27/05/2004 00:00
TW
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by MONITOR
EVERY year the United States State Department puts out a report listing countries whose observance of their citizens' human rights is not what it should be. This year's report was due about a month ago but has not yet appeared, for reasons one can easily understand. Amnesty International also makes a similar annual report which was published yesterday. It documents human rights abuses in 155 countries including execution, detention with judicial process, hostage taking and “disappearances” by state agents. Britain is named among the 47 countries in which extrajudicial executions were carried out last year; the reference is to Northern Ireland with eight killings attributed to loyalist paramilitaries and two to Republican dissident paramilitaries.

The main thrust of the report is that the growth of hostilities between governments and armed groups (it does not use the word “terrorists”) such as al–Qaeda are putting human rights and international humanitarian law under the greatest pressure for more than 50 years. It says that attacks by al–Qaeda and others “sometimes amount to war crimes and crimes against humanity” but points out that the principles of international law that could limit such attacks are being undermined and marginalised by countries such as the United States. In a remarkably forceful passage the report says: “The global security agenda promoted by the US administration is bankrupt of vision and bereft of principle. Violating human rights at home, turning a blind eye to abuses abroad and using pre–emptive military action where and when it chooses has damaged justice and freedom, and made the world a more dangerous place.” Amnesty International's bleakest comment is that 2003 dealt a blow to the UN's vision of universal human rights, with the global body “virtually paralysed in its efforts to hold states to account”.