Hundreds of thousands of people displaced by the recent war in North Eastern Sri Lanka live now in camps and are being denied basic human rights. In response to this crisis we just launched the Unlock the Camps campaign, in which we urge the Sri Lankan government to allow freedom of movement and the installment of a civilian administration of the military run internment camps. We further call on the Government of India to monitor the aid pledged to the Sri Lankan government. As part of the Unlock the Camps campaign we have developed a Facebook Crisis Application, and produced a new Briefing Paper.

Two months after the end of the fighting, the Sri Lankan authorities are still not addressing properly the needs of the newly displaced. The camps are overcrowded and unsanitary. In addition, these are effectively detention camps. They are run by the military and the camp residents are prevented from leaving them; they are denied basic legal safeguards. The government’s claim that it needs to hold people to carry out screening is not a justifiable reason to detain civilians including entire families, the elderly and children, for an indefinite period.

Displaced people have even been prevented from talking to aid workers. With no independent monitors able to freely visit the camps, many people are unprotected and at risk from enforced disappearances, abductions, arbitrary arrest and sexual violence.

According to government figures, the fighting between the Sri Lankan army and the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) displaced over 409,000 people. At least 280,000 are displaced from areas previously under LTTE control. A dramatic influx of people fleeing the fighting and crossing to government controlled areas took place from March 2009. The displaced people, including at least 50,000 children, are being accommodated in 41 camps spread over four districts. The majority of the displaced are in Vavuniya District where Menik Farm is the biggest camp.

When United Nations Secretary General Ban Ki-moon visited some of the camps in May, he said:

I have travelled around the world and visited similar places, but this is by far the most appalling scene I have seen.

While some progress had been made on providing basic needs, much still needs to be done on the right to health, food, water, family reunion and access to relatives. We continue to urge the government of Sri Lanka:

• to end restrictions on liberty and freedom of movement
• to ensure that camps are of a truly civilian nature and administered by civilian authorities, rather than under military supervisions
• give immediate and full access to national and international organizations and observers, including aid agencies, in order to monitor the situation and provide a safeguard against human rights violations.

Trapped in de-facto detention camps

The Sri Lankan government said on 21 May that the displaced will be resettled in 180 days. But very few have so far been allowed to return to their homes or to join friends or family elsewhere, and people remaining in the camps are not at liberty to leave camp premises. The Sri Lankan government must end its policy of forcibly confining people to camps, which amounts to arbitrary detention.  The Sri Lankan government must allow persons who require temporary shelter in these facilities to come and go freely.

With assistance and support from the international community and the involvement of displaced people themselves, the Sri Lankan government must set up clear benchmarks and timelines to ensure that displaced people can safely return home or find other durable solutions (such as relocation) as soon as possible.

We’re happy to bring you some good news in the case of lawyer and human rights activist Shadi Sadr.

We’ve all watched with dismay during that last 2 months as Iran has cracked down on hundreds of thousands of people who have poured into the streets to protest the contested results of June’s presidential election. Behind the scenes, Iranian authorities have conducted a campaign to silence dissident voices — like human rights lawyer Abdolfattah Soltani — through arbitrary arrests and detention.

It was as part of this campaign that Shadi Sadr was detained last month. On July 17, Sadr was walking on a road in Tehran when men in civilian clothes grabbed her and attempted to push her into a car. Sadr lost her headscarf and coat in the ensuing struggle but managed briefly to escape. She was quickly recaptured and beaten with batons, and then taken away in the car.

We are relieved to report that after more than a week in custody, Sadr was released on bail, thanks in part to appeals from Amnesty activists worldwide. Amnesty International is monitoring her situation and will issue further updates as they become available.

The Iranian authorities have announced they have released 140 prisoners from Evin Prison in northern Tehran, reports Reuters. Parliament official Kazem Jalali says that 150 prisoners, arrested during the uprising after the June 12th Presidential election, still remain behind bars.

Ayatollah Khamenei has also ordered the closure of a detainment center in Kahrizak after it failed to “preserve the rights of detainees”. Whether the prisoners in that prison were released or transferred elsewhere remains to be seen.

Iranian plain clothes policemen beat a demonstrator (c)AFP/Getty

We are glued to news coming out of Iran, literally watching as history is unfolding. Commentators have been grasping for relevant comparisons; is this another Tiananmen Square? Another Prague Spring? Or is it even a Second Iranian Revolution? But no comparisons are appropriate for the phenomenal outpouring of people demanding that their rights be respected.

Why is this happening in Iran? We don’t see massive protests in other Middle Eastern countries such as Egypt when there have been allegations of electoral impropriety.

Adjectives such as fearless, indomitable and awe-inspiring come to mind as we see Iranians continually defying bans on opposition protests to pour into the streets by the hundreds of thousands. They constantly find ingenious ways to confound the authorities’ attempts to block communications; now that foreign journalists have been prevented from covering rallies, we rely on the videos, photos and eyewitness accounts provided by Iranian citizens to YouTube and their friends and relatives for up-to-the-minute information.

Iranians express their defiance in a variety of other ways: women have been risking their safety and even their lives to walk up to Basij (paramilitaries) and riot police on motorcycles and armed with truncheons to remind them that “we are all Iranians” and asking them to refrain from violence. Even members of Iran’s soccer team playing in a World Cup qualifying match in Seoul wore green armbands, the color of the opposition candidate Mir Hossein Mousavi.

The yearning for freedom and human rights is a mighty force. Some have claimed that human rights is somehow a “western” concept, foisted on the rest of the world by paternalistic and arrogant Europeans and North Americans. Yet despite Iranian authorities’ attempts to portray the protests as being somehow the result of American “interference” it is clear that the impetus for the massive protests comes from the Iranian people themselves.

What will happen? Already the Supreme Leader has made an unprecedented announcement that there will be an investigation into the allegations of election fraud. Another massive rally by supporters of Mr. Mousavi has been called for tomorrow and there is no way to predict where events will lead.

The authorities have reacted to the unrest by use of force—sometimes lethal—as well as by mass arrests of opposition figures, journalists and human rights lawyers. We hope they will not unleash the full fury of the Revolutionary Guards against the demonstrators, which could result in unthinkable deaths and injuries. But we do know that there is no turning back. The Iranian authorities cannot count on the hope that things will just settle down and that the Iranian people will continue to accept the massive human rights violations perpetrated on them.

(Originally posted in the Bell Gardens Sun)

Coming to the United States was a “dream come true” for Deda Makaj. Now 42, Deda fled Albania 20 years ago after enduring five years in a hard labor camp, the culmination of years of persecution he and his family suffered due to their anti-communist beliefs. He escaped to Greece in 1992 and, with the help of a charity in Athens, made it to California, where he was granted refugee protection and became a lawful permanent resident.

Over the next five years, he cobbled together his American dream, beginning with a minimum-wage job and eventually buying a dollar store. He met his wife Nadia, a refugee from Afghanistan, and they had three children.

Then a combination of bad luck and naïveté tore Deda’s American dream apart. He unwittingly bought a stolen car, and he falsified his income on a home loan application upon the encouragement of his loan officer. After serving 16 months in jail for his crimes, he was immediately placed in immigration detention in Arizona. There, he spent the next four years fighting deportation until he was finally released on bond late last year.

Deda bore witness to the human rights catastrophe that is the U.S. immigration detention system: immigrants imprisoned for months before getting a hearing and sometimes years before a decision; abuse from criminal prisoners; suicides. By the time Deda was released, his business had failed.

Amnesty International’s recent report, Jailed Without Justice, details the U.S. immigration detention system, a purgatory of legal limbo where the core American value of due process does not apply. On any given night, Immigrations and Customs Enforcement (ICE) warehouses more than 30,000 immigrants in prisons and jails—a number that has tripled in the past 12 years. Among them, surely, are immigrants who have committed deportable offenses or are undocumented—but the jailed also include large numbers of legal permanent residents, individuals seeking protection from political or religious persecution, survivors of torture and human trafficking, U.S. citizens mistakenly ensnared in immigration raids, and parents of U.S. citizen children.

Investigative news reports have exposed a litany of human rights abuses in the detention facilities, including physical violence, the use of restraints, and substandard medical care. While in detention, immigrants and asylum seekers are often unable to obtain the legal assistance necessary to prepare viable claims for adversarial and complex court proceedings. Sometimes they cannot even make a simple phone call to obtain documents that would prove they should go free. Some immigrants become so desperate at the prospect of indefinite detention that they agree to deportation despite valid claims.

Amnesty International has launched a campaign to pressure our government to honor its human rights obligations. Legislation is needed so that detention is used only as a measure of last resort, after non-custodial measures, such as reporting requirements or reasonable bond, have failed. Lawmakers who fear anti-immigrant backlash might consider the secondary benefits to honoring our moral imperative: the average cost of detaining a migrant is $95 per person/per day, while alternatives to detention cost as little as $12 per person/per day and yield up to a 99 percent success rate, according to ICE, as measured by immigrants’ appearance in immigration courts for removal hearings.

Congress should also pass legislation to ensure due process for all within our borders, including the right to a prompt individualized hearing before an immigration judge. Currently, ICE field office directors have the power to decide whether to detain someone; yet to incarcerate an individual for months, or even years, before a court makes a judgment on the individual’s case is an absurd negation of our nation’s stated commitment to the rule of law.

Finally, the U.S. government must adopt enforceable human rights standards in all detention facilities that house immigrants. These standards can only be overseen and enforced by an independent body that has the power to hold ICE accountable.

For more than a decade, the federal government has underwritten the unchecked expansion of ICE’s power. The result is a detention system riddled with inconsistencies, errors and widespread human rights violations. Tens of thousands of lives hang in the balance. The time has come for the U.S. government to apply the rule of law to those within its own borders.

Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas

President Barack Obama is slated to meet with Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas today, to discuss what Press Secretary Robert Gibbs calls “ways the United States can strengthen and deepen our partnerships.”

Abbas has already stated that he plans to focus his discussion with Obama on continuous settlement expansion in the West Bank, but has also noted he believes there is a real chance at comprehensive peace in the region.

Amnesty International USA has sent a letter to President Obama asking that he raise some concerns of his own—namely human rights violations by members of the Palestinian Authority (PA) in areas under PA control.  Arbitrary detentions, disregard for due process and ill-treatment and torture of detainees in PA detention centers continue to be reported.  Additionally, the Al Al Aqsa Martyrs Brigade in Gaza, the armed wing of the Fatah party led by President Abbas, have also been linked to indiscriminate rocket fire into southern Israel which violates the rules of war.

President Obama should raise these concerns as the atmosphere of impunity and continued human rights violations by the PA reflects badly on U.S. personnel and resources assigned to train PA security forces, undermines confidence in rule of law and hinders any progress in peace negotiations.

Samah Choudhury contributed to this post

Electoral Map of Lebanon

Lebanon is due to hold its national elections in about two weeks on June 7th. This is a unique opportunity for the country’s political leaders to commit themselves and their parties to introducing long-needed human rights reforms.

There are five key areas that the new government elected on June 7th should focus on for reform: creation of a Special Tribunal for Lebanon within the justice system, an end to arbitrary detention and torture, addressing the impunity of past human rights abuses, ending discrimination and violence against women and other marginalized groups, and abolition of the death penalty. You can find out more details on these key reform issues here.

To date, there have been several positive human rights advances in Lebanon, including the Parliament’s drafting of a Human Rights Action Plan. Candidates should embrace these developments and take advantage of this opportunity to implement a clear, comprehensive human rights agenda should they be elected into office.

To learn more about the candidates and the election, click here.

Samah Choudhury contributed to this post

(As originally posted on Daily Kos)

100 days have come and gone with all the accompanying media hoopla but it increasingly seems like President Obama’s first 24 hours represented the high water mark of his commitment to rolling back the human rights abuses committed by the Bush administration.

The past week has seen still further blows to campaigners’ hopes that the Obama administration would place traditional American values of accountability and the rule of law at the heart of their response to the ongoing terrorist threat.

Leaks from the Department of Justice suggest that former Bush administration lawyers Jay Bybee, John Yoo and Steven Bradbury are unlikely to face significant disciplinary action – let alone criminal charges – for their role in designing the coercive interrogation practices introduced to military and CIA detention facilities around the world in the wake of the September 11th attacks.

These latter day Tom Hagen’s were asked by the White House to cloak the Bush administration’s illegal innovation in a mantle of legitimacy. In doing so, they were not acting in good faith. Rather, like Michael Corleone’s tame lawyer, they were actively engaged in a criminal conspiracy to circumvent U.S. law.

I have been baffled by the argument that criminal charges would produce a chilling effect on lawyers asked to provide legal advice to the executive. Is this really such a bad thing? The whole point of having in-house legal counsels is to make sure the government stays within the boundaries of the law. Government lawyers should be cautious.

Also worrying are fresh leaks from inside the administration that suggest the President is seriously considering reactivating the Military Commissions put on hold when he came into office. These are the same Commissions that the President denounced on the campaign trail as “an enormous failure.”

Should the President decide to abandon a campaign pledge to “reject” the Military Commissions Act, he will be breathing life into a court system with the fewest rights for suspects of any court in the western world. His first instinct was right – we should not bastardize our judicial system to accommodate illegal practices that should have never been countenanced in the first place.

This morning John McCain and Lindsay Graham published an op-ed piece in the Wall Street Journal in which they note that 1 in 10 of the individuals released from Guantanamo have returned to the battlefield. This also means that 9 out of 10 have not.

The detainees in Guantanamo were supposed to be the worst of the worst but it turns out that 9 times out of 10 our intelligence professionals got the wrong man. The Military Commissions will take the assertions of these same professionals at face value and accord them the weight of evidence.

If the Military Commissions are reinstated we can look forward to many more miscarriages of justice. If you think this is a price worth paying for greater security, consider the damage that the cases of the Guilford Four and Birmingham Six did to the reputation of British justice.

The Obama administration is posed to go down a path that will repeat many of the mistakes of the past eight years. This is a time for moral courage not moral compromise. We can do better and we need to make sure that this White House hears that message.

In his May 1 statement in honor of World Press Freedom Day, President Obama singled out for recognition a few journalists unjustly imprisoned for their work:

In every corner of the globe, there are journalists in jail or being actively harassed:  from Azerbaijan to Zimbabwe, Burma to Uzbekistan, Cuba to Eritrea.  Emblematic examples of this distressing reality are figures like J.S. Tissainayagam in Sri Lanka, or Shi Tao and Hu Jia in China.

Tissainayagam remains in prison today, solely for the “crime”  of being a journalist.  Please write to the Sri Lankan government today and ask that he be released immediately and all charges against him dropped.

Fathi el-Jahmi © Private

Earlier this month, prisoner of conscience Fathi el-Jahmi turned another year older inside prison walls in Libya. He was arrested in 2002 after calling for political reform and free speech at a conference in Tripoli, and sentenced to five years’ imprisonment. Due to international support, he was released early in March 2004. Unfortunately, only weeks later, after repeating his call for democracy and political reform, he was detained yet again and has been in prison ever since. He suffers from heart disease, high blood pressure, and diabetes, and his health continues to deteriorate.

There’s a letter circulating in Congress right now, sponsored by Congressmen Frank Wolf and Mark Kirk, calling on the Libyan government to immediately release Fathi el-Jahmi and allow him to pursue medical care outside of Libya, according to his wishes. This letter really is our best chance at influencing the Lybian government, and Fathi el-Jahmi’s best chance at living to see another birthday—but so far not enough Members of Congress have signed on. Please take action!