Jeremy Corbyn
Human Rights
Yesterday a US military defender appeared on the BBC TV Breakfast show to condemn the Military hearings for Guantanamo Detainees as a “Show Trial”. He pointed out that his defendant had three possible outcomes; guilty, innocent or mis-trial. For the unfortunate accused person the result is the same. Whatever decision is reached by the tribunal he will remain in detention in Guantanamo Bay.
Tomorrow the House of Commons will debate the Foreign Office official Human Rights Report on the situation world-wide and the British Government’s response.
The concept of the report and its contents are a throw-back to the heady days of 1997 when the then new Foreign Secretary, the late Robin Cook, outlined his plans for foreign policy “with an ethical dimension”. This was always bitterly resented by some of the mandarins in the Foreign and Commonwealth Office. It started to founder with the Downing Street inspired policy of selling arms to Indonesia. It finally lost any fig leaf of credibility with the invasion of Iraq in 2003.
In the past week alone we have had reports of the killing of a family enjoying a day on the beach in Gaza, deaths of Afghans and a British soldier in southern Afghanistan, deaths of immigrants in Mexico.
Media obsession with Wayne Rooney’s foot and the drunken antics of football supporters in Germany has anaesthetised us to the many other (unreported) disasters around the world such as the continuing deaths of African migrants trying to reach the Canary Islands.
However the Government’s of Europe showed a commendable sense of timing and coordination of news management to collectively rubbish the Marty Report on the (secret) CIA flights over Europe taking (unknown) suspects for questioning from airports outside Europe to strange destinations to be questioned in a place where international conventions do not apply.
Later this month the new United Nations Human Rights Council will go into session in Geneva and discuss its mode of operation. Whilst the old Human Rights Commission was undoubtedly cumbersome in its workings it did appoint rapparteurs on continuing Human Rights violations such as the treatment of the Palestinians and one of its former High Commissioners, Mary Robinson was the subject of US led vilification.
Until the Human Rights Council announces its methods of working and the possible five yearly reviews of every member state’s internal human rights record those who are serious about International Law and Human Rights should be cautious.
Explicit in the UN Charter and the Human Rights Declaration is the role of non state actors, (civil society), in the work of the Human Rights Commission. As of now it is far from clear what role they will play in the new Human Rights Council.
It is essential that civil society be represented so that the treatment of Dalit Peoples, indigenous minorities, women groups and, for example, bonded labour, is represented in Geneva.
The past experience has not always been a happy one with continual efforts by Governments to reduce contribution times of specific groups to as little a three minutes and often forcing the long suffering voluntary groups to speak late at night to an almost empty conference chamber. However the importance of a civil group being able to publicly challenge their Government cannot be under-estimated. This has been effective for Colombian rural groups, Dalit peoples and groups such as the Chagos Islanders.
The European Union member states for some curious reason is represented collectively at Geneva by the Presidency thus it is made more difficult to criticise individual states all of whom have individual legal systems.
The UK Government has been criticised in the past and deserves to be for the treatment of asylum seekers and the whole trend of Anti Terrorist legislation which is in breach of the Human Rights Act and derogations have been sought on this.
The US is quite rightly condemned for Guantanamo Bay but the UK should also be condemned for the treatment of defendants in Belmarsh and the Special Immigration Appeals Courts where he defendant is denied knowledge of the charge against them.
The Marty Report to the all nation Council of Europe on Extraordinary Rendition flights makes salutary reading. In ninety six pages the Swiss Parliamentarian outlines the way in which fourteen European countries colluded in the transfer of suspects by the USA.
His conclusions in this well researched report should send a shiver down the spines of all European Interior Ministers who are accustomed to defending the moral superiority of European justice systems.
The twelve concluding points of Marty’s report is that a ‘spider’s web’ has been spun across the globe by CIA flights.
He concludes that two per cent of all flights by the CIA cause him concern and that in the case of Poland and Romania landing points remain unexplained and could well be the place for illegal detentions. In the absence of satisfactory explanations from member states the allegation must be taken very seriously.
Marty also points out that whilst the report is addressed to European member states it is the USA that has created this “reprehensible network” and that European countries have been either intentional or grossly negligent in their collusion.
He does not spare blushes; when the news of the rendition flights first appeared some European leaders hinted that they were victims of CIA plots. He quite bluntly points out that this does not correspond with reality.
The report is not the basis for prosecution but quite clearly but holds the member states responsible for “failing to comply with the positive obligations to diligently investigate serious allegations of fundamental rights violations”.
It names Sweden, Bosnia-Herzegovina, the UK, Italy, Macedonia, Germany and Turkey for individual cases. Poland and Germany for secret detention centres; Germany, Turkey, Spain and Cyprus for staging flights; Ireland, UK, Portugal, Greece and Italy for ‘stopovers’. Kosovo is described as a legal “black hole”.
The European countries have, by Treaty, a positive obligation to investigate all abuses of human rights.
The responding silence is deafening.
International human rights debates have traditionally fallen into the two camps of the “collective” view that human rights is about basic provisions of food, water, health care, education and housing. The other being the “individual” view that it is about rights of fair trial, expression, assembly and association. The UN charter specifically includes both concepts.
The world since 2001 and the “War on terror” taken together with the Bush-Blair analysis that there is a moral duty on the west to intervene around the world effectively merges both concepts. We have the systematic abuse of human rights and law by the most powerful nations in the world whilst at the same time parading their liberal credentials for increasingly sceptical home audiences.
Maybe in July the newspapers will even find front page space to report these matters.
