[Peace-discuss] Anti-Terror Laws 'Mean US No Longer has Moral High Ground'

[patton paul]

Published on Tuesday, February 17, 2004 by the lndependent/UK
Anti-Terror Laws 'Mean US No Longer has Moral High Ground'
by Kim Sengupta


The United States' "war on terror" has been "extremely damaging" for human
rights, and has been used as an excuse by totalitarian regimes to impose
oppressive laws, a leading think tank said yesterday.


US national security officials have also been reported as using techniques
outlawed under the 1984 Convention Against Torture ... which the US signed
in 1994, in their interrogation of al- Qa'ida suspects. US authorities
have returned or sent a number of prisoners for further interrogation to
countries where there are strong grounds to suspect they will be tortured.

The International Institute for Strategic Studies (IISS), traditionally
viewed as an establishment body, concluded in a report that issues such as
Guantanamo Bay mean that Washington can no longer "assume a high moral
position".

Countries such as Pakistan and Uzbekistan have brought in so-called
anti-terrorist laws insisting that they are not much different to the
Patriot Act enacted by the Bush administration, said the report's author,
Professor Rosemary Foot.

The IISS compiled a dossier Iraq's alleged weapons of mass destruction
before the war. It said Saddam Hussein had stockpiles of chemical and
biological weapons, and would use them if attacked. Tony Blair's dossier,
which followed two weeks later in September 2002, drew heavily on the IISS
document.

Last month the IISS said it had commissioned a new study to reassess its
findings. Yesterday's report, ''Human Rights and Counter-terrorism in
America's Asia Policy", examined the effect of US support for human rights
in five countries seen as being in the front line against Islamic
terrorism - Pakistan, Uzbekistan, Indonesia, Malaysia, and China.

The report pointed out that following the attacks of 11 September 2001,
the US National Security Adviser, Condoleezza Rice, said: "Civil liberties
matter to this President very much, and our values matter to us abroad. We
are not going to stop talking about things that matter to us: human
rights, religious freedom ... We're going to continue to press these
things; we would not be America if we did not."

The report concluded: "US national security officials have also been
reported as using techniques outlawed under the 1984 Convention Against
Torture ... which the US signed in 1994, in their interrogation of al-
Qa'ida suspects. US authorities have returned or sent a number of
prisoners for further interrogation to countries where there are strong
grounds to suspect they will be tortured."

"It is ... important to note that the credibility of America's externally
directed human rights message has been damaged by US curtailment of the
rights of its own citizens and non-citizens."

 2004 Independent Digital (UK) Ltd