Rendition, rendition.
Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper travels to Washington this week for a mini love fest with George W. Bush. A meeting of conservative minds... so beautiful. Business-like, we're told. [Edit: Word on the street is that PMSH's birthday pressie for POTUS is a Calgary Stampede belt-buckle and an RCMP stetson. Lucky.]
Guess what won't be on the agenda? Human rights. Rendition. The UN Human Rights Council. Why? Because human rights are not part of the Harper agenda. PMSH is keen to advocate foster parents for pets very prominantly on the PM's official website, but human rights? Nowhere to be seen anywhere in his agenda. Well, actually it was, for one brief moment: Peter Mackay's "I think I can" press release regarding Tehran's Chief Prosecutor at the first meeting of the UN Human Rights Council.
Do it for Stephen: adopt a pet.
While I was travelling in May, Amnesty International released their annual report of the state of human rights throughout the world in 2005. In the report, the United States' rendition program [referred to by some as "outsourcing torture"] received severe criticisms.
Hypocrisy and a disregard for basic human rights principles and international legal obligations continued to mark the USA’s “war on terror”.
Thousands of detainees remained held without charge in US custody in Iraq, Afghanistan, GuantE1namo Bay in Cuba, and in secret detention centres known as “black sites” believed to exist in Europe, North Africa and elsewhere. Torture and other ill-treatment continued to be reported and further evidence emerged that the US authorities “outsourced” torture by means including “rendition” — the transfer of individuals to another country without any form of judicial or administrative process, sometimes in secret.
Around 500 detainees remained in Guantanamo Bay, where they were held in conditions amounting to cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment and continued to be denied their right to challenge the lawfulness of their detention.
Despite mounting evidence that the US government had sanctioned "disappearances” as well as interrogation techniques constituting torture or other ill-treatment, there was a failure to hold officials at the highest levels accountable, including individuals who may have been responsible for war crimes and crimes against humanity.
US “war on terror” policies that undermined human rights standards were challenged during 2005. Legislation was passed prohibiting the torture and inhumane treatment of detainees anywhere in the world, despite initial objections from the Bush administration that the prohibition would hamper its ability to obtain information from detainees. However, the bill also severely limited the GuantE1namo detainees’ access to federal courts and called into question the future of some 200 pending cases in which detainees had challenged the legality of their detention.
The USA increased its military assistance programme in Colombia despite continued evidence of grave human rights violations by military personnel and paramilitary groups operating with their active or tacit support.
Americas Summary - Amnesty International Annual Report 2006
Continuing with rendition, the Maher Arar Inquiry Report is expected to be released by the end of the northern summer.
Who is Maher Arar? A Canadian victim of rendition.
Outsourcing of terror? You decide:
"[Mr. Arar] had been held in the Metropolitan Detention Centre in manhattan for eleven days (September 27th to October 7th), being interrogated. He was initially denied access to a lawyer, and had little food or sleep. His request to pray during the interrogation sessions had also been denied. His interrorgators had insulted him and used "bad words", which he found deeply upsetting. At 3:00 am one morning, he was awakened and told that the Director of the US Immigation and Naturalization Service had ordered that Mr. Arar be sent, not to Canada, as he says that he constantly requested, but to Syria. He told me that at this moment he began to cry and immediately said that he would be tortured. He felt "destroyed".
....
George brought with him into the room a black cable, which might have been a shredded electrical cable. It was about two feet long. It was probably made of rubber, but was not hollow... George told Mr. Arar to open his right hand. George then raised the cable high and brought it down hard...
Sometimes he was blindfolded and left to stand in the hallway for an hour or more. The screaming continued. It is notable that the only time Mr. Arar completely broke down while I was interviewing him was when he described the screams of women being beaten and the cries of the abbies that some of the women had with them in the detention centre.
....
Day three, October 11, 2002, was the most "intensive for mr. Arar. He was questioned for sixteen to eighteen hours, with great physical and psychological abuse. The questions focussed in part on Mr. Almalki. Mr. Arar was beaten with the black cable on numerous occasions throughout the day, and threatened with electric shocks, "the chair" and "the tire". The pattern was for Mr. Arar to receive three or four lashes with the cable, then to be questioned, and then for the beating to begin again. After a while, he became so weak that he was disoriented.
....
Mr. Arar describes a similar reaction to that of Mr. Almalki. Over time, as the beatings became less intense, it was the daily horror of living in the tiny, dark and damp cell all alone and with no reading material (except later, the Koran) that came to be the most disturbing aspect of the detention. Whereas at first the cell was a refuge from the infliction of physical pain, later it became a "torture" in its own right. Mr. Arar describes nights alone in his cell where he could not sleep on the cold concrete floor. He had to turn every fifteen minutes or so. He was constantly thinking of his family, and worried about their safety. He was "bombarded by memories". He remained in this cell for ten months, ten days, and saw almost no sunlight except for when he was transferred for consular visits. His first visit to the courtyard of the prison did not take place until April 2003. Mr. Arar describes the cell as "a grave" and as a "slow death".
Arar Commission Factual Inquiry, Report of Professor Stephen J Toope, Fact Finder
posted by Carla @ 5:15 AM
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