoned its traditional practice of sponsoring a resolution critical of China, citing leadership changes and unspecified human rights improvements.

The United States blocked any focused debate on the situation in Iraq and resisted human rights monitoring of Iraq's transition. It strongly opposed any call for accountability for past human rights abuses in Afghanistan, and criticism of continuing human rights problems in that country. The United States also fought unsuccessfully to prevent the commission from calling on governments to ratify the statute for the International Criminal Court.

Despite the overwhelming international consensus against the execution of juvenile offenders, the United States insisted that this principle be dropped from a resolution on children's rights. In 2002, the world's only known executions of juvenile offenders were carried out by the U.S. state of Texas, and the United States is the only country worldwide that continues to execute people who were under eighteen at the time of the offense.

However, this year's death penalty resolution condemns the practice more forcefully and makes clear that the execution of juveniles is absolutely prohibited by international human rights law.

The European Union, evidently preoccupied with its own internal divisions and relations with Washington, failed to stand firm and united on critical issues. Although the European Union was nearly the only sponsor of country resolutions, it often was not forceful enough. Resolutions on Russia, Zimbabwe and Sudan were all less critical than in previous years and ultimately were defeated. The European Union refrained from tabling a resolution critical of Iran, pointing to its newly established but unproven human rights dialogue with Tehran. It also did not introduce a resolution on China.

"The United States and European Union have complained loudly about the abusive governments that are members of the commission," Weschler said. "But on many issues they have been just as ready to subjugate human rights to their political interests."

A powerful grouping of hostile governments who have joined the commission in recent years, including Algeria, Libya, Sudan, Syria and Zimbabwe, joined with China, Cuba and Russia to oppose several important country initiatives. African governments, led by South Africa, worked as a bloc to oppose scrutiny of the human rights situation in Zimbabwe and Sudan.

Canada, Mexico, Costa Rica, Norway, New Zealand and Switzerland were among the few to hold a firm and principled line on many key human rights issues. Other Latin American and Caribbean countries who might be expected to champion human rights, such as Brazil and Argentina, failed to back important resolutions, and proved muted in their criticism of Cuba.

Some of the commission's significant achievements included first-time initiatives by the EU on North Korea, by the United States on Belarus and jointly by the EU and the United States on Turkmenistan.

"When the U.S. and the E.U. have the political resolve to censure human rights violators, they can make a powerful statement," Weschler said. "The problem is that they don't do it often enough."

In another positive development, a working group was established to elaborate an Optional Protocol to the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, that would allow for individual complaints. The commission will also consider a resolution on the need to uphold human rights while countering terrorism, although it failed to establish a dedicated monitoring mechanism.

"The upcoming elections for next year's session will make or break the commission," Weschler warned. "Several countries with terrible human rights records - such as Cuba, Iran, North Korea, and Saudi Arabia - are in the running."

Elections for commission membership will be held next week in New York. Human Rights Watch has argued that, as a prerequisite for membership of the commission, governments should have ratified core human rights treaties, complied with their reporting obligations, issued open invitations to U.N. human rights experts and not have been condemned recently by the commission for human rights violations

NOTICE: In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, this material is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes.

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