The release of a new scathing human rights report has made US denials of employing a torture policy increasingly untenable, reports Hicham Safieddine Hundreds of millions of people around the world were vindicated in their belief that torture is a standard policy sanctioned by the highest echelons of the Bush administration by one of the world's most cited human rights watchdogs. "Practice what I preach, not what I do." With these unequivocal words that speak to the double standards the United States has long been accused of by opponents of its foreign policy, the New-York based Human Rights Watch, described the US practices. These practices include a "deliberate" use of torture as part of Washington's counter-terrorism strategy. The sharp criticism of the US was part of the organisation's 2006 World Report which was released last week. "Fighting is central to the human rights cause, but using illegal tactics against alleged terrorists is wrong and counter- productive," says Kenneth Rod, executive director of the New York-based rights group. The report goes on to suggest that the policy is backfiring by fuelling recruits for so-called terrorist organisations. In no uncertain terms, the report dismissed claims by the Bush administration that incidents of torture and abuse of detainees is the exception rather than the norm. "In the course of 2005, it became indisputable that US mistreatment of detainees reflected not a failure of training, discipline, or oversight, but a deliberate policy choice. The problem could not be reduced to a few bad apples at the bottom of the barrel," adds Roth. Allegations of torture and violation of human rights by the US authorities is nothing new. Ever since the self-declared war on terrorism was launched following the 11 September attacks, torture "hotspots" have come to light and increasingly embarrassed the Bush administration internationally. Those include the indefinite detention of terror suspects without trail at the now notorious Guantanamo bay military base in Cuba. They also include the Abu Ghraib prison scandal in which pictures of Iraqi inmates humiliated by US soldiers sent shockwaves across the world and led to the trial of some of the soldiers involved in the pictures. The latest controversy surrounding US measures that further undermined the rights of detainees was over the transportation of these suspects to undisclosed detention centres in Eastern Europe. Executive Director of the Egyptian Human Rights Organisation Hafez Abu Seada says the report adds to the increasing efforts of civil society organisations combating the Bush policies. "Because of its history in championing human rights and the rule of law, what the US is doing and its violation is more dangerous than what any other country does," explains Abu Seada. "The US is clearly involved in specific cases of human rights violations that are becoming increasingly impossible to deny and this report is a significant step in the fight against these measures." The report warns of the growing collaboration between the US and authoritarian regimes that have used the fight against terrorism to tighten their grip on power and crack down on opposition conveniently branding them as "Islamic terrorists". These countries include China, Uzbekistan, and Pakistan, as well as Arab countries whose governments are traditional allies of Washington such as Egypt and Saudi Arabia. But the report also blames two of the US Western allies, Britain and Canada, for a lack of leadership in standing firm against adopting policies that erode their claims to upholding human rights in the field of counter-terrorism. In the case of Britain, the report cites the British government's efforts to send suspects to countries where they could face torture and sign agreements with countries with a bad human rights records that guaranteed the suspect's safety, agreements Human Rights Watch argues is an unacceptable safeguard given the back human rights record these countries possess. In the case of Canada, the report reproached the Canadian government for attempting to dilute key provisions a world treaty on "enforced disappearances", a term used to describe those who are arraigned by government authorities and are not heard of afterwards. Although the introduction to the report mentions a slew of countries for human rights violations such as the US, Canada, Britain, Egypt and Saudi Arabia, it is notably silent on Israeli treatment of the Palestinians (mention of Israeli violations against Palestinians could be found in the heart of the report). Abu Seada says the fact that Israel is not prominently cited could be due to the fact that the conflict has been brewing on for a long time and no major developments or changes have taken place last year. "They [Human Rights Watch] have done a great job in covering the violations committed by Israeli soldiers when they invaded Jenin [in 2002] and I think there is no emphasis in this report on Israeli violations because there is probably nothing new in that file." On the Egyptian front, Abu Seada points out that criticism of the way the Egyptian authorities handled the election demonstrates that the gains of such practices by the authorities might be outweighed by the negative image and consequences of such measures in the long run. Despite the bleak backdrop the report paints of the US policies, Abu Seada is optimistic that mounting pressure on the US government from domestic forces and international ones could put a break on the rising tide of illegal policies of the US. "The Europeans are already feeling embarrassed by their alleged complicity in some of these practices and are under increasing pressure from their societies to put a stop to their collaboration," says Abu Seada. Inside the US, he adds, modest victories of civil society organisations that challenged the legality of not putting Guantanamo detainees on trial and the renewal of the Patriot Act in Congress also give further reason to hope that considerable headway will be made in reversing the tide of the erosion of civil liberties and human rights checks in the world's superpower.
