Leading human rights group Amnesty International Wednesday said efforts by several governments – including many in Asia – to fight terrorism through stringent domestic measures in the aftermath of the September 11 attacks on the U.S. are curtailing human rights across the world.
The group’s Report 2004 stresses that many countries in the Asia-Pacific used the U.S.-led “war on terror” to restrict people’s rights.
“The belief of several governments in the Asia-Pacific region that human rights could be curtailed under the ‘war on terror’ umbrella was particularly apparent in China, India, Malaysia, Pakistan and Thailand,” charges the report – a 339-page account of human rights issues in the world in 2003.
“Hundreds of people suspected of ‘terrorism’ found themselves condemned to legal black holes as the authorities ignored national and international legal frameworks,” it says.
The report points out that in Pakistan, over 500 people, including Arabs and Afghans, apart from Pakistan nationals, were arrested and handed over to the U.S. authorities for suspected links with the Taliban of Afghanistan or the Al Qaeda.
In India, there was “increasing concern at the erosion of human rights protection” as the government launched “anti-terrorism” measures against armed political groups.
“Among the most worrying aspects of developments in South Asia is the increasing legislation on security matters,” cautions Purnima Upadhyay, interim director of Amnesty International India. “The legislation marks the further marginalization of the poor,” she adds.
Amnesty cites the example of the Prevention of Terrorism Act (POTA) in India, which has mostly been used to detain political opponents, the poor or members of minority communities.
Sharma points out that POTA in the western Indian state of Gujarat has overwhelmingly been used against the minority Muslim population, while elsewhere it has been used against Dalits – the so-called lowest strata in the traditional Hindu hierarchy – tribals and other marginalized people.
In Pakistan, the government’s support of the U.S. “war on terrorism” led to a “further undermining” of human rights.
Amnesty cites the case of Khaled Sheikh Mohammad who was arrested in February 2003 and handed over to the Americans in early March. His two sons, aged 9 and 7, were also handed over to the U.S. authorities in an apparent bid to put pressure on Mohammad.
The report says that the sons were also flown to the U.S. in March last year, and till the end of 2003, their whereabouts were not known.
“Amnesty International believes that only a concerted effort by the world human rights community can resist and reverse the trend of increasing human rights abuses in the context of the ‘war on terror’ and abuses by armed groups,” the report maintains.
It notes that gradually, even the courts in the United Kingdom and the U.S. have begun to “scrutinize government attempts to restrict human rights” in the battle against terrorism.
The report, which details violations as well as protection of human rights in all countries, points out that the truce between the Sri Lanka government and the armed separatist group, the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam, has contributed to an “improved” human rights situation.
On the other hand, in Nepal, also in south Asia, a breakdown in talks between the government and Maoists insurgents led to an increase in “arbitrary arrests, ‘disappearances,’ extrajudicial executions and torture by security forces.”
In India, communal tensions continued last year after months of violence left at least 2000 Muslims dead in Gujarat, where anti-Muslim violence broke out after 57 Hindus died when a train was torched allegedly by a Muslim mob in February 2002.
In 2003, witnesses to the violence and rights activists were threatened and the state judiciary dealing with the cases of minority killings came under a cloud after many of the accused were released.
The report points out that nearly half of 4,252 complaints lodged by individuals on religious violence were closed.
One of the reasons cited by the police for the closure of the cases was that they were unable to identify the people who had been accused of the violence.
An Indian nongovernmental organization, the New Delhi-based Act Now for National Harmony and Democracy, stresses that the situation is no better in 2004. “Violence against minorities and those fighting bigotry continues in different forms,” charges ANHAD founder Shabnam Hashmi.
Hashmi points out that a group of school students on a peace campaign in Gujarat were manhandled by members of a radical Hindu group affiliated to the political party ruling the state government in April this year. “The climate is no better now than before,” she says.
(One World)
