Human rights abuses echo the darkest days of history
The Universe
(June 25, 2006)
The suicide of three ‘enemy combatants’ at the US military prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, are all the more tragic and insidious because one of them was to be released but hadn't been told.
The European parliament has now called for its closure of the prison and human rights defenders have sought fair trials for the inmates.
All of us ought to be deeply concerned about what is going on in the name of democracy and freedom and we should never be afraid to speak out about what is wrong. We have to oppose all who try to justify the abuse of power.
Abuses of human rights by torture tactics are the tools of terrorists and no civilised society should stoop too imitating such tactics. The torturers themselves are demeaned in as much as their victims are dehumanised. Fighting terror with more terror makes for a terrorised world. It is morally wrong and a fruitless strategy.
The Guantanamo Bay prison camp is a grave embarrassment to the US administration. Can we ever forget the image of hooded prisoner at Abu Ghraib standing on a box wired for electrocution if he moved? Or the pictures of terrified prisoners stripped naked and set upon by attack dogs snarling and straining at the end of a leash?
Millions of good hearted and patriotic Americans - civilians, members of the intelligence services and even Congress - are angered by the bungling and arrogance which ignores their advice and guidance and tramples all over sacred principles clearly laid out in the bill of rights and the constitution.
European countries are implicated too in the torture and abduction of suspects denied their rights. The Council of Europe has published a report that provides evidence that governments in Germany, the UK, Poland, Romania, Italy and Sweden, violated human rights.
They are accused of acting in collusion with CIA abduction operations. They allowed CIA aircraft to land, refuel, and take off on their soil while carrying suspects to alleged torture camps in Romania and Poland and further afield in the Middle East. There they were allegedly tortured to extract information, most of it useless and inconsequential.
All the countries named have denied involvement but Dick Marty, the Swiss legislator who researched and prepared the report, claims: “Authorities in several European countries actively participated with the CIA in these unlawful activities. Other countries ignored them knowingly or did not want to know”.
So what now, torture camps in Romania and Poland? Are memories so short, principles so scarce, values so absent, love so dead, consciences so dulled and hearts so hardened that the spectre of prisoners being transported for imprisonment, torture and perhaps execution across Europe once again raises not a qualm? [End]
