Australian Government refuses to implement a Human Rights Act

The Australian Government finally issued its Human Rights Framework today after considering a consultation committee report for over six months and ending a process that started in December 2008. The Government is calling it a “framework” because it has gone against the recommendation of the national human rights consultation panel to introduce a new human rights act. McClelland said a human rights framework (pdf version) is more appropriate than legislation. "The Government believes that the enhancement of human rights should be done in a way that as far as possible unites rather than divides our community, and the framework is designed to achieve that outcome," he said.

The head of the consultation panel, Jesuit priest and law professor Frank Brennan, was disappointed with the decision. He said he doubted if politicians will be sufficient faithful to framework obligations without judicial oversight. The Australian Human Rights Commission also criticised the Government’s response saying while it includes important steps to improve the understanding of human rights in Australia, it had missed the opportunity to create an adequate national system of protection. “The Government has missed the opportunity to provide comprehensive human rights protection for everyone in Australia through adopting a national Human Rights Act,” President of the Australian Human Rights Commission Cathy Branson said. Branson urged the Government to revisit the question of the Act as part of its 2014 review of the Framework.

According to The Australian, the reason McClelland refused to include a Human Rights Act was because of a rebellion within his own party. It said this was one of two contentious issues (introducing rules for judges that would have required them to interpret legislation in a way they believe is in accordance with human rights was the other) but did not reveal who in the party room was against these measures or why they opposed them.

Opposition spokesperson for legal affairs George Brandis called it a “humiliation” for McClelland. He said the Rudd Government wasted more than $2 million in promoting an idea which never had community support and only appealed to “a self-regarding elite of legal academics and activist judges.” Brandis said The Opposition has always opposed the bill of rights as “a dangerous and foolish idea”, which would have diminished parliament’s authority of Parliament and politicised the judiciary. “It would have been a Trojan horse to impose a left-wing social agenda on Australians without democratic legitimacy,” Brandis claimed.

According to McClelland’s media release the framework is based on five key principles. These are: a commitment to human rights obligations; the importance of human rights education; enhancing domestic and international engagement on human rights issues; improving human rights protections, including greater parliamentary scrutiny; and achieving greater respect for human rights principles within the community. McClelland said the Government would spend $12m on education initiatives and would establish a new Parliamentary Joint Committee on Human Rights to scrutinise legislation for compliance with international human rights obligations.

In the blogosphere, reaction to the announcement was mostly scathing. Classical Liberal Andrew Norton agreed with the decision not to include a charter but said it would have focussed attention on which freedoms deserved to achieve semi-constitutional status and which were matters of ordinary political debate. Instead, he said, human rights would become subject to undemocratic treaties. Guy Beres said McClelland’s assertion an Act would be divisive is risible given how divisive the lack of one is. Kim at Larvatus Prodeo agrees with Beres and said the Act had been squibbed by the ALP’s “authoritarian streak, which seems particularly prominent in New South Wales.”

In the end this was political compromise of an ugly kind. While most Labor MPs were philosophically in favour of such an Act (especially knowing how its lack contributed to some of the worst excesses of the Howard administration), no one in Rudd's kitchen cabinet was prepared to die in the trenches of marginal seats for it in an election year. In the end, it has been replaced by feel-good phrases, a rubber-stamp committee and an education campaign that has “failure” written all over it. Taxpayers can consider themselves lucky that just $12m will be wasted on it. We will have to wait until the 2014 review of a likely third-term Labor Government before something better is offered.

HRW uncovers LRA massacre in Congo

A new Human Rights Watch report has given details of a large scale massacre of civilians in north-eastern Congo by the Ugandan rebel group the Lords Resistance Army in December last year. In a well-planned operation, the LRA killed more than 321 civilians and abducted more than 250 others, including at least 80 children in northeastern DRC near the border with Sudan. The attack was one of the largest single massacres in the LRA’s 23-year history and witnesses said for days afterwards the remote area was filled with the “stench of death.” (photo © 2009 Reuters)

The horrific nature of the attack is outlined in HRW 67-page report “Trail of Death: LRA atrocities in Northeastern Congo” (pdf version).It was one of a series of assaults in the Haut-Uele and Makombo regions of DRC late last year during a vicious four-day operation to abduct child soldiers for their operations. In each town they arrived in, the LRA pretended to be Congolese and Ugandan army soldiers on patrol, and spoke in broken Lingala (the common language of northern Congo) to reassure locals. Then they tied them up with ropes or metal wire at the waist, often in human chains of five to 15 people and dragged them away. The victims included many children aged 10 to 15 years old who were made to carry pillaged goods. Anyone who refused, or who walked too slowly, or who tried to escape was killed. Hundreds were hacked to death with machetes or had their skulls crushed with axes and heavy wooden sticks.

Both the Congolese and Ugandan governments had previously claimed the LRA was no longer a threat to the DRC. HRW says embarrassment over these claims contributed to the lack of news of the massacre reaching the outside world. A DRC army investigation unit arrived in the area a week later and concluded the LRA had carried out the attacks but no further action was taken. Ugandan soldiers attempted to pursue the assailants but without success.

It wasn’t until the end of December that news filtered through to MONUC, the UN peacekeeping mission in Congo. Though it regarded the LRA as the enemy, MONUC did not have the resources to investigate. Its priorities were to defend the district capital Dungu from LRA attack, and attend to the long-running crisis in Kivu. However after a HRW briefing in March, MONUC sent a team of human-rights specialists to the area to investigate.

The attack was coordinated by General Dominic Ongwen, commander of LRA forces in northeastern Congo. Ongwen is wanted by the International Criminal Court for crimes committed in Uganda and he divvied up the abductees among the LRA commanders and separated into multiple smaller groups, each heading in a different direction. HRW has now called on the ICC and the DRC to investigate Ongwen and his two most senior commanders for their role in the massacre.

It will be a task easier to ask than answer. Originally restricted to Uganda, the LRA has now evolved into a regional power causing deadly mayhem in Uganda, southern Sudan, CAR, and Congo. They were pushed out of Uganda in 2005 and now operate in the remote border areas between southern Sudan, Congo and CAR. Despite continual attacks from multiple directions, including the 2008 US-logistics backed Operation Lightning Thunder, the LRA has proven remarkably resilient and able to regroup to continue their attacks against and abductions of civilians. In retaliation for Operation Lightning Thunder the LRA attacked numerous Congolese villages around the end of 2008 killing almost a thousand civilians and abducting hundreds more.

HRW says one hope of defeating the LRA comes from the US government. On 24 February, US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton Senate told the Foreign Relations Committee “I have been following the Lord’s Resistance Army for more than 15 years. I just don’t understand why we cannot end this scourge. And we [the US government] are going to do everything we can to provide support we believe will enable us to do that.” Three weeks ago the Senate unanimously passed the Lord’s Resistance Army Disarmament and Northern Uganda Recovery Act. The bill is now before the US House of Representatives and if enacted into law requires the Obama administration to develop a regional strategy to stop LRA attacks, LRA, work to apprehend their leadership, and support economic recovery for northern Uganda.

HRW says the people of northeastern Congo and other LRA-affected areas across the central African region have suffered for far too long. “They are waiting for strong, effective action to end the LRA’s atrocities,” said the report. “[And also] to see the safe return of their children and other loved ones who remain with the LRA, and to let them know they are not forgotten.”

UN to discuss Goldstone Report on Israel's war crimes in Gaza

The UN Security Council has agreed to Libya’s request for an emergency session to discuss a report on Israeli war crimes in its Gaza incursion last year. The closed door talks will take place later today to discuss South African Justice Richard Goldstone’s Report into the war which was produced without the co-operation of Israel. Palestine has approved the talks a week after deferring a UN debate on the matter to March 2010. But Libyan spokesman Ahmed Gebreel said his country had requested the meeting "because of the seriousness of the report and because we think it's too long to wait until March". (photo of Israeli air assault on Gaza on 28 Dec 2008 by Amir Farshad Ebrahimi)

The UN released the report entitled “Human rights in Palestine and other occupied territories: Report of the United Nations Fact Finding Mission on the Gaza Conflict” last month. The 575 page report looked at Israel’s blockade of the Gaza Strip and its military air and ground offensive which lasted from 27 December 2008 to 18 January 2009. An estimated 1,500 people were killed in the invasion of which just ten were Israeli soldiers (4 of these died from friendly fire) and three were Israeli civilians.

During the 22-day war, Israeli attacks totally destroyed the Palestinian Legislative Council and the Gaza main prison. The report rejected the Israeli justification these buildings were part of the “Hamas terrorist infrastructure” and said they were deliberate attacks on civilian objects. The report also condemned the attacks on six police stations which resulted in the deaths of 99 police officers and nine civilians. Israel deliberately targeted police on the grounds they were considered part of the Palestinian military but the report found they were a civilian law-enforcement agency.

The report found that Palestinian militants launched rockets from urban areas and did not adequately distinguish themselves from non-combatants. However, it found no evidence that mosques or hospitals were used as “military shields”. It also acknowledged Israel made significant efforts to issue warnings for civilians to get out of harm’s way but many of their warnings were not specific and lacked credibility.

It condemned Israel for its flagrant attack on the UNRWA (UN Relief and Works Agency) field office which offered shelter to 700 people. The IDF attacked the building with high explosives for several hours despite the fact they were aware of who was there and the fact the compound contained a huge fuel depot. On the same day (15 January), Israel also attacked a Gaza City hospital without warning. The attack caused a day-long fire and panic among evacuated patients.

The report also criticised an Israeli attack on al-Fakhura junction in Jabalya next to a UNRWA school where 1,300 people were taking shelter. Mortar shells killed at least 35 people in an attack that was “indiscriminate in violation of international law”. The report said 10 out of another 11 attacks on civilian targets had no military objective. The impact was compounded by Israeli refusal to evacuate wounded or permit access to ambulances. It said IDF conduct was “criminal” and constituted “grave breaches of the Fourth Geneva Convention in respect of wilful killings.”

The report also condemned deliberate attacks against industrial installations, food production, sewage treatment and housing. Israel also used blindfolded Palestinian shields to enter houses of suspected militants and detained large numbers of men, women and children for the duration of the conflict. The entire mission was carried out according to “Dahiya Doctrine” (also practiced in the Lebanon war in 2006) which involves disproportionate force, maximum disruption and damage and the transformation of civilians into military targets.

The report also considered the continued detention of kidnapped Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit who was captured in 2006 by a Palestinian group. While the report said Shalit was entitled to POW status and is entitled to a visit from the Red Cross, it did not justify the blockade of the Strip as it constituted “collective punishment”. It certainly does not justify the imprisonment of 8,100 Palestinian political prisoners.

The report also accused Gaza forces of targeting five Fatah members who were killed for their political affiliation. It also accused the Palestinian Authority of torture and inhumane treatment of Hamas prisoners in the West Bank. Goldstone considered the West Bank situation as “closely interrelated” to Gaza but Israel refused access for them to visit the territory (they were able to visit Gaza via Egypt). The report said that attacks in the West Bank coincided with the Gaza assault and the IDF killed a number of protesters. Israel has taken no action to punish soldiers and settlers for violence against Palestinians.

The report also blamed Gaza for its persistent rocket attacks. It said that Palestinian armed groups have launched 8,000 rockets into southern Israel since 2001 with a range of 40kms from the border. These attacks have killed three people and injured another one thousand causing a high level of psychological trauma and an exodus of residents from the area. The report said they were indiscriminate attacks against civilian populations in order to spread terror and is contrary to humanitarian law.

The report recommended international legal action against Israel and Hamas for war crimes and possible crimes against humanity. It recommended the findings are handed to the prosecutor of the International Criminal Court (ICC) in The Hague and also urged the UN Security Council and, separately, the General Assembly, to ensure that those responsible for the crimes are brought to justice.

But Palestinian authorities initially did not support a UN review of Goldstone’s report. A week ago, President Mahmoud Abbas withdrew Palestinian support for a vote in the UN Human Rights Council to have the report sent to the General Assembly for possible action. Such a vote may have eventually led toward possible war crimes tribunals. Palestinian officials said Abbas’s decision was made “under heavy US pressure”. The decision was widely criticised within Palestine. Electronic Intifada called it “the most blatant case yet of PA betrayal of Palestinian rights and surrender to Israeli dictates.”

But now a senior Palestinian politician, Yasser Abed Rabbo, has said they had erred by seeking the deferral. "We must say a mistake has been made,” he said. “This mistake should not be underestimated or concealed.” Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu meanwhile claimed the report's conclusions would "devastate the peace process". This is a disengenous complaint given that peace talks are currently going nowhere due to Netenyahu’s insistence on continuing with illegal settlement-building in the West Bank. It is Israel who have "devastated" the peace process just as they devastated Gaza ten months ago.

Paying the Bill of Rights

Last week former Prime Minister John Howard told the 2009 Menzies Lecture that an Australian bill of rights was misguided and would not expand individual liberties. Howard reminded his audience that Robert Menzies was a lawyer and would have opposed such a bill with “every bone of his common law body”. Howard said that one of the functions of the common law was to protect the individual against infringement of his personal rights.

But Menzies is more remembered as a politician than a lawyer. Here again Howard said Menzies would not have supported a Bill of Rights. It would have impinged upon Menzies “deep reverence for parliament”. The parliamentarians’ ability to enact good law on behalf of their constituents would be hampered by an “elitist” charter that would place rights ahead of responsibility. According to Howard, common law provides better protection for the individual than a bill of rights and enshrining such rights muzzles the ability of parliament to pass laws in the public interest. So the question becomes, are rights right or are they a tool of the left? To answer this, we need to go back a bit.

The history of rights begins properly with the guilt of Auschwitz. During the war, the Allies had very good maps of the area, knew the layout of Auschwitz I and II and knew roughly what was its scale and purpose. Yet while Dresden and other cities were regularly firebombed, not a single bomb was dropped on either Auschwitz. It was considered to be unhelpful in the act of the winning the war.

While apparently sadistic, this was an essentially correct military decision. Germany’s lunacy in the later stages of the war meant that valuable resources were being drained away on the unproductive factory-killing of many of its minorities and the Allies wanted this to continue so that they could put an end to the war sooner. The military decision could not take into account that society’s weakest would be the ones that would pay the highest price for thia strategy.

When the full cruelties of the camps unfolded after the war ended, it inspired the new UN to act for the defenceless. In 1948 its General Assembly instituted a Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Prior to this, the only well known bill of rights was the first ten amendments of the US constitution in which timeless notions such as freedom of speech mixed uneasily with peculiarly Georgian needs such as keeping a well-regulated Militia. But despite misgivings over possible post-war anachronisms in the UN declaration, all western countries have adopted some components of the UDHR charter.

All western countries bar one, that is. Although Australian foreign minister Dr Herbert Vere Evatt was a crucial player in the formation of the UN charter, his own government had misgivings about the brown and black people having the same dignity and rights as them. Its aboriginals were then still considered fauna and Labor supported the White Australia Policy to protect the jobs of its voters. Australia ratified grudgingly but never adopted it in local laws.

The Menzies era that followed was equally disinterested in formulating rights laws though for a different reason. In 1967 the newly retired prime minister said individual rights were adequately protected by common law and “the good sense” of elected representatives. Howard drew on these traditions when defending matters such as mandatory sentencing, sedition, and the treatment of refugees. The original 1901 constitution still gives the federal government powers over “the people of any race for whom it is deemed necessary to make special laws”. While this seems like antiquated law, it has been invoked as recently as 1998 in the Hindmarsh Island case which allowed the government to discriminate against Aboriginals.

While the jurists see no way past these laws, it may be dangerous to also assume that politicians will always have the sense to be sensible. Against it, is the political need to be seen doing something. No politician ever lost an election by being tough on “law and order” and many rights are further eroded in knee-jerk reactions to terrorism events or bad bikie behaviour. Once taken away, it is very hard to get those rights back. The usual response to harsher measures is that if you are not doing anything wrong you will have nothing to worry about. But lack of rights doesn’t just affect deviants. They also affect the vulnerable, the unlucky and those on the border-line.

That is not to say there are no protections in Australian law. There is freedom of religion, trial by jury, freedom of trade, and property rights. Voting is not simply a right, it is a duty. Common law also has an 800 year tradition of preserving rights that goes back to the Magna Carta. But while it recognises rights, it does not recognise freedoms. Judges see this as a role for parliament.

But while many parliamentary inquiries have looked at rights bills, very few have recommended action. A Labor Human Rights Bill in 1973 was sunk by strong opposition in the Senate. A second attempt in 1985 collapsed because WA was unwilling to give up its gerrymandered electoral boundaries. Further efforts for constitutional change failed in 1988 and 1999 which made the rights agenda a handy wedge issue. Opponents would say Russia in the 1930s had a human rights bill but that did not stop the gulags. So savvy politicians like Bob Carr preferred to hide behind cosy do-nothing statements such as “the protection of rights lies in the good sense, tolerance and fairness of the community.”

He may be asking too much of the community. But Australia does have one bill of rights jurisdiction. In 2004, the Australian Capital Territory lived up to its acronym and became the first Australian administration to enact a Human Rights Act. The Act recognises equality before the law, the rights to life, family, reputation and freedom of expression. But it has weaknesses. There is no remedy for breach of these rights. It is also silent on the matter of economic and social rights, which are the ones most lacking in the most disadvantaged sectors.

But as George Williams says in “The Case for an Australian Bill of Rights”, it is a good start. He argues a national bill would augment the common law and enhance democracy here by expressing the fundamental rights of a diverse Australian people. This is not an obvious or intuitive concept and education will be needed to show the community why it is needed. It should follow the model used in the ACT, New Zealand and UK legislation and begin with a small set of laws that could be expanded upon over time. The courts should have the permission to strike down legislation, there should be an override clause and should eventually be included in the constitution.

Williams says the real value of such a bill would be in education, shaping attitudes and offering hope and recognition to otherwise powerless people. There is also little doubt it would be also be something all new law would be measured against, and could act as a moral check to any temporary madness towards clamping down on a country's own citizens. Perhaps this the real reason Howard and his supporters do not want a Bill of Rights - they do not want to identify what freedoms citizens really have, or should have.

Belgian PM pledges support for Philippe Bogaert’s release from Qatar

Belgian Premier Herman Van Rompuy has pledged to do everything possible to get countryman Philippe Bogaert released from Qatar where he is currently appealing a three year prison sentence. Van Rompuy (report in Flemish) claimed that Belgium was doing everything it could for Bogaert “taking into account the limitations that the legal frameworks of both countries impose.” The prison sentence was handed out after several cheques failed to clear which he guaranteed while managing director of a Qatari subsidiary of a Belgian company. Bogaert is not actually in jail at the moment but has been stuck in a Kafkaesque scenario for almost a year unable to leave the country.

Philippe Bogaert is stranded in Doha because his employer’s sponsor refuses to grant him an exit permit to leave the country. Like most Gulf states, Qatar requires foreigners who wish to work in the country to have a local sponsor. However, unlike other Gulf countries, Qatar gives sponsors the right to say whether their employee is allowed to leave the country. Bogaert claims he has been “held hostage” by his sponsor since the company he worked for fell into financial difficulty last year. The sponsor is holding him personally liable for QAR16m ($AUD 5.2m) that the company is alleged to owe debtors, including former staff’s unpaid salaries and rent.

Bogaert has been fighting back using the power of social networks. There is a Facebook group called “Philippe Liberation Front” with almost 6,000 members and he been updating a Twitter page @HostageinQatar since 23 May. One of his earliest tweets read “Don't sign any guaranty checks in Qatar. As a signatory, you are personally responsible and they could eventually get you in jail.” On a regular basis he tweets “I am a hostage in Qatar and this is my Twitter SOS” while telling his back-story to the world 140 characters at a time.

The 38 year old married father of two is a TV producer who says he was offered a “dream job” in April 2008. A communication consultancy company called Dialogic SA, which he had worked for in Belgium, was looking for a broadcast manager in Qatar. He would be working with the Qatar Marine Festival which was run by Sheikha Mozah, the Qatari Emir’s wife. Like all foreign workers in Qatar, Bogaert needed a sponsor and his was Farukh Azad a 28-year-old assistant to the executive director of the Qatar Foundation. Farukh was to play an important role in Bogaert's later difficulties.

What Bogaert did not know was that Dialogic was already in trouble in Qatar. A Few months before he arrived, a powerful Qatari official had asked Dialogic’s management in Belgium for a bribe. Brussels refused and the marine festival organising committee retaliated by refusing to pay its invoices. Shortly after Bogaert's arrival, the committee served Dialogic Qatar with a default notice saying they were not delivering to their standards. The firm’s Belgian managing director was fired and Bogaert was given the job to mend fences.

But after just ten days in the job, the Qatari committee cancelled Dialogic’s contract and Bogaert's new job was to wind up its affairs. The problem was that he needed company sponsor Farukh’s agreement to liquidate but he boycotted meetings arranged to strike a deal. In October, the frustrated Bogaert handed in his resignation which was accepted by the company’s Belgian CEO. But Farukh refused the the resignation and wouldn’t sign the exit permit. Bogaert was placed on a no-travel list and was now effectively a hostage.

He contacted Qatari security police, who called Farukh to settle the matter. Farukh told police that Bogaert had created a lot of problems for the company and accused him of criminal intentions which he said he could prove. Because he was the sponsor, he could have been held responsible for Dialogic’s debts under Qatari law. So instead he launched a court case of his own to make Bogaert personally responsible for the debt.

Dialogic Belgium refused to intervene saying the debts and Bogaert's imprisonment was the sponsor’s decision and responsibility. Stranded and out of cash, he went to the Belgium Embassy in early December. The ambassador apologised and said he could not help him leave but offered to put him up at his own residence. To earn money, Bogaert turned to an old skill and began singing and playing the piano in bars and restaurants around Doha. Despite the support of Amnesty International, Qatar’s Human Rights Committee, and Foreign Affairs bureaus in Belgium and Qatar, no one would intervene in the court case.

On 31 May, he finally had his day in court for a liquidation hearing. Bogaert found it difficult to follow the Arabic proceedings but found out the judge had ruled that Dialogic Belgium were not represented and delayed the hearing to 1 November. By now foreign media were beginning to get interested in his story and he was interviewed by Le Soir, The Independent, the Huffington Post, the Gulf Times and Belgian radio.

On Friday 19 June, he was back in court facing criminal charges on a bouncing cheques case. On Monday 22 June Bogaert was found guilty and sentenced to three years imprisonment. On Twitter, he said: “I can pay 500 Riyals to freeze the judgment and appeal. Then I will have to be represented by a Qatari lawyer during the next hearings.” Bogaert told Journalism.co.uk “If I raise the money, I can appeal so won’t go to jail (yet). But unfortunately, I’ll still be far from free.” Thanks to his publicity, he raised the funds and on 29 June his lawyer told him he had successfully appealed with a new hearing date of 12 October.

Bogaert's use of social media has met with mixed support. While it has undoubtedly given his case a wider audience, Bogaert admits the Belgian ambassador is not very happy with the strategy. “I put [up] an open letter to apologise to officials,” he said. Interestingly Bogaert has not been supported by any media freedom organisations: "I am a TV broadcast manager, not a journalist,” he said. “Although I might become a journalist [in order to receive more support]”.

Russian human rights activist Natalia Estemirova murdered in Chechnya

Another human rights campaigner has been silenced in the time-honoured Russian fashion as Natalia Estemirova was abducted and then murdered in Chechnya. Four men seized the 50 year old Estemirova as she left for work in the capital Grozny yesterday morning. She shouted out "I'm being kidnapped” before the men dragged her into a waiting vehicle. Her body was found later that day dumped on a main road near the village of Gazi-Yurt in the neighbouring federal republic of Ingushetia. She had been shot twice in the head and chest.

Estemirova was an acknowledged expert on abuses in Chechnya where the long separatist war has morphed into a brutal counter-insurgency campaign. She documented hundreds of cases of torture carried out by Chechen security forces. In recent years, she focused on kidnappings that she believed had been carried out under the authority of the Chechen president, Ramzan Kadyrov. The 32 year old Kadyrov inherited Chechnya on the death of his father and runs the state as a personal fiefdom with the complete backing of the Kremlin.

Estemirova has had several run-ins with Kadyrov. In March 2008, after Estemirova criticised a law requiring Chechen women to wear head scarves, Kadyrov summoned her to his office and threatened her. Estemirova was so frightened she went abroad for several months. But she eventually felt compelled to return to fulfill her fate. Estemirova’s human rights group employers Memorial were quick to blame Kadyrov for her murder. Chairman Oleg Orlov put a statement on the Memorial's website where he said Ramzan had already threatened and insulted her and considered her a personal enemy. "I know, I am sure of it, who is guilty for the murder of Natalia,” Orlov said. “His name is Ramzan Kadyrov."

Kadyrov was also implicated in the murder of Estemirova’s close friend, the journalist and writer Anna Politkovskaya. Politkovskaya was an implacable critic of Russia’s policy in Chechnya and was shot dead outside her Moscow apartment in 2006. When asked whether he was responsible for that death, Kadyrov’s response was “I don’t kill women”.

No one has ever been charged for Politkovskaya’s murder and anyone who has tried to subsequently seek justice in the matter has been gunned down. Her lawyer Stanislav Markelov was shot dead in Moscow in January this year. A young investigative journalist named Anastasia Barburova was also killed when she tried to apprehend Markelov’s murderer. In a chilling postscript to the double murder, a party of Russian nationalists brought champagne to the murder scene the following day to celebrate the “elimination” of their enemies.

Russia continues to be one of the most dangerous places in the world for investigative campaigners, particularly journalists. In 2008 two died in Russia’s troubled southern republics (Dagestan and Ingushetia). The Kremlin has been of little help in solving any of the murders. Prosecutor-General Yuri Chaika blamed Politkovskaya’s death on people “trying to destabilise Russia from abroad”. The administration’s most implacable enemy, the newspaper Novaya Gazeta (co-founded by Mikhail Gorbachev) has been worst affected with four journalists murdered in eight years. The Reporters sans Frontieres Russia report for 2008 found that, independent newspapers shut down and journalists were imprisoned for attending opposition rallies. In a frightening reminder of Soviet practices, at least two reporters were forcibly sent to psychiatric hospitals for criticising local authorities.

Russian President Dmitri Medvedev has piously claimed to be “outraged” by the latest murder in Chechnya and has ordered an investigation. But given that Russian leaders have made similar unfulfilled promises in the past, there is little reason to believe this one will lead to anything substantial. Especially as it is extremely likely that the killers are either acting under the orders of the Russian Government or at the very least, have the tacit approval of Putin to remove unwanted critics of the administration. Russia remains a place where political murders are committed with impunity.

Newsy.com's report on the killing:

Abu Ghraib set to re-open

The Iraqi government has announced it will be re-opening the Abu Ghraib prison next month under a new name. The prison was closed in 2006 after a string of controversial incidents where Iraqi war prisoners were tortured and humiliated by American military personnel. Busho Ibrahim, Iraq’s deputy justice minister made the announcement last week and said the renovated facility will be renamed as Baghdad Central Prison. "We have named it Baghdad Central Prison because of its bad reputation as Abu Ghraib prison,” said Ibrahim, “not just because of what the Americans did there but also because of what the regime of Saddam has done.”

Located 32km out of the capital, Abu Ghraib means “place of ravens” in Arabic. The raven has long been considered a bird of ill omen and the prison was infamous in Iraq well before the Americans invaded. During the Saddam era the facility held thousands of inmates. The legal scholar Robert Alt noted in 2004 that it may have held as many as 400,000 people and was a place where Iraqis were detained for crimes that caused offence to the leader. He says it was a place where torture was the rule and not the exception; and a place that Iraqis feared worse than death itself. He quoted Abu Ghraib survivor Ala’a Abdul Hussien Hassan who said "I don’t believe that anybody can imagine what we’ve been through. We’ve been oppressed on all levels."

However it was its use in the post-Saddam era that made Abu Ghraib’s notoriety in the wider world. By the time that Alt wrote his piece about the Saddam era prison, US soldiers were already creating a new nightmare of oppression for its post-invasion inmates. When US forces arrived in Baghdad the previous April, Abu Ghraib was empty. Saddam released all the prisoners in one of last acts as dictator. US commanders on the ground were slow to adapt to the insurgency that erupted in the Summer and Autumn of 2003. As they began detaining thousands of Iraqis suspected of involvement, the problem of what to doing with them quickly spiralled out of control.

Around the same time, evidence began to emerge of torture at the facility. The CBS program 60 Minutes broadcast pictures of male and female US soldiers grinning and pointing at the genitals of naked prisoners. Others showed a naked and hooded inmate placed on a box with wires attached to his body. There were allegations of sexual abuses and attacks by dogs. The authorities quickly acted to court martial the offenders and tried to limit the damage by calling them “bad apples”. Bush apologised for “the humiliation suffered by Iraqi prisoners and..their families” but refused calls to sack Defence Secretary Rumsfeld.

But the politicians were the real culprits. Before the war General Eric K Shinseki estimated that several hundred thousand troops would be needed to occupy Iraq. Rumsfeld’s deputy Paul Wolfowitz called this estimate “wildly off the mark”. The Pentagon expected things to calm down and planned for just 100,000 troops. A spokesman for Shinseki (a former commander of the peacekeeping operation in Bosnia) said simply: "He was asked a question and he responded with his best military judgement."

Of course, time proved Shinseki's best military judgement right and Wolfowitz “wildly wrong”. This became apparent even in the early days of occupation. The army committee of inquiry found that the brigade in charge of Abu Ghraib was inadequately trained for its mission. Morale was also low. Most soldiers expected to go home after the occupation of Baghdad and became demoralised when he had to stay on to guard an influx of thousands of detainees. It didn’t help that heavy fighting took place in and around Abu Ghraib during the early years of the US invasion in Iraq. The prison was overcrowded, under-resourced and under continuous attack.

But while the chaotic conditions allowed corrupt and unsupervised behaviour to thrive, once again in it was the directive of politicians that lay at the heart of what went wrong. Back in 2002, President Bush issued a memorandum stating that the Geneva Convention did not apply to Al-Qaeda and that Taliban combatants were also not entitled to prisoner of war status. This new category of “unlawful combatants” would have far-reaching consequences even though it was never intended to apply to Iraq.

The inquiry noted that military intelligence personnel at Abu Ghraib had previously worked in Afghanistan and Guantanamo and believed the presidential order gave them permission to apply additional interrogation techniques. The abuses, the final report of the inquiry found, “would have been avoided with proper training, leadership and oversight”.

After the report was issued, the Americans moved to shut down the facility. President Bush announced in May 2004 said Abu Ghraib would be destroyed and replaced by” the construction of a modern, maximum security prison.” However the Iraqis opposed this plan and the Americans began gradually moving prisoners to Camp Bucca near the Kuwait border. By 2006 it was emptied of detainees and the US handed the facility over to the Iraqi government. Now the country’s deputy justice minister Ibrahim says the prison will house 3,500 inmates when it reopens in mid-February and will have a capacity for at least 15,000 by the end of this year. "This prison will solve many problems for us - huge problems," he said. The ghosts of the place of ravens may not agree.

Pressure groups condemn Chinese media tactics on eve of Olympics

The French-based media watchdog Reporters Sans Frontieres (RSF) made an unauthorised radio broadcast into Beijing just hours before the Olympic opening ceremony. The activist group say they used miniaturised transmitters and a home-made antenna to broadcast on an unused FM frequency. They aired 20-minute program in Mandarin, English and French and listeners heard Chinese human rights activists urging government to relax state control of the media. RSF secretary-general Robert Ménard also spoke on the program which began at 8:08am local time exactly 12 hours before the opening ceremony.

In the broadcast Robert Ménard called on the Chinese Government to respect free speech. He said China refused to issue visas to ten RSF members but this has not stopped them from making themselves heard in Beijing. Menard claimed it was the first non-state radio station to broadcast in China since the Communist Party took power in 1949. "Reporters Without Borders devised and carried out this protest in a spirit of resistance against state control of the media,” he said.

Another journalist advocacy body, the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) expressed their concern that China was refusing permission for an American-Tibetan journalist to attend the Games. They say Dhondup Gonsar, an American citizen of Tibetan ethnicity who works for the U.S. government-funded broadcaster Radio Free Asia (RFA), has not yet received press accreditation from Olympic organisers. Gonsar is currently in a hotel in Hong Kong, waiting for his papers to enter China. “The IOC (International Olympic Committee) has promised RFA that two of our reporters could cover the Games. I don’t understand why I have not gotten my IOC accreditation and am not allowed to cover the Games,” Gonsar told CPJ. “Maybe it has something to do with my ethnicity as a Tibetan.”

Their broadcast came as Human Rights Watch weighed in claiming a sharp increase in abuses in human rights and media freedom directly linked to China’s preparations for the games. They pointed to several examples including the intimidation and arrest of protesters against forced evictions, protesters against demolitions, harassment of foreign media in the wake of the Llasa riots, and a crackdown on Beijing’s “undesirables”. Sophie Richardson, Asia advocacy director for Human Rights Watch said China and the IOC have wasted a historic opportunity to use the Beijing Games to make progress on Chinese human rights. “That failure has damaged the prospects for a legacy of enhanced media freedom, greater tolerance for dissent, and respect for the rule of law,” she said.

Staffordshire University’s Professor John Herbert says that the media in China is a branch of government and that is how politicians see it. China’s newspapers are all state owned and virtually all printed material is first scrutinised by Communist Party officials. Prior to the handback of Hong Kong, the Xinhua news agency acted as a defacto Chinese embassy employing hundreds in news-gathering and intelligence functions. Herbert says China has a habit of increasing their grip on the media in times of sensitive anniversaries such as the founding of the People’s Republic, the Tibetan uprising and the Tiananmen Square massacre. The Olympics is no different. In these times, says Herbert, vigilance intensifies and journalists are ordered to pay particular attention to social order and political stability.

Spain gives human rights to great apes

Spain is likely to pass a law giving great apes human rights to life and freedom. Last month a parliamentary environmental committee urged the government to give rights to the closest genetic relatives to humans. With cross party support, it managed to commit the Spanish Government enact a law within 12 months to outlaw harmful experiments on apes. The committee modelled their plan on the declaration of the “Great Ape Project” which has the backing of scientists and philosophers.

The declaration affords rights equal to humans for all the other great apes: chimpanzees, bonobos, gorillas and orang-utans. It promotes the right to life, the protection of individual freedom and the prohibition of torture. The Great Ape Project was founded 15 years based on a book of that name by the philosophers Peter Singer and Paola Cavalieri.

In 1993, Singer and Cavalieri wrote about the rich emotional and cultural lives of non-human great apes. The book recommended the creation of an international body for the extension of the moral community to all great apes. The book compared the slave trade in human and non-human ape societies and expanded the boundaries for legal rights for the other apes based on the evolution of hominids.

Hominids emerged out of the Great Rift Valley. The valley was formed 15 million years ago in a tectonic parting of the ways that stretched 10,000 km from Lebanon’s Beqaa Valley through the Dead Sea, the Red Sea and down to the Great Lakes of Africa that fill its crevasses. Along the rift, are active and inactive volcanos, as well as lakes, deserts and plains. In places, the valley floor is lower than sea level. The crack is widening and will eventually rip Africa apart. But for the now the valleys teem with life.

The Rift is also a theatre of death. At Olduvai Gorge, in what is now Tanzania, archaeologists Louis and Mary Leakey found fossilised hominid skulls some 1.75 million tears old. Mary Leakey would go on to find footprints frozen in wet ash by hominid parents and their child fleeing an eruption that took place almost 4 million years ago. The long lifeline between Ethiopia and Tanzania was the home of human forebears for millions of years before they reached down to pick up a tool.

The valley is also home to many of the great apes including the chimpanzee. Seven million years ago, the common ancestor of chimps and humans lived in the forests of the valley. But no fossil record exists of this creature. Heavy rains leach minerals from the tropical forest grounds before anything can fossilise. But genetics show this creature exists. American physical anthropologist Richard Wrangham gave this ape a name: Pan prior.

The name meant ‘prior to Pan troglodytes’ the scientific name for chimps. Wrangham and others believe that climate change seven million years ago caused an ice age that dried up Africa. One branch of Pan priors moved on to the savannah in a desperate measure to survive. By the time the planet warmed again, these grassland dwellers preferred to stay in the open. While they had lost its ability to live in trees, they had picked up new skills on the savannah.

Those that stayed in the forest evolved into chimpanzees. They are exceptionally bright creatures and superb hunters. Their successful kill rate of 80 percent compares well to the 10 to 20 percent of lions. But like humans, they are also extremely brutal to each other. They will launch raids in other clan territories. There, they will ambush unwary lone males and maul him to death. Once they have carefully picked off all the males in this way, they will claim the females of the territory. Fights will then break out to determine the alpha male in the group.

Much of chimp behaviour is disturbingly similar to human behaviour. To give them the same rights as humans is reasonable, if a little perplexing in Spain which has no native great apes. But the ruling is also likely to be a shot across the bows of other animal related industries, including the bullfighting lobby. Certainly that’s how Pedro Pozas, the Spanish Great Apes Project director, sees it. He said that the vote would set a precedent, establishing legal rights for animals that could be extended to other species. “We are seeking to break the species barrier,” he said. “We are just the point of the spear.”

The case of Binyam Mohamed: US charges the last Brit in Gitmo

The US have announced they have charged the last British citizen held in Guantánamo Bay. The Pentagon has arraigned Binyam Mohamed, 30, for plotting with al-Qaeda to bomb apartment buildings in the US. His defence lawyers argue that the only evidence for these charges was extorted from him under torture. His lawyers wrote a letter to the Pentagon official overseeing the tribunal system to dismiss the charges stating that all the evidence against him appears to have been "derived from coercive interrogation and torture.” Binyam is the 20th detainee selected to face the military tribunals at Guantánamo, and the fifth in the last week.


Binyam Mohamed al-Habashi, was born in Ethiopia in 1979 and came to the UK with his father in 1995. He worked as a janitor at a mosque in west London. After seven years he applied for political asylum and was allowed to remain while his case was resolved. Binyam travelled to South Asia in 2002 and was arrested in Pakistan on a visa violation. Pakistan, then doing a lucrative trade in extraordinary rendition, turned him over to the US authorities for $5,000. Binyam asked what crime he had committed, and insisted on having a lawyer if he was going to be interrogated. The FBI told him: ‘The rules have changed. You don’t get a lawyer.”

US authorities flew him to Morocco where he underwent 18 months of regular torture including having a scalpel used to make incisions on his chest and penis. He was then transferred to the notorious “Dark Prison” in Kabul, Afghanistan. In operation between 2002 and 2004, it inmates called this top secret facility the “dark prison” or “prison of darkness,” where they were chained to walls, deprived of food and drinking water, and kept in total darkness with loud rap, heavy metal music, or other sounds blared for weeks at a time.

Binyam would later describe his experiences at the Dark Prison to his attorney:
“It was pitch black no lights on in the rooms for most of the time.... They hung me up. I was allowed a few hours of sleep on the second day, then hung up again, this time for two days. My legs had swollen. My wrists and hands had gone numb.... There was loud music, [Eminem’s] “Slim Shady” and Dr. Dre for 20 days.... [Then] they changed the sounds to horrible ghost laughter and Halloween sounds. [At one point, I was] chained to the rails for a fortnight.... The CIA worked on people, including me, day and night.... Plenty lost their minds. I could hear people knocking their heads against the walls and the doors, screaming their heads off.”

Despite being held there for several months Binyam did not lose his sanity. However, his hopes of release were dashed when was sent to Guantánamo Bay in September 2004. Binyam has been there ever since. In November 2005, the Pentagon used the evidence they gained under torture in Morocco to charge him with conspiring to plot attacks against the US. The court papers alleged that he was an accomplice of Jose Padilla in Pakistan where they allegedly proposed a fanciful plan to al Qaeda leaders that they travel to the US to detonate a "uranium-enhanced" explosive device. Although he faced a preliminary hearing, he was never fully tried. Britain sought his release along with another four other British residents in August 2007. While the others were released by Christmas, US refused requests to release Binyam. Last week, he was charged with terrorism-related offences and is due to be brought before a military tribunal at Guantánamo Bay.

In 2003 one of Britain’s top law lords described Gitmo military tribunals as “kangaroo courts”. Lord Steyn, one of the most senior judges in Britain's highest court, said the term implied "a pre-ordained arbitrary rush to judgement by an irregular tribunal, which makes a mockery of justice". Yet mockery or no, Binyam now faces the very real prospect of the death penalty. Binyam is being represented by human rights lawyer Clive Stafford Smith and his Reprieve team who specialise in representing “prisoners facing execution at the hands of the state in the conventional criminal justice system, or those subject to imprisonment outside the reach of the law in the ‘war on terror.’”

Smith says Binyam is in a very fragile mental and emotional state. Binyam is suffering from depression and has taken to smearing the walls of his cell with his own faeces. On Friday 30 May, Reprieve delivered a letter to Prime Minister Gordon Brown from Binyam that castigated British intelligence services for supplying evidence to his Moroccan torturers. The letter gave a graphic account of the pain inflicted including the cuts to his penis. "I felt like I was being stung by a million bees at once,” he wrote. “The floor was full of blood.” Binyam also spoke of a desire to commit suicide as “that would be one way to end, it I suppose”. A saner way to end it would be for the US to end this obscene charade and release Binyam from baseless and immoral charges.

Burma: media snapshot

This essay will offer a snapshot of the state of journalism in the Union of Myanmar, more commonly known as Burma. It will examine the roots and evolution of press journalism, the current situation in broadcasting, and will conclude with the examination of difficulties facing Burmese journalists such as censorship and threat of imprisonment.

Burma has a long and rich tradition of journalism. Lower Burma was established as a British colony after the Treaty of Yandabo in 1826 and within ten years the first western-style newspapers appeared in both English and Burmese. By 1919 Burmese language nationalist newspapers such as Myanmar Alin (New light of Burma) were agitating for change. Burma gained independence from Britain in 1948 with a democratically elected civilian political leadership. At the time Burma had a vibrant network of over 30 newspapers which operated with considerable freedom in a country of much natural wealth and widespread literacy. Burma’s international reputation was honoured by the elevation of U Thant as Asia’s first, and until the incumbent Ban Ki Moon the only, UN Secretary-General in 1961.

All that changed one year later, when General Ne Win staged a coup and installed a military regime that remains in power to this day. Under his junta, the country outlawed all other political parties and adopted the “Burmese way to socialism”. For the press, that way meant a system of licensing that required the registration of all publications. The new military rulers also issued a warning that seditious news was not to be published. Through the 1960s, Ne Win became more tyrannical and further press freedoms were eroded. In 1963 the junta closed down the prestigious Nation and began to publish its own propaganda in the Working People’s Daily. By the end of 1966, they banned all private newspapers and expelled Reuters and the Associated Press correspondents. In 1993 there was just one permitted newspaper, the Government run Working People’s Daily, printed in Burmese and English.

Similarly, the broadcast media of Radio and TV remain, for the most part, tightly controlled by the Government. Radio was a wartime legacy and the Burmese followed the British model when they set up the Burma Broadcasting Service (BBS) after independence. Programmers on the BBS operated with similar freedom to the press until it too was abruptly ended by the military takeover in 1962. Myanmar TV began in 1980 and was supplemented by a military channel in 1990. Both channels are owned and operated by the government and the military. But the government doesn’t totally control the airwaves. While foreign stations such as Rupert Murdoch's STAR TV are officially available only to five star hotels in Yangon (Rangoon) and high ranking officials, enterprising citizens in northern towns have smuggled satellite dishes across the border from China.

Burma has a very active culture of censorship. The Press Scrutiny and Registration Division check every article, editorial, cartoon, advertisement and illustration ahead of publication. Censorship affects the reporting of such varied issues as political opposition, the UN and even the bird flu epidemic. Burma also insists that all fax machines be registered and journalists can earn a seven year prison sentence for having an unauthorised fax, video camera, modem or a copy of a banned publication.

There are other major impediments facing Burmese journalists. The Committee to Protection of Journalists (CPJ) describe Burma as one of the most repressive places for journalists, trailing only North Korea on their “10 Most Censored Countries” list. Even minimal attempts to report the facts are ruthlessly crushed. Two journalists were imprisoned for attempting to film outside the country’s controversial new capital and at least seven journalists were behind bars, making Burma the world’s fifth leading jailer of journalists. The situation is symptomatic of what Human Rights Watch calls “the dire state of human rights in the country".

Red Cross denounce Burma's human rights record

The Red Cross publicly denounced Burma’s military junta for its human rights record last Friday. The move represents a rare departure for International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) which prefers quiet diplomacy to open attack. ICRC president Jakob Kellenberger criticised the military regime for violating international humanitarian law by murdering civilians, forcing prisoners to serve as army “porters” in combat areas strewn with landmines and destroying village food stocks.

Burma has blocked the ICRC from independent visits to detention centres and prisons to check on conditions for the past two years, and the Red Cross says its staff faces increasing difficulty in delivering aid. Normally this would result in a private complaint to the relevant government. But the ICRC has run out of patience with Burma. Kellenberger’s rare public denunciation was prompted by the consistent refusal of the military junta to enter into a serious discussion of human rights abuses.

ICRC’s findings were based on observations made by their delegates as well as numerous allegations of abuse they collected during private interviews with thousands of civilians and detainees between 2000 and 2005. Systematic abuses against detainees and civilians are the primary source of serious concern. Burma has set up a prison system which forces thousands of detainees to support the armed forces by serving as porters. These porters have been exposed to armed conflict as well as abused, exhausted, malnourished and sometimes murdered.

Civilians along the Thai-Burmese border have also suffered at the hands of the military. A large-scale military offensive in northern Karen state during 2006 displaced an estimated 27,000 civilians, and destroyed over 230 villages. The army also destroyed their food supplies and means of production. The state is the home of the Karen National Union (KNU) which has been fighting to establish an independent Karen state (Kawthoolei) since 1956. Since the KNU called off a ceasefire in 2006, the army has severely restricted freedom of movement, making it impossible for villagers to work in their fields. This has had a significant impact on the economy, aggravating an already precarious humanitarian situation.

The worsening of relations between the ICRC and Burma is due to a change in the junta’s power structure. In October 2004 then 65-year old General Khin Nyunt was sacked as Prime Minister by senior junta leader Than Shwe. Shwe had become increasingly irritated by Nyunt’s “liberal” policies. Nyunt had made the mistake of announcing a seven-point "road map" to democracy, plans for a new National Constitutional Convention and "free and fair" elections. Nyunt was also responsible for a peace deal with the KNU. However since he was summarily dismissed for “health reasons”, human rights abuses have increased.

The ICRC attack came after a UN special representative finished a five-day trip to Burma. Radhika Coomaraswamy met with several top junta officials on her visit. She discussed the possibility of setting up a UN task force to verify information about the use of children soldiers by the Burmese military and insurgent groups. The report will be prepared for the UN Security Council Working Group on Children and Armed Conflict which meets in November this year.

Burma’s has been under military rule since 1962 and has one of the world's worst records in human rights abuses. Its isolationism has increased in the last 12 months. The army junta known as the State Peace and Development Council (SPDC) have suppressed the Burmese democratic movement since they declared the 1990 election null and void, while Aung San Suu Kyi and other political activists continued to be detained or imprisoned. The SPDC also forcibly moved thousands of civil servants to the anonymous new capital Naypidaw in 2005 due to a fear of a foreign military intervention and to lessen the impacts of civilian protests in Rangoon.

According to the ICRC, Burma's military have created "a climate of constant fear among the population and have forced thousands of people to join the ranks of the internally displaced, or to flee abroad”.

No amnesty on human rights abuses

Yesterday, Amnesty International (AI) announced its concerns about the widespread impunity of perpetrators of domestic violence in Georgia. They also announced a rally in Dublin next week to pressure the international community into protecting the civilians caught up in the deadly conflict in Darfur, Western Sudan. Two days ago they claimed Libyan police opened fire on political prisoners, killing one and wounding at least nine others. AI has a strong worldwide presence and is not afraid to use it.

Founded in 1961, Amnesty International (AI) is probably the most famous human rights organisation in the world. In 1948 the UN General Assembly, fresh from the horrors of World War II, agreed on a Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR). However with the power of the state paramount, the UN had no means of enforcing these rights. Many people continue to suffer as a result of brutish government treatment across the world. Two such people were Portuguese students who were sentenced to seven years imprisonment in 1960 for remarks that were critical of the Salazar Portuguese dictatorship. The students had raised their wine glasses in a toast to freedom. British lawyer Peter Benenson read about the plight of the students and got together with other authors, academics and lawyers to write an article in Britain’s Observer newspaper. Called “The Forgotten Prisoners”, the article hailed those globally who were “imprisoned, tortured or executed because of opinions or religion unacceptable” to their governments thus violating the principles of articles 18 and 19 of the UDHR. The article launched 'Appeal for Amnesty, 1961', the aim of which was to mobilize public opinion in defence of those who Benenson described as "Prisoners of Conscience". The article was reprinted in newspapers throughout the world. In July that year, the first international meeting was held. It had delegates from Belgium, UK, France, Germany, Ireland, Switzerland and the United States who decided to establish "a permanent international movement in defence of freedom of opinion and religion." The first AI groups were founded in the UK, West Germany, Netherlands, France, Italy and Switzerland. Within a year they had 1,200 cases documented in their Prisoners of Conscience Library.

In 1963, the great Irish jurist Sean MacBride was elected Chairman of the newly established International Executive Committee (IEC) and Benenson himself became president of the organisation a year later. It also received a boost when the UN gave AI consultative status in 1964. MacBride won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1974 in recognition of his lifelong work for human rights. Three years later AI achieved its pinnacle by also winning the Peace Prize. The committee cited them for “"having contributed to securing the ground for freedom, for justice, and thereby also for peace in the world". Its membership rose 15,000 in 1969 to 200,000 ten years later.

By the 1980s its successes were creating a number of enemies despite its ontribution to peace in the world. The USSR alleged that AI spied on it, Morocco denounced it as a defender of criminals, and Argentina banned AIs annual report. By the 1990s, the growing humanitarian crisis of the world’s refugees was taking centre stage in AI’s thinking. AI concentrated on those forced to flee because of human rights violations. It was instrumental in the creation of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights (1993) and the International Criminal Court (2002). The new century has posed new problems for the organisation as it approaches its 50th birthday. In the 9/11 aftermath, new AI Secretary General, Irene Khan reported that a senior US government official had said to Amnesty International delegates: "Your role collapsed with the collapse of the Twin Towers in New York". It has been heavily criticised by many in the US media for its “vitriolic condemnations” of the US especially in relation to the Guantanamo detainees.

AI now has more than 1.8 million members, supporters and subscribers in over 150 countries and territories in every region of the world. Major policy decisions are taken by an International Council made up of representatives from all national sections. It works best in the areas of least hope. Its latest report on Sudan, tells us “The people of Darfur are crying out for security. Thousands of civilians have been killed, tortured and raped, and hundreds of thousands have been forcibly displaced since 2003”. AI continues to play a crucial NGO role in reminding us of our most chronic human rights issues. Now more than ever, Peter Benenson's freedom of opinion needs its doughty defenders.

Suu Kyi house arrest extended

Aung San Suu Kyi is the world’s most famous political prisoner. She has spent 11 of the past 18 years under house arrest in Rangoon, the capital of Burma. Last month, the country's military rulers decided to extend her house arrest when her confinement order expired on May 27, 2006. May 27 was sixteen years ago to the day when Suu Kyi and her National League for Democracy (NLD) party won a crushing 82 per cent of the vote in a general election, a majority that could not have sent a clearer message to the ruling military junta about what the nation thought of its 28-year dictatorship.

Nonetheless the government have ignored the world and indefinitely extended her detention. This was despite pleas such as the one from UN Secretary General Kofi Annan "I'm relying on you, General Than Shwe, to do the right thing," he said, in a direct appeal to the country's senior leader.

Now Annan is saying “despite this setback, the international community cannot abandon the search for improvements in the difficult situation in Myanmar.”

In 1989 the ruling junta renamed the English version of its name from Burma to Myanmar to denote the majority Bamar ethnic group. Myanmar was already the name in Burmese. The West has been slow to embrace the change and organisations such as the BBC and the New York Times still refer to it as Burma.

Burma was a series of independent kingdoms that evolved through the centuries. The Konbaung Dynasty ruled in the 18th and 19th century and fought a series of wars with British India. By the time of the third Anglo-Burmese war in 1885, the British had conquered the whole of the country and turned it into an Indian province. Burma was split from India and set up as a separate colony in 1937. When the Second World War broke out, some leaders such as Aung San (the father of Aung San Suu Kyi) called for a national uprising against the British. He fled to China but fell into Japanese hands. The Japanese offered him support to form the Burmese Independence Army (BIA).

The Japanese invaded Burma in 1942 and they allowed the BIA to form a provisional government. But the Japanese didn’t like how truly independent they were becoming. They disbanded the BIA and replaced it with the Burmese Defence Army still under Aung San. The Japanese trained this army and they appointed Ba Maw as puppet head of state. A disillusioned Aung San formed an anti-Japanese group and they rose up in rebellion in March 1945. The Japanese were routed and left the country in defeat in May. The British reinstalled a governor who convinced the hugely popular Aung Sun to join a ruling council. In 1947 his party won a landslide victory in Burma’s first election. Unfortunately for him, he and six of his newly formed cabinet members were assassinated on the orders of a conservative politician U Saw.

Despite the assassinations, Burma transitioned to become a democratic republic in 1948. The republic lasted until the military coup of 1962. General Ne Win took over. Ne Win was a contemporary of Aung Sun and one of the leaders who travelled to Toyko for wartime training. He cemented his reputation in the 1950s when he put down the Karen rebellion. Having taken power, he dissolved parliament and ruled alone for the next 26 years. In 1990, free elections were held but the landslide victory of the NLD, the party of Aung San’s daughter, Aung San Suu Kyi was voided by the military, which refused to step down.

Aung San Suu Kyi was only 2 years old when her father was killed. She was educated in English Catholic schools for much of her childhood in Burma. Her mother Khin Kyi was appointed as Burmese ambassador to India in 1960, and Suu Kyi followed, graduating in New Delhi in 1964. She then went to Oxford when she got a BA in Philosophy, Politics and Economics in 1967. She went to work for the UN in New York and married an Englishman, the Tibetan scholar Michael Aris, in 1972. She returned to her native country in 1988 to care for her ailing mother. In that year, the long-time leader General Ne Win stepped down among democracy demonstrations which were violently suppressed. A new military junta took power. Suu Kyi entered politics, influenced by Ghandi’s theories of non-violence. She founded the National League for Democracy (NLD) and was placed under house arrest in 1989. She was offered freedom in exchange for leaving the country but she refused.

The junta called elections in 1990 which the NLD won easily. However the military refused to hand over power which resulted in international outrage. Suu Kyi won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1991 for her “non-violent struggle for democracy and human rights". She was released from house arrest in 1995 but told she would not be allowed back in if she left the country. Her dying husband was not allowed an entry visa. They never saw each other again as he died in an Oxford hospital in 1999. She was repeatedly prevented from meeting with her party supporters, and in September 2000 was again put under house arrest. The UN negotiated for her release in 2002 and she proclaimed "a new dawn for the country". This dawn was short-lived. In May 2003, her entourage was attacked in a remote northern village by a government-sponsored mob that killed and wounded many of her supporters. Suu Kyi fled the scene but was arrested shortly after. She was imprisoned in Yangon and was again placed under house arrest in Yangon after a hysterectomy in September 2003.

The United Nations has continued to lobby Burma for her release. She is the subject of a high-profile international campaign by the US government, dignitaries and such musical artists as U2, REM and Coldplay. Nonetheless she remains imprisoned under the 1975 State Protection Act which grants the government the power to imprison persons for up to five years without a trial.

General Than Shwe remains implacably opposed to her release and with the support of China and the leadership of ASEAN, he is confident his position is strong enough to ride out the international condemnation. Drug money from the Golden Triangle is widely suspected of keeping the Burmese economy afloat. Shwe’s regime has profited from the flow of drugs across the border into Thailand. Most local investment in that country is laundered drug money. Some five-star hotels, many finance houses and a large percentage of all tourist facilities are built by money from druglords.

And while Suu Kyi remains locked up, none of that is likely to change any time soon.

Human Rights in Australia

The excellent website run by Human Rights Watch turns the spotlight on Australia and its Temporary Protection Visas for refugees.

The key points of the attack are: temporary status is inappropriate for fully adjusted refugees, there are procedural failings in TPVs and they create a misallocation of resources.

The first point (inappropriateness) is further divided into 3 parts.

They are
a) Australian policy has no international precedent. For instance in the US, temporary protection is an additional status to regular refugee status – not a replacement for it.
b) TPVs should have a finite duration. Without this, it means that despite growing significant ties to Australia during their stay, they may always remain on TPVs.
c) there is no jurisdiction in international law for re-proving refugee claims.

The procedural flaws include:
a) TPVs shift the burden of proof from the state to the migrants themselves. People who have been subject to gross human rights violations never want to return to their native country regardless of how conditions may have changed there in the interim.
b) “The 7 day rule” means that those on TPVs can be banned from ever applying for permanent protection visas.
c) There are limitations on judicial reviews. The misallocation of resources means that every individual claim is judged at least twice.

Refugees know better than any bureaucrat where is truly ‘home’ for them.

Still No #
So this is public property, I no longer own
These words…unless, unless they never leave me
Best lay in doubt and working it out
Find its time and measurements deceive me
People take comfort in truth
Nesting in a willing sanctuary
There was an asylum beside them
A people crushing factory
Laying awake at night afeared
Wondering what happened to Occam’s beard
Nutmeg omelettes at the Grand
Dynamite energy total fire banned
My reaction semi-equal and opposite
Friends and enemas becoming composite
Thus enamoured will defeat with ease
Under shower of cloud-cow faeces
Me I’m just making ends meet