Tag Archives: reparations for victims

Time for a Full Court Press on Human Rights in Myanmar (Burma)

November 15, 2012 at 12:38 PM

US President Barack Obama sits near Myanmar President Thein Sein as they participate in the US-Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) meeting in 2011. Photo credit: SAUL LOEB/AFP/Getty Images

On the eve of President Obama’s historic visit to Myanmar (Burma), the first ever by a U.S. President, his host, President Thein Sein, has released 450 prisoners, a move surely calculated to curry favor with the United States. A smaller amnesty announced in September, just before the UN General Assembly convened, included about 60 political prisoners.

It remains to be seen whether any of an estimated 300 remaining political prisoners will be scattered among the latest batch of parolees. Nonetheless, the prisoner release is, by any measurement, an encouraging step. It says something important about the power and influence of the United States, and the desire of the new government of Myanmar to kiss up to President Obama and bask in the economic possibilities of a post-sanctions environment.

SEE THE REST OF THIS POST

A Diminished Force for Good

March 21, 2012 at 12:27 PM
president obama sri lanka speech

Photo: Tim Sloan/AFP/Getty Images

On Tuesday the United States sponsored a resolution at United Nations Human Rights Council calling on Sri Lanka to investigate alleged human rights abuses that occurred in the final days of the country’s struggle with the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE).

A United Nations Panel of Experts has estimated that as many as 40,000 civilians may have been killed in the final stages of the conflict as the Sri Lankan Army overran the last few pockets of LTTE opposition.

As Amnesty’s recent report Locked Away: Sri Lanka’s security detainees makes clear, there are good reasons to believe that human rights abuses still continue to this day. Instances of arbitrary and illegal detention have been widely reported, as have acts of torture and extrajudicial execution.

SEE THE REST OF THIS POST

One of Guantanamo's Forgotten Prisoners

November 8, 2011 at 9:45 AM
Shaker Aamer protest in London

Shaker Aamer was cleared for release by the Bush administration in 2007. (Photo by Leon Neal/AFP/Getty Images)

Shaker Aamer, a former UK resident of Saudi descent, has been held without charge at the US detention center at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, for nearly 10 years. He was cleared for release by the Bush administration in 2007 but is still inexplicably incarcerated more than four years later.

Shaker was detained by irregular Afghan forces in Jalalabad in December 2001, shortly after the beginning of Operation Enduring Freedom. By his own account he had been in Afghanistan working for a Saudi charity and no compelling evidence refuting this contention has been presented.

SEE THE REST OF THIS POST

Dudley Do-Wrong

October 26, 2011 at 1:28 PM
Protest Bush Canada

Activists protest former President Bush's visit to Canada

Last week former President George W. Bush visited British Columbia, Canada, to give a speech at the Surrey Regional Economic Summit. He was reportedly paid $150,000 for his appearance.

Setting aside the fact that the Bush administration had much the same effect on America’s economy that the iceberg had on the Titanic, there is another good reason why President Bush was a very poor choice of speaker.

As President of the United States, George Bush ordered the torture of detainees in US custody.

SEE THE REST OF THIS POST

The Winter of Human Rights

June 24, 2011 at 6:55 PM

By Elaine Scarry, Professor of English and American Literature at Harvard University and author of “The Body in Pain” and the recently published “Thinking in an Emergency,” part of the Amnesty International Global Ethics Series

Early on the morning of December 9, 2008, I flew from Boston to New York City to be present at the U.S. Court of Appeals Second Circuit’s rehearing of Arar v. Ashcroft.  The trial was scheduled for 2:00 p.m., but anticipating the courtroom would be packed, I felt it would be prudent to arrive by 8:30 a.m.

Maher Arar

From Amnesty USA's infographic on the Maher Arar case, taken from photo by © Bud Schultz.

Six months earlier a Second Circuit panel of three judges had declined to hear Maher Arar’s claims on the grounds – put forward by Mr.Ashcroft’s defense – that doing so would jeopardize national security. Then suddenly, out of the blue, this very same court – but  this time the full panel of 12 judges – had decided en banc and sua sponte (collectively and on its own) to reconsider the case.

SEE THE REST OF THIS POST

Guantánamo’s Children: The Wikileaked Testimonies

June 10, 2011 at 11:50 AM

By Almerindo E. Ojeda of The Guantánamo Testimonials Project

The Guantanamo detention facility at sunrise, January 7, 2011.

A couple of months ago, the transparency organization Wikileaks began to release Detainee Assessment Briefs and other classified documents for all 779 Guantánamo prisoners.

As a consequence of these wikileaked releases, military documents now in the public domain acknowledge that fifteen children were imprisoned, at some time or another, at Guantánamo.

This would be three more than the twelve the State Department acknowledged to the public after the earlier report on the subject put out by the Guantánamo Testimonials Project, and seven more than the eight the State Department reported to the UN Committee on the Rights of the Child.

SEE THE REST OF THIS POST

Doubling Down On Failure At Guantanamo

April 27, 2011 at 12:51 PM

There are still 172 detainees held at the Guantánamo Bay detention centre © Amnesty International

Released just as President Obama seems to have washed his hands of closing Guantanamo, a new batch of leaked government documents provide fresh insight into just how inadequate, iniquitous and ultimately counterproductive, the US foray into indefinite detention has been.

The new document cache consists of Detainee Assessment Briefs (DABs) – essentially case summaries – produced by intelligence analysts at Guantanamo between 2002 and 2009 that were first leaked to Wikileaks and then by someone in the Wikileaks community to the press.

The picture of Guantanamo that emerges from these new documents is of an arbitrary review process, operating from a presumption of guilt not innocence, thrown together on the fly, and overseen by individuals with so little understanding of cultural nuance that they might as well have been drafted in from Mars.

The New York Times points out that the qualification “possibly” appears 387 times about intelligence used in the files, with the qualifiers “unknown” and “deceptive” appearing 188 times and 85 times respectively. Further proof that the intelligence business is anything but a precise science.

SEE THE REST OF THIS POST