January 23, 2003	Thursday	Ziqa’ad 19, 1423

LONDON, Jan 22: The head of Amnesty International said on Wednesday governments around the world had seized on the “struggle against terror” as an excuse for domestic repression.

Irene Khan, secretary-general of the London-based group, said in an interview that respect for human rights had eroded since the Sept 11, 2001, attacks in US cities.

“We see this in Western countries, in the United States, in European countries.

“But what we also see around the world now is many countries which had very repressive policies, or which had a record of serious human rights abuses, now justifying those abuses in the name of the fight against terror,” she said.

“What Amnesty is concerned about is the way in which fundamental human rights, the right to stand trial, the right not to be detained arbitrarily and the right not to be tortured...are now being questioned or watered down in a very disturbing way without any scrutiny, without any check.”

Security and human rights were not opposing aims, she said. “In the end security is about keeping rights safe.”

Irene Khan expressed concern about a recent Washington Post report quoting US intelligence officers as saying they had used “stress and duress” methods to extract information from suspects. The techniques included sleep deprivation, hooding and forcing prisoners to hold awkward positions for hours.

“(The ban on) torture is one of those fundamental rights that you do not curtail regardless of the state of emergency, even in wartime,” she said.

DUBIOUS EXTRADITIONS: US officials were quoted in the Post as saying they had handed over prisoners to countries such as Egypt, Jordan and Morocco with a reputation for violent interrogation, and had sometimes supplied questions for the interrogators to ask.

“People are being returned to the risk of torture by governments that know that they cannot themselves commit those acts on their own territory,” the Amnesty official said.

“In a sense it’s a slide downwards towards the very terror that they want to prevent.”

She said the debate over whether to go to war over Iraq’s alleged weapons of mass destruction must focus on protecting Iraqi civilians, whose rights had been violated under President Saddam Hussein’s government for decades and who had suffered deprivation under UN sanctions since 1991.

She said diplomatic pressure and international monitoring would be more effective than sanctions or military action when it came to tackling Iraq’s human rights record.

“There has been discussion about weapons inspectors, but no discussion about human rights inspectors,” she said.

Amnesty has accused the United States and Britain of citing its reports selectively to bolster their case for war on Iraq.

“Way back in 1988 when the Halabja gassing of the Kurds took place, we produced reports which the US government ignored and refused to accept at that time because Saddam was then an ally against Iran,” Irene Khan said.

She argued that any war on Iraq could aggravate human rights abuses in the Middle East.

“Throughout the Middle East, whether we’re talking about Egypt or Israel or other states, they have seen the so-called war against terrorism as a licence to continue committing human rights abuse with impunity,” she declared.—Reuters