OTHER SAFE & FREE REPORTS Civil Liberties After 9-11: The ACLU Defends Insatiable Appetite: The Government's Bigger Monster, Weaker Chains: The Growth Freedom Under Fire: Dissent in Post-9/11 Independence Day 2003: Main Street America Seeking Truth From Justice: PATRIOT J. Edgar Hoover Tactics in the 21st Century: An ACLU Report ACLU AMERICAN CIVIL LIBERTIES UNION National Headquarters 125 Broad Street, 18th FL New York, NY 10004-2400 (212) 549-2500 Report 2005: Foreword By Irene Khan, Secretary General Page 2 of 5 be achieved without a firm commitment to equal respect for all human rights -economic, social and cultural as well as civil and political. The Indifference, apathy and impunity that allow violence against millions of women to persist is shocking. In countries around the world women suffer many forms of violence including genital mutilation, rape, beatings by partners, and killings in the name of honour. Thanks to the efforts of women's groups, there are now international treaties and mechanisms, laws and policies designed to protect women, but they fall still far short of what is required. In addition, there is a real danger of a backlash against women's human rights from conservative and fundamentalist elements. Women's human rights are not the only casualty of the assault on fundamental values that is shaking the human rights world. Nowhere has this been more damaging than in the efforts by the US administration to weaken the absolute ban on torture. In 1973 AI published its first report on torture. It found that: "torture thrives on secrecy and impunity. Torture rears its head when the legal barriers against it are barred. Torture feeds on discrimination and fear. Torture gains ground when official condemnation of it is less than absolute." The pictures of detainees in US custody in Abu Ghraib, Iraq, show that what was true 30 years ago remains true today. Despite the near-universal outrage generated by the photographs coming out of Abu Ghraib, and the evidence suggesting that such practices are being applied to other prisoners held by the USA in Afghanistan, Guantánamo and elsewhere, neither the US administration nor the US Congress has called for a full and independent investigation. Instead, the US government has gone to great lengths to restrict the application of the Geneva Conventions and to "re-define" torture. It has sought to justify the use of coercive interrogation techniques, the practice of holding "ghost detainees" (people in unacknowledged incommunicado detention) and the "rendering" or handing over of prisoners to third countries known to practise torture. The detention facility at Guantánamo Bay has become the gulag of our times, entrenching the practice of arbitrary and indefinite detention in violation of international law. Trials by military commissions have made a mockery of justice and due process. The USA, as the unrivalled political, military and economic hyper-power, sets the tone for governmental behaviour worldwide. When the most powerful country in the world thumbs its nose at the rule of law and human rights, it grants a licence to others to commit abuse with impunity and audacity. From Israel to Uzbekistan, Egypt to Nepal, governments have openly defied human rights and international humanitarian law in the name of national security and "counter-terrorism". Sixty years ago, out of the ashes of the Second World War, a new world order came International Law LATEST NEWS Web uplate: Close Guantanamo, disclose the rest Denounce Torture: Amnesty International launches campaign against torture in the war on terror Jun 23, 2005 More News » LATEST REPORTS Jeraoi/Occupied Territorion: Committee on the Elimination of Mare Reparts » |