Emadeddin Baghi, leading human rights activist in Iran

On Monday November 9, the award ceremony for this year’s winner of the Martin Ennals Award for human rights defenders will take place in Geneva. The recipient of the award will probably not be there though. Emadeddin Baghi, one of Iran’s leading intellectuals and human rights activists, will be the first laureate in the award’s eighteen-year history to be denied the opportunity to receive his prize in person since the Iranian authorities are not allowing him to leave the country to accept it.

Iran’s citizens have won more than their fair share of prestigious international human rights awards. Fearless attorney and human rights defender Shirin Ebadi won the Nobel Peace Prize in October 2003, the first (and only) Muslim woman to receive that honor. Parvin Ardalan, a prominent journalist and women’s rights activist, was awarded the Olof Palme Prize for 2007 for her activism on behalf of women’s rights in Iran. And this year, Emadeddin Baghi won the Martin Ennals Award for his work to defend the rights of prisoners and to end the imposition of the death penalty. However, instead of expressing pride in the accomplishments of their citizens, the Iranian authorities have not only done their best to try to silence their voices, but won’t even let them collect their awards.

Parvin Ardalan had already boarded a plane at the airport in Tehran in March 2008 to fly to Stockholm to accept her Olof Palme Award when she was removed from the flight by Iranian authorities. Her passport was then confiscated. Since that time, she has been battling charges against her stemming from her activities with the One Million Signatures Campaign, calling for better rights for women. She was finally able to leave Iran to go to Sweden in October 2009.

Although Shirin Ebadi was allowed to accept her Nobel Prize in person, she has been subjected to persistent and withering threats, intimidation, and persecution. In December 2008, dozens of government agents carried out a raid on the Center for Human Rights Defenders, run by Ms Ebadi to provide legal assistance to victims of human rights violations, hours before they were planning on holding an event there to commemorate the 60^th anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Center staff members and guests were harassed and intimidated and the center was forcibly closed; documents and computers containing protected attorney-client information were later removed.

The Martin Ennals Award, named for the first secretary-general of Amnesty International, is a collaboration of ten of the world’s leading human rights organizations, including AI. It is “granted annually to someone who has demonstrated an exceptional record of combating human rights violations by courageous and innovative means.”  The Chairman of the Jury of the MEA, Hans Thoolen, described Emadeddin Baghi as “an exceptionally brave man defending human rights despite imprisonment and poor health.”

Emadeddin Baghi is the founder of the Association for the Defense of Prisoners’ Rights, which had been compiling information on torture and other abuses of detainees. He has focused attention on Iran’s appalling record of executing juvenile offenders, as well as the execution, following grossly flawed legal proceedings, of a number of Iranian Arabs accused of politically motivated crimes. In the late 1990s he exposed the mysterious serial murders of Iranian intellectuals. His books Right to Life and Right to Life II argue for the abolition of the death penalty using Islamic texts and jurisprudence. They have been banned by Iranian authorities–who had previously shut down his newspaper Joumhouriat in 2003– and Mr. Baghi has served years in prison on charges of “endangering national security” and “printing lies.”  In December 2007, during his most recent imprisonment, he suffered three seizures and remained in poor health without adequate medical care until his release in October 2008.  Officials closed down the office of the Association for the Defense of Prisoners’ Rights in September 2009.

Amnesty International has deplored the Iranian authorities denying Emadeddin Baghi the opportunity to personally accept an award he so richly deserves.

Sudanese President Omar al Bashir is expected in Istanbul, Turkey, this Sunday and Monday for a summit of the Organization of the Islamic Conference (OIC). Back in March, the International Criminal Court indicted al Bashir on counts of war crimes and crimes against humanity, which means al Bashir is a fugitive from international justice and that no countries should willingly host al Bashir without taking steps to arrest him and surrender him to the ICC in The Hague.

President Omar al Bashir is a fugitive from international justice, charged with responsibility for crimes against humanity and war crimes against men, women and children, including murder, rape, torture and forced displacement. It would be a disgrace for Turkey to offer him safe haven – Christopher Keith Hall, Senior Legal Advisor, Amnesty International.

According to the BBC, Turkish President Abdullah Gul has no intention of arresting al Bashir, even though the European Union has asked him to reconsider his invitation to al Bashir. Turkey may not have signed or ratified the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court, but it still has a duty under international law to arrest al Bashir and surrender him to the court in The Hague. 

Since his indictment in March, al Bashir has visited seven countries: Eritrea, Egypt, Libya, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Ethiopia and Zimbabwe. Due to pressure from the international community and civil society groups however, he was forced to cancel 2 recent trips to Uganda and Nigeria.

Take action now to urge the US government to support the ICC’s investigations in Darfur!

Juliette Rousselot wrote this blog post

While protesters have been occupying House Speaker Pelosi’s office, demanding a health care system that serves “Patients not Profit”, the House of Representatives is preparing to vote on the market-based health care bill introduced last week by Speaker Pelosi. It is not expected that the House leadership will allow a lengthy floor discussion, but the most recent news reports suggest that the promised vote on Rep. Anthony Weiner’s (D-NY) single payer amendment may be allowed. Meanwhile, Speaker Pelosi has presented the leadership’s additions to the bill in a so-called Manager’s Amendment, stating that this would strengthen provisions for “excluding insurers who put profits over patients from an affordable marketplace that will serve tens of millions of Americans.”

Does that mean the protesters demands have been met? Is this health care bill bringing us closer to realizing our human right to health care? Let’s recall that according to international legal standards, the human right to health requires that “health facilities, goods and services must be affordable for all. Payment for health-care services…has to be based on the principle of equity.”

The House bill aims to achieve affordability by subsidizing the purchase of an insurance policy for those earning between 150% and 400% of the federal poverty level, provided they don’t have employer-based insurance. In practice, this means someone with an income at the upper end of this scale would pay $5300 a year in premiums and up to $2000 a year in cost-sharing, amounting to around 17% of their income. At the bottom end of the scale, health care costs would be around 6-7% of a person’s income – which is still higher than a general income tax increase proposed by single payer health insurance bills.  Many immigrants would get no support at all, and anyone unable to afford such an insurance plan would be subject to a penalty payment, since everyone will be mandated to purchase insurance.  

Is this affordable? Maybe for some, but probably not for others. Is it equitable? Giving lower-income people greater subsidies seems like a reasonable starting point, yet even if those subsidies were sufficient, and even if everyone who needed them was eligible, it is not clear that this money would actually buy access to health care, as opposed to access to coverage.

Each person’s subsidy would go directly to an insurance company, which would continue to control an individual’s access to care, covering certain treatments but not others, allowing the visit to one doctor but not another, or denying claims altogether. Different groups of people would get different coverage and therefore different access to care, depending on their ability to pay. People would not get health care based solely on their health needs, but based on their income or wealth, age, and immigration status.

Let’s take the example of those without income, or extremely low incomes up to 150% of the poverty level. The House bill would expand the public Medicaid program to cover these groups, which is certainly a welcome measure. But is it enough to ensure access to care? Medicaid has comprehensive coverage benefits, often better than private insurance plans, yet it can be difficult for people to find a doctor who accepts Medicaid patients, since providers can make much more money treating privately insured patients. Once again, access to coverage doesn’t necessarily mean access to care. So why does the House bill favor a Medicaid expansion? Here’s the New York Times’ analysis: “This change saves money. It is less expensive for the federal government to cover low-income people under Medicaid than to provide them with subsidies to buy private insurance.”

So if it’s cheaper to pay the entire bill for a person’s comprehensive Medicaid benefits than to pay a percentage of another person’s more skimpy private coverage, then why don’t we all get Medicaid? Or Medicare, for that matter, which has higher reimbursement rates to doctors but remains much more cost-effective than private plans?

This is where the proposed market-based reform plan unravels: it is less affordable, less equitable, and more expensive than public health insurance programs. And Democrats know it, even Speaker Pelosi knows it. That’s why the Manager’s Amendment includes a pathetic attempt at reviewing – not capping – premiums charged by insurers in the federally regulated marketplace, the Exchange. But insurers have already threatened to increase premiums if Congress passes a version of the Democrats’ bill – because they can!  There’s nothing in the current bills to prevent them from increasing premiums at will, and taxpayer’s subsidies would have struggle to keep up with that, as growing cost concerns in Massachusetts demonstrate. So what about Pelosi’s last ditch effort to prevent insurers from putting “profits over patients”? It should come as no surprise to her that corporations are legally required to do just that: to make money for their shareholders by prioritizing profits over providing access to care. Indeed, the only way for insurers to stay in business is to avoid paying for health care whenever they can.

It is this market mandate to limit access to care that is the target of the “Patients not Profit” civil disobedience campaign, which has led to over a hundred arrests at sit-ins in front of insurance companies’ offices. The protesters find it unacceptable that reform efforts continue to treat health care as a commodity, not a right, and that this will result in, according to The LA Times, a bonanza for the insurance industry. No half-hearted regulatory mechanisms can address this. In fact, the only regulation that could trump the profit mandate and remove arbitrary restrictions to care would be public control of prices, coverage benefits and eligibility, and this would spell the end of for-profit and even not-for-profit market-based insurers as we know them.

Most reformers who are now trying to push this health reform effort over the finish line are well aware that leaving the market in control of our access to health care will not take us closer to realizing the human right to health care. In a recent interview, Drew Altman, President of the influential Kaiser Family Foundation, reflected on the United States’ obligation to guarantee everyone’s access to health care and concluded that this “is fundamentally about redistributing wealth in our country; that, ultimately, it means, as some of us who have to have more, have to pay, you know, a little bit more, so that others who have less can have health care.”

Such an equitable pooling of resources, which would enable us to establish a universal and unified health insurance program, requires a sense of social solidarity from all of us, a commitment to take care of everyone rather than jostling for the best position in an inherently unequal market that is artificially sustained by subsidies. This is what real democracy should be about.

A democratic society should protect everyone’s rights and dignity by meeting their fundamental needs. We can do this by “building institutions by people for the benefit of people” whose function it is to finance and administer education, health care, fire services, due process, etc. Such institutions cannot be for-profit corporations, which serve only private interests; rather, they must be publicly mandated to serve the common good. Public services such as schools, fire departments, and courts already strive to do this, and in all other industrialized democracies, health care too is financed and administered as a public good, just as Amnesty International USA has called for, in order to enable everyone to be as healthy as they can be.

In a healthy democracy, the protection of people’s rights should not depend on their income – the rich don’t get to vote twice, they can’t pay fire fighters to save their house but not their neighbor’s, and they can’t buy a visit to a doctor while others suffer from untreated illnesses. Or can they?

In today’s democracy, access to health care can be bought, and the proposed reform measures are not going to change that. This is in violation of basic human rights, according to which our fundamental needs must be met regardless of income and wealth.

But let’s suppose we were ready to agree on our responsibility to care about each other, the community we live in, and society as a whole. If we were ready to help meet each others’ needs and protect each other’s rights, we could express this solidarity through financing health care collectively. If we’re ready to do that, we could ask Speaker Pelosi and our representatives to drop the plan that forces us to buy an insurance product whose benefits and price we can’t control.  Instead, let’s focus in on an option that allow us to share contributions and benefits in a national health program that delivers health care not as a commodity, but as a public good.

Anja Rudiger is a Guest Contributor.

Dear Senator Graham,

Sometime tomorrow, Thursday, likely before noon, the Senate will probably vote on the Commerce, Justice, Science and Related Agencies Appropriations Act for Fiscal Year 2010 and on your proposed amendment to that act that would block Guantanamo detainees from having trials in US federal courts.

I urge you to drop your amendment. And I’ve called my Senators, Gillibrand and Schumer, and urged them to oppose it, using the script below. I’ve encouraged others to call their Senators too.

Why? Because I live in New York City. I’m watching the Yanks as I write this.

And I could see the Twin Towers from my living room. I saw the second Tower fall with my own eyes, from the corner of West Broadway and Canal. I want the people responsible brought to justice.

Instead we got 8 years of indefinite detention and military commissions at Guantanamo; 8 years of illegal detention at CIA “black sites”, Bagram and other US prisons in Afghanistan and Iraq; 8 years of murdered civilians; 8 years of the American torture program, and 8 years of impunity for these crimes.

And yet no one responsible for 9/11 has been brought to justice. No one.

Enough is enough. Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and other Guantanamo detainees accused of planning 9/11 should be brought to a fair federal trial in New York City, where those of us who lost friends and family and parts of our city can watch and finally after more than 8 years have some sense that justice is being served.

You, Cheney and Bush had your chance to ensure justice for 9/11. You failed. Miserably. Now, step aside and let us try a tried and true approach: fair trials.

Thanks,
Zeke Johnson
NYC

- – - – - – - – - – - – -

Please call your Senators as soon as possible!

We need you to call your Senators right now — before mid-morning tomorrow (Thursday, November 5th) — and tell them to oppose Senator Graham’s amendment! Essentially, Senator Graham’s amendment would tie President Obama’s hands in closing Guantanamo. We need real justice for acts of terrorism. And real justice requires a real court–a US federal court. Don’t let Senator Graham’s amendment block fair trials and keep Guantanamo open. We can win this fight–but we need you.

Please call right away. Some Senators will have a comment line to leave your message–others won’t and you’ll need to call back in the morning when they’re open. Please be persistent.

You can use our script below and look up the names and Washington DC phone numbers of your two Senators here:

http://www.amnestyusa.org/elected_officials

Dear Senator ___________,

My name is _________ and I live in _______________ (City/State).

I am calling to strongly urge you to oppose Senate Amendment 2669 (known as the Graham amendment) to the Commerce, Justice, Science and Related Agencies Appropriations Act for Fiscal Year 2010 . I believe that each Guantanamo detainee should either be charged and fairly tried in US federal court, or be released.

Thank you,

_____________.

Please let us know you called: email ctwj@aiusa.org.

Thank you for taking action for human rights!

Earlier today an Italian court convicted in absentia twenty-two CIA officers and a colonel in the US Air Force of charges relating to the February 2003 kidnapping of Muslim cleric Osama Moustafa Hassan Nasr aka Abu Omar.

Abu Omar was a victim of the extraordinary rendition program established by the Clinton administration and greatly expanded under President George W. Bush in the aftermath of the 9/11 attacks.

He was snatched off the street in Milan and flown secretly to Cairo where he was handed off to Egyptian security officials. Abu Omar was tortured extensively in Egyptian custody. He was finally released without charge in 2007.

The Italian decision is a graphic illustration of just how damaging practices such as kidnapping and torture are to America’s national security.

Armando Spataro, the deputy Milan public prosecutor, told reporters:

“This decision sends a clear message to all governments that even in the fight against terrorism you can’t forsake the basic rights of our democracies.”

Yet, the Obama administration has given no commitment to end the practice of extraordinary rendition. Indeed, the administration has asserted that this is an option that it plans to retain as part of its counterterrorism strategy.

This is a terrible mistake. Continuing these practices will inevitably have a chilling effect on other countries’ willingness to work with the United States until they can be sure that America will no longer operate as a rogue nation outside the law.

Two Italian intelligence officers were also convicted for their roles in the Abu Omar abduction and it is hard to imagine that this lesson has been lost on counterterrorism officials in other western countries.

These policies are toxic. We gain nothing but shame from them. There is no upside. Extraordinary rendition famously produced the false intelligence that linked Iraq to Al Qaeda and helped precipitate the rush to war in Iraq perhaps the biggest counterterrorism blunder of this, or any, decade.

The United States shouldn’t need a foreign court to distinguish right from wrong. The Obama administration must repudiate the unlawful practice of extraordinary rendition – and hold accountable those responsible for having put this system in place — or his administration will end up as tarnished as his predecessor’s.

Italy convicts Americans for C.I.A. renditions. BRENNAN LINSLEY/AFP/Getty Images

American courts and politicians have been reluctant to take a stand against the use of kidnapping and torture by American officials in the war on terror, but critics of those policies today received a stunning vote of support from an unexpected source – the Italian courts.

An Italian judge convicted a CIA station chief and 22 other Americans in the kidnapping of the 2003 Egyptian cleric from the streets of Milan.  The cleric, Osama Moustafa Hassan Nasr, known as Abu Omar, was seized and rendered to Egypt where he was allegedly tortured and held in detention without trial before his release nearly four years later. Abu Omar said he was tortured while held in secret detention in Egypt and that methods included alternating extremes of temperature and electric shocks to the genitals. There was no indication that the allegations were the subject of any investigation by the Egyptian authorities.

Supporters of American renditions insist that the policy is limited to actions against the most dangerous of the dangerous, but in fact the American kidnapping thwarted an Italian investigation into the cleric that might have resulted in criminal charges and a fair trial.  The fact that the Egyptians released the cleric after four years, despite that countries record of long-term administrative detention, simply underscores just how much of a loser the American policy is.

So now former CIA station chief Robert Seldon Lady and 22 Americans, all of whom were tried in absentia, are fugitives from Italian law.  The practical consequences of the Italian ruling are minimal, but the ruling sets a standard of truth and justice that American courts and politicians have yet to make.  For all the talk about moving forward, the extent of the illegal American practices, particularly involving rendition and torture, has still not been publicly disclosed.  If the Obama Administration doesn’t heed the call of the Italian courts and act, it may be that other nations are willing to do the job for us.

This posting is part of our Write-a-Thon Cases Series. For more information visit www.amnestyusa.org/writeathon/

Aung San Suu Kyi, © Chris Robinson

Democracy icon Aung San Suu Kyi has called for political change in Myanmar and has spent 14 of the last 20 years being punished for it. The military junta that has run the country since a 1962 coup has cracked down on political dissent, jailing thousands of reformists and activists. Aung San Suu Kyi, the primary face of the movement for democracy, has been kept under house arrest, unofficially detained, and subjected to other restrictions since the National League for Democracy (NLD), which she co-founded, won a 1990 general election. The NLD was immediately denied power by the ruling State Peace and Development Council.

Aung San Suu Kyi is one of Amnesty International’s 10 priority cases who you can help free by participating in our Global Write-a-thon running from December 5-13. She has most recently been placed under 18 months’ house arrest in August, a move that the international community has censured as a government pretext to prohibit her from participating in state elections scheduled for 2010.

Placing pressure on the Myanmar authorities to release Aung San Suu Kyi and allow the peaceful exercise of freedom of expression could be especially effective now.  Addressing Asian state leaders on Saturday, General Thein Sein, Myanmar’s prime minister, announced that the government would be open to including Aung San Suu Kyi in reconciliation processes before the elections. In addition, it may ease some restrictions on her movement if she “maintains a good attitude.” While initially encouraging, the ambiguity of Thein Sein’s words do not guarantee Aung San Suu Kyi’s freedom or involvement in the elections, and with your help, Amnesty International will campaign for her immediate release in our Global Write-a-thon.

By Michele Hong, AIUSA Campaign for Individuals at Risk

Ousted Honduran President Manuel Zelaya and de facto Honduran leader Roberto Micheletti reached an agreement on Thursday that involves sharing power for the remaining of Zelaya’s term. More from Democracy Now!:

…Roberto Micheletti, said the agreement would create a power-sharing government and require both sides to recognise the result of the November 29th presidential elections. It would also create a truth commission to investigate the events of the past few months.

Micheletti and Zelaya held talks separately on Thursday with Tom Shannon, the US assistant secretary of state, and Dan Restrepo, Washington’s special assistant for Western Hemisphere affairs. As the negotiations were underway Thursday, a rally by hundreds of pro-Zelaya protesters in Tegucigalpa was broken up by police who fired tear gas.

A few questions still remain about the agreement — Congress has to approve the agreement and some experts are worried about continued bitterness from Zelaya supporters who do not want a power sharing government.

I think the most important part of the deal is that it establishes a Truth Commission to look into abuses (on both sides) committed during the civil unrest during the days of the coup. Though details of the commission are not laid out yet, it is a very important first step to ending this crisis appropriately.

What do you think of the deal?

Israel is denying Palestinians their right to access to adequate water by using discriminatory and restrictive policies.

 Donatella Rovera, senior researcher on Israel and the Occupied Palestinian Territories said,

 “Israel allows the Palestinians access to only a fraction of the shared water resources, which lie mostly in the occupied West Bank, while the unlawful Israeli settlements there receive virtually unlimited supplies. In Gaza the Israeli blockade has made an already dire situation worse.”

The report, “Troubled Waters: Palestinians Denied Fair Access to Water,” says Israel uses more than 80 per cent of the water from the Mountain Aquifer, the main source of underground water in Israel and the OPT, while restricting Palestinian access to 20 per cent.  Israel takes all the water from the Jordan River,  the Palestinians get none.

In the Gaza Strip, 90 to 95 per cent of the water from its only water resource, the Coastal Aquifer, is contaminated and unfit for human consumption. Yet, Israel does not allow the transfer of water from the Mountain Aquifer in the West Bank to Gaza.  And because of the blockade on the Gaza Strip and the stringent restrictions imposed by Israel on the entry into Gaza of material and equipment necessary for the development and repair of infrastructure have caused further deterioration of the water and sanitation situation in Gaza, which has reached a crisis point.

A  12 page digest, “Thirsting for Justice: Palestinians access to water restricted” and the feature story of West Bank farmer,  Mahmoud al-’Alam,  about the day Israeli bulldozers came and destroyed his water supply and his livelihood can also be found on the Amnesty International website along with  the main report.

Aterciopelados at UN concert ©AI

The Colombian rock group Aterciopelados performed last week at the UN Day Concert: A Tribute to Peacekeeping, as they performed their hit song ‘The Price of Silence’ at the ceremony in New York this past Friday, October 23rd. The UN Day Concert event was put together by the non-profit organization, Culture Project to commemorate the anniversary of the United Nations charter, focusing on its most crucial purpose of peacekeeping. The event featured live music performances and documentary clips, appearances by the Aterciopelados, CNN’s Isha Sesay, Roberta Flack, Lang Lang, Harry Belafonte, , Angelique Kidjo, former child soldier Emmanuel Jal, and Sister Fa. UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon made an introductory statement at the event and then stayed for the show.

Aterciopelados were invited because of their contribution and participation with  Amnesty International campaigns, since late 2008. They participated in a collaborative performance with singers from all over the world for a human rights anthem ‘The price of silence’, inspired by an Aterciopelados song called “Protest Song” from their album Oye, Latin Grammy winner.