Life and Liberty
“More dangerous than a nuclear bomb”
Shirin Ebadi, right, won the 2003 Nobel Peace Prize for her work on Iranian women and children's rights
Imagine a program that allowed you to create and customise your own human rights campaigner. Aside from being a guaranteed top-seller (particularly on the Wii, I imagine), you might be surprised at the results.
If you were able to hand-pick credentials for a human rights experts in, say, Iran, then it is more than likely that you would unknowingly create Shirin Ebadi.
Born in 1948, Ebadi became the first woman to preside over a legislative court in Iran in 1975, but was demoted four years’ later following the Iranian revolution. Using her newly found free time to write books and journal articles, she became a lecturer at her Alta Mata, the University of Tehran, where she campaigned heavily for the rights of women and children.
In 2003, she was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize, in which she was described as having “never heeded the threat of her own safety.”
Since then, she has been even busier with campaigning and awareness raising of Iran’s ever decreasing human rights performance.
She also established the Centre for the Defence of Human Rights in Iran, an organisation that has defended the legal cases of many Iranian free speech advocates and academics.
As far as well-informed and professional comment on human rights goes, she is probably among the most highly qualified.
Which is why, when she accuses Britain of ignoring the human rights’ situation in Iran, she should have note taken of her.
In an interview with The Times, she said that “the West cares more about its own security than human rights. I think they’re wrong…Undemocratic countries are more dangerous than a nuclear bomb.”
The reception to her interview by British officials is appalling. This is an extract from the article:
British officials dismissed her appeals as misguided. “The only other people who act like they want to close our embassy are the Iranian Government,” a Foreign Office source said.
The Foreign and Commonwealth Office said that Britain had signalled its displeasure at the regime’s conduct by withholding its customary letter of congratulation. It said that “communication channels had to be kept open”.
She has risked so much to make these petitions to Western leaders. The response she has received is disgraceful.
Demanding more than just words
HRW urge Miliband to stop deportation to Ethiopia
Human Rights Watch UK has today written a letter to David Miliband, the Foreign Secretary, condemning the Memorandum of Understanding signed last year between Britain and Ethiopia.
The letter opens warning that “diplomatic promises are insufficient to prevent torture” before going on to outline the fact that torture is widely used both “in the course of interrogations”, and “as a form of punishment”.
Here is an extract from the latter section:
“Methods of torture include forcing people to strip and subjecting them to repeated and severe kicking and beatings with sticks, electric cables, rifle butts, iron bars, and other instruments, sometimes at gunpoint; tying the individual’s hands and feet and suspending the person upside down and beating them; tying bottles of water to men’s testicles; and forcing detainees to run or crawl barefoot over sharp gravel for several hours at a time. Human Rights Watch has also documented cases of rape of women and girls detained in military barracks in Somali region.
Other patterns of serious violations of international human rights and humanitarian law by Ethiopian military (Ethiopian National Defence Force) and police forces include summary or extrajudicial executions, arbitrary and incommunicado detention, indiscriminate attacks, and rape and sexual violence against civilians. Detainees in police and military custody often lack access to legal counsel, medical care, and family members and are routinely subjected to lengthy pre-charge and pre-trial detention in violation of Ethiopian and international law.”
The letter then makes reference to the role of Ethiopia in the North African Rendition Process, an ongoing barbarity that HRW documented in this 2007 report.
The open letter closes with these words:
“In conclusion, Human Rights Watch is extremely concerned that the UK-Ethiopia MoU will trigger an attempt by the UK to return individuals to a country known to have a serious record of torture and mistreatment of detainees by security forces, in violation of the UK’s legal obligations under UK and international law. We strongly urge you to refrain from implementing the agreement and deporting individuals to Ethiopia, where they will face a serious risk of torture and other abuse.”
They also posted online a report to accompany the letter, which you can read here.
It took the foreign office just under three weeks to respond to my letter regarding Burma. If they have that turnaround time for me, a lowly human rights hack, then they will surely respond quicker to HRW.
We wait and watch with interest…
Oil, Burma, and why we can’t rely on governments.
Total's gas pipeline under construction in Burma
It’s a long title for a complicated issue. A response from the Foreign Office on the human rights situation in Burma states that “democratic reform in Burma remains a high priority for the UK and for the Prime Minister personally” and goes on to say that they “remain deeply concerned about the human rights situation in Burma” and “call for the start of a genuine process of political reform.”
You can see the full response here.
Three days later (today), the Independent carries this report on the gains that Burma make from an oil deal with Total, the French-owned petrol giant. This revelation has made me realise several things:
1. The Burmese ‘government’ (military, brutal, undemocratic Junta) will never change as a result of local international pressure. While Britain may continue to “urge Burma’s neighbours, including India, China and those countries in the ASEAN, to use their influence to press for change in Burma”, these countries are unlikely to use their full weight to press for change. Even if they did, the military have been in power since 1962, and the current ruling junta in power since the late 1980s. They will not bow to the pressures of these more recent rulers (Hu Juitao became President of The People’s Republic of China in 2003, and Pratibha Patil became President of India in 2007), whether economic or political. Furthermore, they have no interest in pressing Burma. Neither India nor China, the only bordering countries to conceivably carry any weight (Come on – could Laos, Thailand, or Bangladesh achieve anything?), have any motivation for dealing with Burma. China is unlikely to pick a human rights fight, even with Burma, and India should probably be focussing on the state of Pakistan, which is politically in far more trouble than Burma.
2. The West has greater worries in the East beside the Burmese. I only need to mention Afghanistan, but recent examples of human rights progress, such as [Bill] Clinton’s success at freeing American journalists from North Korea was significant because it was North Korea. As harmful as they are, Burma is not a direct nuclear threat to Western governments, which puts it further down the list of priorities than other countries in Asia-Pacific.
3. This is probably the most important factor to consider, as it guarantees an immovable obstacle to all progress in the country: The Burmese will not be moved while they are able to make vast sums of money from their resources by selling them to international companies. I need cite no more evidence than today’s report (see above).
There it is. If you want to change Burma, the way to do so is not through its neighbours. It is not through international pressure, or sanctions, or even through our own government. Hitting them ‘where it hurts’ is out of control of politically elected officials and representatives. It is, however, within the power of the corporations and oil businesses. If they can give so much to the Burmese government, then they can take it away just as easily.
Is it possible to bring these companies into an agreement to aid the 2,000 political prisoners currently in the dungeons of the junta by seeking to change the government?
One thing is certain: Gone are the days when mere condemnation is enough to topple powers. Trying to do so now would be laughable.
The power is with the oil barons, and it is towards them that lobbying and reasoning must be directed.
Foreign Office on Burma
Is a broken silence sufficient for action?
While researching for my dissertation on Gaza, I ran into ‘Breaking the Silence’, a human rights group in Israel made up of former soldiers who seek to expose human rights abuses by the Israeli military. Taking testimonies of soldiers who served in Operation Cast Lead, probably better known over here as the Israeli actions during the Gaza Crisis last Christmas, they compiled a damning report of the same name, published in June of this year.
The report categorises not just accidental deaths, stray bombs, and the use of white phosphorous, but also the direct instructions and briefings given to the soldiers before they entered the Gaza strip; instructions that told them to raze Palestinian buildings simply in order to de-clutter the filed of vision for future bombardments, and to open fire on anything suspicious.
The group is also well regarded by other humanitarian groups. Amnesty regard them as highly credible, saying “one of our key campaigners met with their founder for talks earlier this year and our international section deal with them on a regular basis.”
The response to the document has been little short of lukewarm. From a BBC report:
Israeli military spokeswoman Lt Col Avital Leibovich dismissed the testimonies as anonymous hearsay, designed to embarrass the army rather than lead to serious investigations…”We are investigating many of the requests from NGOs and other groups,” she said. “But when you have a report that is based on hearsay, with no facts whatsoever, we can’t do anything with it.”
Read the document and decide for yourself. The link to the full document is at the bottom, but here is the opening from the front cover:
“In training you learn that white phosphorus is not used, and you’re taught that it’s not humane. You watch films and see what it does to people who are hit, and you say, “There, we’re doing it too.” That’s not what I expected to see. Until that moment I had thought I belonged to the most humane army in the world, I knew that even in the West Bank, when we go into a neighborhood, we do it quietly so that people won’t see us, but also in order not to disturb them, no less. Even when Molotov cocktails were thrown at us in the West Bank, we wouldn’t shoot, the rules are very explicit. If your own life is at risk, you shoot. But under no other circumstances. Practically speaking, how often are you really in a life-threatening situation in the West Bank? Until that moment I had never fired a shot except at cardboard targets, just at the shooting range and maneuvers, and I also understood why. An IDF soldier does not shoot for the sake of shooting nor does he apply excessive force beyond the call of the mission he is to perform. We saw the planes flying out and you see from which building the rocket is launched against Israel and you see the four houses surrounding that building collapsing as soon as the airforce bombs. I don’t know if it was white phosphorus or not, and I don’t really care that much, but whole neighborhoods were simply razed because four houses in the area served to launch Qassam rockets.”
Given that Breaking the Silence is funded by the British, Dutch, and Spanish governments, should they not be calling for more action over these accusations? Will the Israeli government not take this group seriously? Denial and rejection of evidence will not clear the name of the Israeli military.
They, too, now have a silence to break.
Ko’s story
In March in 1988 in Burma, thousands of students took to the streets in a protest against the ruling Junta that would result in 3,000 deaths.
Ko Aung was a leader of the protests. He was arrested and tortured. Two years later he received a jail sentence for his role in the protests at a trial that many believe to have been unfair, and that he claims used evidence that was given after undergoing severe torture. While in prison, he received hundreds of cards from Amnesty International members. When finally released in 1994, he fled to the UK, but has never forsaken those whom he sees as his brothers in the dungeons of the Junta.
This is his account.
“I had a key role to mobilise and organise the uprising in 1988. I never regretted what I did, because it was for what I believed was right.
I served three and a half years in solitary confinement on and off. The only way I survived was to hold my belief and fight for it. If you hold true to your belief, then you can bear the iron bar or the torture. I lost so many friends and comrades, and I was kept alive by keeping fighting for what they wanted and gave their lives for. I was brutally tortured in several military detention centres.
At the time, I had an iron bar on across my legs, with a chain for my hands from it. It was a dark room, really hard to sleep, hard to walk because it was so small. At night, I had nothing to wear; they had taken all my clothes, and I had this iron bar around my legs. It was cold – about as cold as Autumn in Britain.
There were mosquitoes trying to bite every inch of my body, so I was going crazy trying to get them off. It was the only time I had talked to God, and I said “help me!” When I talked I could feel the release, I needed somebody to talk to.
But I will tell you about the worst time. During the night they would come and knock on my door. It had happened before, and I was so scared. After every time they came in they handcuffed me and took me into this dark room. It was completely dark, I couldn’t see anything.
They asked me to climb down big steps. I climbed down the first, and the second. When I got to the third, I smelt it. It was maggots. They forced me into it, to climb into it.
I was in maggots up to my waist, and crying out “you can’t do this to me”. They forced me in up to my neck. I shouted and cried, but they made me stay there. I don’t know how long I stayed there, I was just crying. I could feel maggots crawling up onto my face.
My mind went blank…and then I wake up in hospital.
They take the information from me, and use that to sentence me.
It is a troubled time in solitary confinement, but friends managed to send the letters through. You have no-one to talk to, and suddenly you receive a card from far far away, it is such a gift of strength.
There is only one thing that the regime can take away from me, and that is hope. You need to keep hope alive, and this card helped do that in solitary confinement.
There were many others with me during the protests. 100s gave their lives for the cause of freedom. 1000s were arrested, others fled. The leader of my students union is still in prison. Some people give their lives for the cause of freedom. You can be beaten and tortured, but if your mind is strong, you won’t lose.
I never thought of escaping. It is not a solution to the problem, you can only free yourself. You will still leave a lot of comrades behind, and living together is a huge encouragement.
Around the world, the UK is the best one for knowing the profile of the situation in Burma. Change within the Burmese government is possible. Revolution is an option, but so is non-revolution. We need to empower society, we need education, and trying to get the information to our people. We now have more advanced technology, and they [the Junta] can’t stop that.
I can’t find the words to show my appreciation to the UK.
Please use your liberties to promote ours.”
A 2004 Amnesty report details the known political prisoners still taken in Burma. It can be seen here. The situation today is no better than the one that Ko endured. Much still remains to be done.
On waterboarding
This is an expansion of a blog entry originally published on Peter’s other blog here.
It is not normally in the nature of this blog for me to upload a post without any of my own input into the discussion. However, there are several things that have prompted me to make an exception on this occasion.
A piece on the Times Online earlier this week, saying that Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the 9/11 mastermind, was waterboarded 183 times has redrawn the debate surrounding this form of “harsh interrogation” to the surface.
Two pieces particularly caught my attention this morning. On the BBC, Condoleezza Rice approved the technique of waterboarding back in 2002, saying that it produced results. Secondly, Ben Macintyre’s outstanding piece in The Times this morning on why tortue doesn’t work, making excellent use of the oft-quoted 24 example.
I was also slightly concerned by James Delingpole’s blog entry that seems almost to make light of waterboarding in order to emphasise his point.
Many people know remarkably little about waterboarding, and what it entails. I feel therefore that I must upload this video of journalist Christopher Hitchens undergoing waterboarding for a Vanity Fair feature. You can read his written account here. I believe this is a video that should be as widely circulated as possible, made by a man for whom I have the utmost journalistic respect:
Here we go…
It has been a turbulent few months for those who take an interest in the ever-complex issue of human rights and freedoms. With the proposed closure of Guantanamo Bay and the revelation of the terrible acts that took place inside comes about the tragic realisation; that the end of chapter of one of the most grotesque Western-backed institutions in our lifetime only reveals how much more there is to be done. Mozam Begg, in a visit to our University last term described the closure as “the tip of the iceberg”.
While we can wait expectantly for the final hours of this dreadful place – an issue that is being challenged even as I type – it is sobering to know that many other, far less well known and far more brutal, prisons exist; again under the control of various Western powers. Obama’s arm will indeed grow long if he can instigate the closure of these within one or even two terms in office.
Closer to home, the UN has backed a non-binding mandate on the defamation of religion that many fear will lead to the dampening down of free speech against controversial strands of major world religion, notably fundamental Islam. This was highlighted by the exclusion of Gert Wilders from the UK in February this year. While his message was clearly one sided and subjective, there were some unfortunate inconsistencies in his case.
Finally, women’s rights have again come under the spotlight both at the General Synod of the Church of England, with regards to the appointment of female bishops, and in the role of Afghan marriages.
It’s a difficult and dirty area, human rights. Let’s dive right in.