Amnesty International has released its 2005 report and it contains a damning indictment of the policies and actions of the Bush administration:
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”.
The report is silent concerning the US military’s wanton disregard for human life in Iraq, where thousands of non-comabatant Iraqis have died as "collateral damage". These killings have been justified as unfortunate incidents in either "the war on terror" or "the war for freedom" (depending on the White House’s flavor of the week).
You can read Amnesty International’s report on the United States here, and on Germany here.
