Iraq: Detainees Describe Torture in Secret Jail

More news has come out about torture in Iraq. The article comes from the Human rights watch news. It talks about how many officials, at all levels were involved, and this will be looked at very closely as more stories get out. Detainees were being held in a secret Baghdad detention facility were hung upside-down, deprived of air, kicked, whipped, given electric shocks, and sodomized. The article also stated, “Most of the 300 displayed fresh scars and injuries they said were a result of routine and systematic torture they had experienced at the hands of interrogators at Muthanna.” Of the 300 people 42 were interviewed by humans rights watch. The article tells some of the stories they were told by the detainees. It is disturbing thinking that even after the confessions were made, false or not, the torture continued. Some people were forced to sign false statements and accused of aiding and abetting terrorism. Each story was different but in the end all the stories were the same. Torture may not be very powerful when it comes to the use but when it comes to human rights and the basic rights you have it’s become a very powerful and disturbing tool today.

Sexuality Rights in Don’t Ask Don’t Tell

On Thursday, Defense Secretary Robert Gates presented new rules regarding the Don’t Ask Don’t Tell (DADT) policy to top military officials. The new rules mean that it will be easier for gay and lesbian service members to serve. It does not mean, however, that homosexuals can serve openly in the military. There is a measure in congress, however, to repeal don’t ask don’t tell. The Military Readiness Enhancement Act of 2010, introduced by Sen. Joseph Lieberman (I-CT), would repeal DADT.

The Human Rights Campaign (HRC) has been a strong activist for the repealing of DADT. They say that the policy is an infringement on their human rights and freedoms, specifically freedoms of choice and speech.

Marine General James Conway stated this week that repealing DADT would be detrimental to the cohesion of the Marine Corps. The corps is the only military branch that shares barracks. Gen. Conway argued that repeal DADT would require the Marines to build new, one-man, barracks in order to accommodate the new policy. Conway said that openly gay service members would cause other Marine members to be uncomfortable.

Is DADT an infringement on the rights of gay military members, because they are not forced into any situation? Or, would repealing DADT be infringement on the rights of straight service members, it what Gen. Conway says is true, and they would feel uncomfortable in their living situation?

Human Rights Alliance Demands Inquiry into UK Torture Role

It will be pretty fascinating to see how things shake out in Britain, where a group of human rights organizations have joined up with MPs to demand an independent inquiry:

The case for an inquiry is supported by almost everybody except the government, including Lord Carlile, the government’s own independent reviewer of terrorism legislation, the joint committee on human rights, David Cameron, Nick Clegg and other experts in this field. This proposal offers a clear way forward. The government should take it.

Full article here (HT: Susanne Ure).

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Is Texas About To Execute Another Innocent Man?

One thing's for sure: no one seems all that interested in finding out.

Some important points to consider:

Skinner has been on Death Row in Texas since 1993, awaiting execution for the murder of his girlfriend and her two sons. He has maintained his innocence since his arrest, and investigators from the Northwestern University Journalism School’s Medill Innocence Project have shot numerous holes in the prosecution’s case. But Texas officials refuse to conduct a simple DNA test that could point to the condemned man’s innocence or cement his guilt.

Why not test the DNA?

Well, you might find out something that would prevent the execution ... and what fun would that be?!

Full article here (HT: Brendan Nyhan).

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Louisiana Sues Its Own Death Row Inmates

"I’ve been hanging around death penalty cases for 25 years ... and I have never seen anything like this."

Apparently, the Louisiana Department of Public Safety and Corrections is suing all eighty-four inmates on their death row in an effort to prevent them from challenging the state's lethal injection procedures.

Here's how this works:

The Corrections Department’s litigation is a countersuit, filed in response to an earlier lawsuit claiming that Louisiana’s lethal injection procedure is in violation of state law. That suit was filed by the Capital Post Conviction Project of Louisiana (CPCPL) on behalf of death row prisoner Nathaniel Code. It stated that Louisiana had not met the requirements of its own Administrative Procedures Act in creating guidelines for execution by lethal injection. The state procedure ought to specify exactly what drugs should be used to kill prisoners, the CPCPL argued, rather than simply calling for the administration of drugs.

 [...]

Immediately after the ruling in Code’s suit, the Corrections Department filed its countersuit against all death row inmates. The department’s attorney, Wade Shows, told the Baton Rouge Advocate that Louisiana was asking the court “to formally declare—‘once and for all’—that the state’s lethal injection protocol is not subject to the Louisiana Administrative Procedure Act.” Such a ruling, Shows said, “‘means you don’t have to go through the rule-making process….It’s sort of an internal management decision.’”

Full blog post -- with links to newspaper treatments of the story -- here (HT: W. Thomas Webb).

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Muslim Head Veils and Human Rights in France

This story, from The New York Times on January 26th, is about French Parliament continuing to debate legislation on banning full Muslim head veils in public places like subways, airports, government offices and hospitals. This would be in addition to already banning veils in public schools.

The debate over veils in France leads directly back to conflicting French ideals of secularism and individual liberties.The French Declaration of the Rights of Man and Of the Citizen guarantees the right to resist oppression in addition to saying “No one shall be disquieted on account of his opinions, including his religious views, provided their manifestation does not disturb the public order established by law.” The debate, for French Parliament, is how much religious freedom is allowed versus the veil being a threat to the public order.

Of course, the debate about the Muslim veil is not new to France. And the growing Islamic and North African community within France is struggling to gain equality and equal treatment in many aspects of French society. For many people, taking away the veil is a direct attack on the imposed threat of Muslims on French culture, not an issue of public safety. Freedom of religion is a human right, and not allowing Muslim women to wear veils in public may directly violate that right.

Read the full article Here: http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/27/world/europe/27france.html?ref=europe

International Holocaust Remembrance Day

"Today we remember all of the victims of the Nazi regime, all those who were robbed of their dignity, their health, their worldly possessions and, indeed, of their lives. European Jews, Gypsy and Roma, people with disabilities, forced laborers, homosexuals, political dissenters, artists, academics, all those people who were vilified and persecuted as enemies of National Socialism"

--German Bundestag President Dr. Norbert Lammert

"Never again a racist doctrine. Never again the feeling of superiority. Never again a so-called divine authority to incite, murder, scorn the law, deny God and the Holocaust. Never again ignore blood-thirsty dictators hiding behind demagogical masks, who utter murderous slogans."

--Israeli President Shimon Peres

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The military junta in Burma reportedly plans to free opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi from her house arrest in November, when her most recent sentence expires.

Of course, waiting until November means that she likely will not be available to stand for election in the country's first parliamentary election in two decades -- which most people think will take place in October (though no date has been set). Of course, it's generally understood that she would be barred from taking part in the election whether or not she's under house arrest.

Full article here.

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Free Internet and Human Rights

For a while, the Chinese government framed the continuing Internet censorship spat with Google as a business affair; however, now the argument is shaping up as one about human rights.

On Jan. 21, Secretary of State Hilary Clinton made remarks on Internet Freedom, bringing up the Cold War rhetoric of a “descending curtain” that is now Internet censorship. She specifically named a number of countries where such practice is common – with China topping the list. Clinton’s speech was an appeal to human rights and freedoms. In fact, she even mentioned the Declaration on Human Rights:

Some countries have erected electronic barriers that prevent their people from accessing portions of the world’s networks. They’ve expunged words, names, and phrases from search engine results. They have violated the privacy of citizens who engage in non-violent political speech. These actions contravene the Universal Declaration on Human Rights, which tells us that all people have the right “to seek, receive and impart information and ideas through any media and regardless of frontiers.” With the spread of these restrictive practices, a new information curtain is descending across much of the world. And beyond this partition, viral videos and blog posts are becoming the samizdat of our day.

The Chinese government quickly reacted to Clinton’s comments with a statement that appealed to the U.S. government “to respect the truth and to stop using the so-called Internet freedom question to level baseless accusations,” seemingly an attempt to return to square one—when the argument was a business one, not of human rights.

Interestingly, a recent poll by a worldwide market research company Angus Reid Global Monitor discovered that a majority of American would prefer that the U.S. dealt with Chinese Internet censorship in the framework of a human rights debate as opposed to viewing it through the prism of consequences for trade relations. Why do you think it is so and do you agree? And also, is a right to free Internet access really a universal human right?

Google, Human Rights, Corporate Social Responsibility

Some time ago, I wrote a little bit about why I thought that corporations should do more than simply not do evil. Here is the full post, which began with Google but didn't really use Google as the model of a corporation that needed to do more. Though I certainly could have done so, I went with Microsoft and Cisco in China, and -- of course -- Shell in Nigeria. In the end, I said:

We can insist that corporations not do evil and that they avoid assisting those who do evil. Trying to do nothing when evil is happening — the position of not taking a position, like Cisco and Microsoft when it comes to Chinese repression — is insufficient. Even if it’s not actively doing evil, it clearly lends support to those who do.

Yesterday's big news from Google requires a mention, then. When Google first began operating in China, the company drew substantial fire for its decision to side with the Chinese government on the question of internet censorship. After a cyberattack that no one is saying originated with the Chinese government but no one is saying didn't originate with the Chinese government, Google announced that it "was no longer willing to censor results on its Chinese-language search engine and would discuss with Chinese authorities whether it could operate an uncensored search engine in that country." According to Google, the main goal of the attack seemed to be accessing the email accounts of Chinese human rights activists.

'These attacks and the surveillance they have uncovered -- combined with the attempts over the past year to further limit free speech on the web -- have led us to conclude that we should review the feasibility of our business operations in China.'

The long and short of the matter is something I hope will resonate with other corporations: going into business with countries that routinely and systematically abuse the human rights of their citizens actually turns out to be a bad business decision.

Full article here.

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