Myanmar's Unwanted Boat People

According to the UNHCR, at least 230,000 Rohingya now live a precarious, stateless existence in Bangladesh alone, having fled their homes in Myanmar's North Rakhine state. Those who have not fled are restricted from travel inside the country, while human rights groups say Rohingya face abuses by the Myanmar military that make the recent crackdown on democracy protests seem pale in comparison.

Gabriele Marranci, professor of anthropology of Islam at the National University of Singapore, told Al Jazeera the main reason the Rohingya are "unwanted" in Thailand, and also facing the prospect of deportation from Indonesia, is that they "lack strategic value".

"There seems to be a consensus among countries neighbouring Myanmar to also treat the Rohingya as a stateless group which has no place in their societies," he said.

Read More At Al Jazeera

Waterboarding In 1920's American South

Waterboarding was sometimes used in the Deep South to torture African-Americans and to extract false confessions to alleged crimes. And when it emerged in an appeal as long ago as 1926, even the Mississippi Supreme Court ruled it categorically “a specie of torture well known to the bench and bar of the country,” and “barbarous.” They over-turned a guilty verdict for murder by an African-American man against a white man because such methods invalidated any notion of a reliable confession.

Read More At SF Bay View

Immigrant Prisoners Stage Uprising in Texas

Details are still sketchy of an inmate uprising at a privately-operated federal detention facility in West Texas last Saturday. Reports in the U.S. and Mexican press suggest the revolt, involving hundreds prisoners at the Reeves County Detention Center in Pecos, Tex., erupted after complaints of poor medical treatment went unheeded.

Initial accounts report the uprising spanned two days, with inmates setting fires and possibly even seizing guards’ radio communication equipment.The uprising is now declared over, and as many as 700 former Pecos prisoners are reportedly confined at another detention center in Sierra Blanca, Tex., because sleeping areas were destroyed during Saturday’s rebellion. Many of the inmates at the Pecos prison were held on immigration law violations.

Managed by the Florida-based Geo Group, the Pecos facility is among many immigrant detention centers in the United States currently run by private companies. The jail has a capacity of 2,400 inmates, according to information posted on Geo Group’s Web site.

Read More At AlterNet

Slain Exile Detailed Cruelty of the Ruler of Chechnya

For more than two years, Mr. Israilov, a Chechen in exile, had formally accused Russia’s government of allowing a macabre pattern of crimes in Chechnya. Even by the dark norms of violence in the Caucasus, his accusations were extraordinary.

A rebel fighter turned bodyguard of Ramzan A. Kadyrov, Chechnya’s current president, Mr. Israilov had access to the inner ring of Chechen power. Mr. Kadyrov’s career has been sponsored by Prime Minister Vladimir V. Putin of Russia, who as president lifted him from obscurity with unwavering Kremlin support.

In written legal complaints, Mr. Israilov described many brutal acts by Mr. Kadyrov and his subordinates, including executions of illegally detained men. One executed man, Mr. Israilov said, had been beaten with a shovel handle by Mr. Kadyrov and Adam Delimkhanov, now a member of Russia’s Parliament. Another prisoner, the defector said, was sodomized by a prominent police officer and at Mr. Kadyrov’s order put to death.

Mr. Israilov said he and others had been tortured by Mr. Kadyrov, who amused himself by personally giving prisoners electric shocks or firing pistols at their feet.

Read More At The New York Times

MPs to Hear Claims That Britain Colluded in Torture of Suspects

Last year, the Guardian reported a story relating to a number of suspects arrested in Pakistan at the request of British authorities between 2003 and 2007. The men say they were repeatedly tortured by agents of Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence agency (ISI), before being questioned by MI5.

One of the alleged victims, Rangzieb Ahmed, from Manchester, says that in 2006 he was beaten, whipped, deprived of sleep and had three fingernails extracted by ISI agents at the Rawalpindi centre before being interrogated by two MI5 officers.

Read More At The Guardian

CIA Prisons Emptied, But Rendition Remains

The CIA's secret prisons are being shuttered. Harsh interrogation techniques are off-limits. And Guantanamo Bay will eventually go back to being a wind-swept naval base in southeastern Cuba. But even while dismantling these discredited programs, President Obama left an equally controversial counterterrorism tool intact.

Under executive orders issued by Obama last week, the CIA still has authority to carry out what are known as renditions, or the secret abductions and transfers of prisoners to countries that cooperate with the United States.

Read More At SF Chronicle

Long Cleared of Terrorism Charges, Uyghurs Languish in Gitmo Prison and Albanian Exile

Uyghur prisoners at Guantanamo have long been determined to be not guilty of terrorism. But seventeen of these ethnic Muslim Chinese are still imprisoned at Guantanamo after almost eight years. Five were forcibly resettled in Albania, isolated and away from their families.

Twenty-two of Uyghers ended up in Guantanamo, five were released in mid-2006 to Albania, and the remaining seventeen continue to languish in detention because no country wants to resettle them. Sabin Willett, an attorney for the Uyghurs, sent a letter to Secretary of Defense Robert Gates and Attorney General-designate Eric Holder, urging them to immediately release the Uyghurs and resettle them in the United States.

Read More At Democracy Now

Financed by the British Taxpayer, Brutal Torturers of the West Bank

The horrific torture of hundreds of people by Palestinian security forces in the West Bank is being funded by British taxpayers.An investigation by The Mail on Sunday has found that the forces responsible get £20million a year from the UK.

The victims – some left maimed – are rounded up for alleged involvement with the militant Islamic group Hamas, yet many have nothing to do with it.They are targeted because the Fatah party, which runs the semi-autonomous Palestinian Authority (PA) on the West Bank, is the bitter rival of Hamas, which controls the war-torn Gaza strip.

Britain’s Department for International Development (DFID) gave £76million in all to the PA last year for ‘security sector reform’ and fostering the rule of law. Yet the PA forces are carrying out torture, and the authority ignores judges’ orders to release political detainees. Last month at least 30 journalists, teachers and students were arrested – as the crackdown on Hamas was praised by a senior Israeli defence official as a necessary ‘iron fist policy’.

Read More At The Daily Mail

"Sodomy Laws" Rooted in British Colonialism

Although 66 countries signed a statement at the United Nations on Dec. 19 affirming that human rights protections extend to sexual orientation and gender identity, activists note that dozens of nations still criminalise homosexuality and seven impose the death penalty.The New York-based

Human Rights Watch says that the oppressive legacy of British colonialism is at the heart of many of these laws that penalise consensual sexual activity among adults of the same sex. According to a report titled "This Alien Legacy", launched last week, more than half of the world's remaining "sodomy laws" derive from a single law on homosexual conduct that British colonial rulers imposed on India in 1860.

The law, known as Section 377 under the Indian penal code, was designed to set standards of behaviour, both to "reform" the colonised and to protect the colonisers against "moral lapses". It was the first colonial "sodomy law" integrated into a penal code, and it became a model for countries across Asia, the Pacific Islands and Africa -- almost everywhere the British imperial flag flew.

Read More At IPS

Cutters Turn Razors on Babies to Evade FGM/C Law

Women performing excisions in Burkina Faso are cutting babies instead of young girls to escape increased scrutiny, according to the government and organisations fighting female genital mutilation/cutting (FGM/C).

FGM/C has been outlawed in Burkina Faso since 1996 and is punishable by up to 10 years in prison and US$1500 in fines. In the years following the law the number of FGM/C victims younger than five years old increased from 20 percent in 1998 to 31 percent in 2003, according to the government.

At least 70 newborns nationwide were admitted for hospital emergency care after botched cuttings in the first three months of 2008, according to the government.

Read More At IRIN

Rohingya Refugees Face Deportation

A group of Rohingya refugees who were beaten and burned by Myanmar soldiers as they tried to flee on boats to Thailand are facing likely deportation back to Myanmar. The 78 refugees were intercepted earlier this week by Thai authorities, who have themselves faced accusations of abusing Rohingya boat people in recent days.

One man who gave his name as Sutamin said he was taken onto a military vessel, where soldiers wrapped a cloth around a wooden stick, doused it in kerosene, ignited it and held it to his skin. "I got beaten. Everybody got beaten," he said. "But not a normal beating - this was very hard. I was tortured."He said the soldiers had also tied a noose around his neck and threatened to strangle him.

On Wednesday 66 members of the group appeared in court in the town of Ranong in southern Thailand to hear charges of illegally entering the country. They were not represented by lawyers and will not have an opportunity to defend themselves.The remaining members of the group were minors too young to appear in court.

Read More At Al Jazeera

Congo Militia Leader 'Trained Child Soldiers to Kill'

A Congolese militia leader trained child soldiers to kill and pillage, the international criminal court heard as it finally began its historic first trial today.Thomas Lubanga, the former head of the Union of Congolese Patriots (UPC), appeared before the court six years after the world's first permanent war crimes tribunal was set up in The Hague on charges of conscripting children under 15 and sending them into battle.

The UPC "recruited and trained hundreds of children to kill, pillage and rape", the chief prosecutor, Luis Moreno-Ocampo, said in an opening address.

"Hundreds of children still suffer the consequences of Lubanga's crimes. They cannot forget what they suffered, what they did, what they saw. They cannot forget the beatings they suffered, they cannot forget the terror they felt and the terror they inflicted. They cannot forget the sounds of the machine guns, they cannot forget that they killed. They cannot forget that they raped, that they were raped."

Read More At The Gaurdian

Plight of Greece's Migrants Worsens

On Wednesday, shortly after 7 pm local time,a fire razed 65 huts in the sprawling settlement of rudimentary homes of corrugated cardboard, plastic sheeting and scrap wood, that has for more than a decade sheltered countless illegal migrants, mostly from Afghanistan. While no one was injured, more than 400 illegal migrants lost the roof over their heads right in the middle of Greece's cold, wet winter.

Almost 48 hours after the devastation, aid workers and illegal migrants told Al Jazeera that Greek government officials had yet to respond to the practical needs of those left homeless.

"Last night I slept on the road; tonight I will sleep on the road," says Irfan, a 14-year-old Afghan who has lived in the camp for one month. "I need a home."

Read More At Al Jazeera

Private Assassins Target Gangs In Guatemala

Earlier this fall, the head of the Organization of American States warned that violent crime is an epidemic in Latin America, fueled by street gangs, drug trafficking and poverty. There, gun homicides are four times the world average.

In Guatemala, people have had enough of corrupt police and brutal extortions by gangs. They've turned to vigilantism. Lynch mobs and death squads are now commonplace. Twenty-five years ago, public enemy No. 1 was the leftist guerrillas who were at war with the government of Guatemala. They were branded subversives, delinquents, anti-social elements, and they were disappeared by death squads in the dark of night.

Today, the enemies of society are the maras, the street gangs whose members are estimated to number 80,000. And the violent campaign to eradicate them is called limpieza social, or social cleansing.

Read More At NPR

DR Congo's Bemba Accused of Ordering Mass Rapes

Prosecutors at the International Criminal Court in The Hague have accused Jen-Pierre Bemba, a former rebel leader in the Democratic Republic of Congo, of ordering mass rapes.At a hearing on Monday to decide if Bemba will face trial, the prosecutors said he had used rape to terrorise civilians suspected of supporting rivals in the Central African Republic.

Bemba, who also served as vice-president in DR Congo's post-civil war transitional government, faces three counts of crimes against humanity and five counts of war crimes."Bemba's men went from house to house, pillaging and raping mothers, wives and daughters," Petra Kneuer, the prosecutor, said.The troops were instructed to "traumatise and terrorise" the population to prevent them from supporting any resistance to Ange-Felix Patasse, the Central African Republic president, the prosecution said."To do this, he [Bemba] chose rape as his main method," Kneuer said.

Read More At Al Jazeera

UN Struggles to House Displaced After Gaza Invasion

Democrats Inch Toward Torture Probe

On Wednesday – the first working day of the Obama administration – Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid said he would support funding and staff for additional fact-finding by the Senate Armed Services Committee, which last month released a report tracing abuse of detainees at Guantanamo Bay and Abu Ghraib to Bush’s Feb. 7, 2002, decision to exclude terror suspects from Geneva Convention protections.

Senate Armed Services Committee Chairman Carl Levin, who issued that report, echoed Reid’s comments, saying “there needs to be an accounting of torture in this country.” Levin, D-Michigan, also said he intends to encourage the Justice Department and incoming Attorney General Eric Holder to investigate torture practices that took place while Bush was in office.

Read More At Consortium News

Israeli Forces Arrest Seven Children in West Bank

Seven children from Toura al-Gharbeiah village (near the West Bank city of Jenin) were arrested on Tuesday by the Israeli authorities; they are currently detained in Salim detention and interrogation center, in the northern West Bank. Two of the children are only 12 years old; two are 13; another two are aged 15; and the seventh is 17.

The Israeli intelligence, police and army entered Toura al-Gharbeiah village and arrested the seven children from their respective homes.The children were then assembled in a public building in the village, and interrogated there. They were alleged to have thrown stones at the Wall and were intimidated into confessing.

Read More At Electronic Intifada

Thailand Accused of Mistreating Muslim Refugees

Nearly 1,000 refugees were detained on a remote island in December before being towed out to sea and abandoned with little food or water, rights group says. Hundreds of Muslim refugees from Burma (Myanmar) are feared missing or dead after Thai troops forced them onto boats without engines and cut them adrift in international waters, according to human rights activists and authorities in India who rescued survivors. The revelations have shone a spotlight on the Thai military's expulsion policy toward Muslims it sees as a security threat.

Nearly 1,000 refugees were detained on a remote island in December before being towed out to sea in two batches and abandoned with little food or water, according to a tally by a migrant-rights group based on survivors' accounts and media reports. The detainees, mostly members of Burma's oppressed Rohingya minority, then drifted for weeks. One group was later rescued by Indonesia's Navy, and two others made landfall in India's Andaman Islands. Photos of refugees on a Thai island show rows of bedraggled men stripped to the waist as soldiers stand guard.

Read More At The Christian Science Monitor

KENYA: Hiding From the Cruellest Cut

Hundreds of girls between seven and 17 are seeking refuge in church compounds in western Kenya to avoid the ritual removal of their clitorises, a practice that remains common despite its illegality.

"Local authorities must ensure that these girls are not ostracised by the community and that their education is not disrupted," Andrew Timpson, a senior protection officer for the UN Children's Fund (UNICEF) in Kenya, told IRIN on 16 December. Timpson made a field visit to Kuria East and Kuria West districts in early December to examine the condition and protection needs of 342 girls who had fled their homes to avoid undergoing female genital mutilation/cutting (FGM/C).

Read More At IRIN

Sudanese Refugees Live in Fear of LRA Assaults

Iraq to Reopen Abu Ghraib

The Iraqi government will reopen the notorious Abu Ghraib prison next month under the name of Baghdad Central Prison, a senior justice official has said.

The announcement came as the US military began handing over detainees in its custody to the Iraqis under a new security agreement.

Read More At Al Jazeera

Migrants break out of Italian camp

Hundreds of asylum seekers and hopeful migrants have broken out of a holding centre on the Italian island of Lampedusa and marched to the town hall. Bernardino De Rubeis, the island's mayor, said that 700 out of about 1,300 people at the centre walked out on Saturday morning.

"It is a very tense situation," he said. Police said the group forced open the gates of the camp and marched peacefully to the town centre to protest against their detention.


Read More At Al Jazeera

UN human rights official: Gaza evokes memories of Warsaw Ghetto

There is evidence that Israel committed war crimes during its 22-day campaign in the Gaza Strip and there should be an independent inquiry, UN investigator Richard Falk said Thursday. The mental anguish of the civilians who suffered the assault is so great that the entire population of Gaza could be seen as casualties, said Falk, U.N. special rapporteur on human rights in the occupied West Bank and Gaza Strip.

"To lock people into a war zone is something that evokes the worst kind of international memories of the Warsaw Ghetto, and sieges that occur unintentionally during a period of wartime," Falk, who is Jewish, said, referring to the starvation and murder of Warsaw's Jews by Nazi Germany in World War Two.

Read More At Haaretz

The International Criminal Court's Dream of Global Justice

The International Criminal Court in The Hague is supposed to bring war criminals to justice, but it has yet to deliver a single verdict. Can international law bring peace to war-torn regions -- or does it actually hinder the peace process?Calvin Ocora is afraid whenever he hears a rustling sound in the jungle. At any time or place, it could happen again, just like on that day in May that he barely survived.

Ocora had fallen asleep under the mango tree -- and that nap probably saved his life. If it had not been so hot, and the shade of the tree had not been so cool, Ocora and his eight goats probably would have been back in the village of Lukodi in northern Uganda when it was transformed into a killing field.

Read More At Spiegel Online International

Lawyer and Journalist Are Shot Dead In Moscow

A prominent Russian human rights lawyer who often clashed with the security services was shot and killed along with a student journalist investigating neo-Nazi activity on Monday in central Moscow, prompting grief and outrage from colleagues who suspect they were targeted for their work.

The brazen daytime attack occurred moments after the lawyer, Stanislav Markelov, 34, stepped out of an afternoon news conference he had called to protest the release on parole a few days earlier of the highest-ranking Russian officer convicted of atrocities in the Chechen war.
Authorities said a gunman wearing a dark ski mask shot Markelov in the head on a street not far from the Kremlin. The journalist, Anastasia Baburova, 25, may have attempted to stop the assailant, and he shot her in the head as well before escaping into a nearby subway station, officials said.

Read More At the Washington Post

Deaths in Moscow: Russian Political Murders

The killing of Mr Markelov eliminated a man whose name in Chechnya, according to Tatyana Lokshina of Human Rights Watch, a campaigning group, “was synonymous with hope for justice.” It also epitomised the atmosphere of lawlessness and impunity that has flourished in Russia in recent years.

The list of dead journalists, campaigners for civil liberties and those who seriously harm the interests of over-mighty state officials is getting longer by the day. On January 13th a former Chechen rebel, Umar Israilov, who had turned against Mr Kadyrov and formally complained to the European Court of Human Rights of his involvement in kidnappings and torture, was gunned down in Vienna.

Last August Magomed Yevloyev, a journalist and owner of an opposition internet site in another north Caucasus republic, Ingushetia, was detained and “accidentally” shot by an interior ministry guard. His supporters blamed Ingushetia’s then president and interior minister. To the joy of the whole republic the Kremlin fired both men in October. But on December 30th Russia’s president, Dmitry Medvedev, appointed the former interior minister to a new job of “federal inspector” in Moscow. Impunity, it seems, still prevails.

Read More At The Economist

Thai Forces Accused of Towing Migrants Out to Sea on Barges

The Thai armed forces have been accused of towing hundreds of migrants out to sea last month and leaving them to their fate with inadequate food and water and only paddles as a means to reach land.

The migrants allegedly arrived off Thailand's Andaman coast after setting sail from Bangladesh. Most of them are from the Rohingya ethnic minority, tens of thousands of whom have fled to Bangladesh to escape repression and economic hardship in their homeland in western Burma.

The Thai authorities are accused of towing them back out to sea on barges without engines and abandoning them. Reports in the regional news media say that hundreds have died and that many bodies have been found trapped in mangrove forests around India's Andaman Islands. Hundreds more people, starving and dehydrated, have been rescued by Indian and Indonesian authorities after days adrift.

Read More At The Washington Post

ICRC Fear For Sri Lanka Civilians

The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) says that intense fighting in northern Sri Lanka has caused a "massive displacement" of civilians. It says thousands of people trapped inside rebel-held territory have had to flee several times in recent months. An ICRC official, Paul Castella, told the BBC that fighting had stopped relief supplies being delivered to rebel-held areas for nearly a week and that there were serious concerns about a lack of food.

Read More At BBC

Italy pressed by UN over migrants

The UN's refugee agency says it is increasingly concerned for the welfare of nearly 2,000 migrants at a detention centre on a southern Italian island.

The centre on Lampedusa has a capacity of 850, forcing hundreds of people to sleep outdoors in the cold, the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) said.

It said Italy's new immigration policy was partly to blame for the conditions.
Italy reported a sharp rise in the number of migrants arriving by sea on the island from Africa in 2008.

Correspondents say many would-be migrants are fleeing wars or poverty in countries such as Somalia and Eritrea and risk the dangerous Mediterranean crossing to enter Europe.
People smugglers charge them about $1,000 (£685; 710 euros) each to make the often stormy crossing in barely seaworthy vessels.

Read More At BBC

Activist's 'Railroad' Helps Gay Iranians

"Not quite three years ago, Arsham Parsi was an Iranian refugee in Turkey. Today, he is executive director of the Iranian Queer Railroad, trying to help 200 people down the same road he took to Toronto.

On a recent trip to Turkey, he secured refugee status from the UN High Commissioner for Refugees for 45 Iranian gays, but they are awaiting interviews at the Canadian and U.S. embassies. Canada, the U.S. and Australia are the likely destinations for gays, lesbians, bisexuals and transgendered people on his "railroad," because those countries recognize the kind of persecution they face."

Read More At The Star

Senegal Jails 9 Men For Homosexuality

Nine gay men in Dakar, Senegal, were jailed for eight years Jan. 6 for the crimes of having gay sex and belonging to a “criminal association,” an HIV-services group.

On Dec. 19, police raided the apartment of gay leader Diadji Diouf, arrested him and the other men, and confiscated condoms and lubricants. The men were taken to a police station and held until Dec. 24, then transferred to a detention center, where they were held until trial. Human Rights Watch said the men were beaten while in custody.

The men received the maximum five-year sentence for engaging in what the Penal Code calls “an improper or unnatural act with a person of the same sex” and three additional years for being members of the HIV-services organization AIDES Sénégal, the “criminal association.”

Read More At San Francisco Bay Times

Murders highlight increasing violence against trans people in Honduras

"A leading human rights group has claimed that the murder of a trans activist in Honduras is part of a series of violent attacks on the community. In addition to the attacks, on December 20th, members of the police assaulted a transgender activist doing HIV/AIDS outreach work in Tegucigalpa.

'The transgender community is terrified,' said Indyra Mendoza, director of the Honduran lesbian and feminist group Cattrachas. But these attacks will not silence the community in Honduras, and we will continue to work to ensure that the rights of transgender people are recognised and protected."

Read More At PinkNews

The Bush/Cheney Torture Legacy Still Being Whitewashed

Even as the convening authority of the Military Commissions at Guantanamo Bay, Susan Crawford, finally comes forward with revelations of torture at Guantanamo Bay against suspected terrorist Mohammed al-Qahtani, our corporate media and others continue to whitewash the Bush/Cheney torture legacy.

In the first place, this is not new information, by any stretch. Almost three years ago, in February 2006, Jean Mayer wrote in the New Yorker about the General Counsel of the U.S. Navy, Alberto Mora’s attempt to put a stop to the torture. Mayer’s article describes a 22-page memo by Mora, released in July 2004, which showed that in 2002 Mora tried to put a halt to what he saw as “a disastrous and unlawful policy of authorizing cruelty towards terrorism suspects”.

Read More At Democratic Underground

The United States as Torture Central

The United States was truly torture central at that time, not by virtue of its own use of torture, but by its sponsorship of regimes that used it extensively. Add to this the fact that this country is always in the forefront of technological advance in the tools of repression, as well as war, and in those earlier years carried out major operations in the supply of torture technology and training in its use. Electronic methods of torture were used extensively by U.S. and mercenary army forces in Vietnam and, in the 1960s and 1970s, U.S. experts advised client-state torturers from Vietnam to Brazil and Uruguay on the permissible limits of electronic torture to prevent premature death under "interrogation," among other advanced techniques.

Read More At Z Magazine

Obama To Close Secret CIA Prisons Immediately

President Barack Obama will shut down a secret network of CIA prisons immediately. He has also ordered that the military detention facility at Guantanamo Bay be closed within one year. Alex Cohen talks to Slate.com senior editor Dahlia Lithwick about what this means for the future of detainees.

Read More At NPR

Obama Orders Closure of Guantanamo Prison, Interrogations Must Follow Army Field Manual

PRESIDENT BARACK OBAMA: This morning, I signed three executive orders. First, I can say without exception or equivocation that the United States will not torture. Second, we will close the Guantanamo Bay detention camp and determine how to deal with those who have been held there. And third, we will immediately undertake a comprehensive review to determine how to hold and try terrorism suspects to best protect our nation and the rule of law.

The world needs to understand that America will be unyielding in its defense of its security and relentless in its pursuit of those who would carry out terrorism or threaten the United States. And that’s why, in this twilight struggle, we need a durable framework. The orders that I signed today should send an unmistakable signal that our actions in defense of liberty will be just as our cause and that we, the people, will uphold our fundamental values as vigilantly as we protect our security. Once again, America’s moral example must be the bedrock and the beacon of our global leadership.

Read More At Democracy Now!

How the U.S. Army's Field Manual Codified Torture -- and Still Does

The President of the National Lawyers Guild Marjorie Cohn has stated that portions of the Army Field Manual's protocol, especially the use of isolation and prolonged sleep deprivation, constitutes cruel-and-unusual punishment and is illegal under the Common Article 3 of the Geneva Conventions, the U.N. Convention Against Torture and the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights.

Yet, the interrogation manual is still praised by politicians, including then-presidential candidate Barack Obama, who in December 2007 said he would "have the Army Field Manual govern interrogation techniques for all United States Government personnel and contractors."

Read More At AlterNet

4 Prisoners Die in Thailand As A Result of Torture

Released today, Thailand: Torture in the southern counter-insurgency, says that people are being brutally beaten, burnt with candles, buried up to their necks in the ground, subjected to electric shocks and exposed to intense heat or cold. Amnesty International gathered information about at least four people who died as a result of torture.

Read More At Amnesty International

Muntazer Al-Zaidi Seeks Asylum in Switzerland

The Iraqi journalist who hurled his shoes at US President George W Bush is seeking asylum in Switzerland, Swiss newspaper Tribune de Geneve reports.

Muntazer al-Zaidi has been in custody in Iraq awaiting trial since the incident during a visit by Mr Bush to the country in mid-December. He fears for his safety in his Baghdad prison, the paper says, quoting his lawyer, Mauro Poggia. The lawyer argues his client likewise cannot resume his old job in Iraq.

Since his arrest, the Iraqi has reportedly been beaten in custody, suffering a broken arm, broken ribs and internal bleeding."

Read More At BBC

Obama pick rejects waterboarding

Eric Holder, the US attorney-general choice nominated by Barack Obama, the US president-elect, has said he believes the controversial interrogation method of "waterboarding" to be torture.

Speaking at his confirmation hearing at the US senate on Thursday, Holder also said he did not think a US president had the power to "immunise" an intelligence offcer to carry out torture and not face charges. "No-one is above the law, the president has a constitutional obligation to faithfully execute the law of the United States," he said in Washington DC.

Read More At Al Jazeera

David Ngaruri Kenney

David Ngaruri Kenney, co-author of Asylum Denied, will be sworn in as a US citizen on January 16, 2009 through the Office of US Immigration and Citizen Services in Baltimore, MD. In a recent letter to supporters, Kenney expressed how meaningful the ceremony is for himself, his family and expressed gratitude to the many people who have supported his endeavors since leaving his home country 14 years ago.

Bush Admits Signing Off on Torture of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed

President Bush acknowledged that he personally authorized the torture of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, who was held in a secret CIA prison where he was waterboarded over 100 times. Bush made the disclosure on Fox News Sunday.

President Bush: “One such person who gave us information was Khalid Sheikh Mohammed… And I’m in the Oval Office, and I am told that we have captured Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and the professionals believe he has information necessary to secure the country. So I ask, ‘What tools are available for us to find information from him?’ And they gave me a list of tools. And I said, ‘Are these tools deemed to be legal?’ And so, we got legal opinions before any decision was made.”

From Democracy Now!

Son of Charles Taylor Sentenced to 97 Years for Torture

The son of former Liberian President Charles Taylor has been sentenced to ninety-seven years in prison for mutilations and executions carried out in Liberia, in the first US prosecution for torture committed abroad. Charles “Chuckie” Taylor, Jr., was convicted in October by a jury in Miami, Florida on eight torture and conspiracy charges for killings, beatings and atrocities committed while he headed a paramilitary force in Liberia. The charges said he and his colleagues burned their victims with hot irons, molten wax and boiling water and applied electric shocks to their genitals. The thirty-one-year-old Taylor is a US citizen who was born in Boston. Taylor was the first person charged under a 1994 extraterritorial torture statute, which allows prosecutors to charge a US citizen or someone present in the United States with acts of torture or conspiracy to torture outside the country.

From Democracy Now!

Former Gitmo guard speaks of inmate 'torture'

The US Department of Defence says its policy is to treat detainees humanely.But Chris Arendt has told the BBC some of his fellow guards were so violent as to be psychotic. He says what he saw there amounted to torture.

"I saw people storm into the cell and beat that detainee, and then zip-tie the detainee and pull them out. I saw that done excessively," he said. "I saw people kicking detainees in the face. It's torture, it's a means of extracting information that I didn't even believe these people probably had."

Meanwhile, the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) has written a letter to US Secretary of Defence Robert Gates protesting the "inhumane and unlawful practice" of force-feeding hunger strikers at the prison. "Pentagon spokeswoman Cynthia Smith said there were 34 hunger strikers at the prison and that 25 of them were being force-fed.

"Force-feeding is universally considered to be a form of cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment," Mr Dakwar wrote to Mr Gates."Debilitating risks of force-feeding include major infections, pneumonia and collapsed lungs," said Mr Dawkar, recalling that five detainees have died in custody at the US naval base prison.

Read More At ABC News

Obama: Gitmo Likely Won't Close in First 100 Days

President-elect B arack Obama said this weekend that he does not expect to close Guantanamo Bay in his first 100 days in office.

When asked if he plans to require that every government interrogation program be under the same standard and in accordance with the Army Field Manuel, Obama said, " My general view is that our United States military is under fire and has huge stakes in getting good intelligence. And if our top army commanders feel comfortable with interrogation techniques that are squarely within the boundaries of rule of law, our constitution and international standards, then those are things that we should be able to."

Read More At ABCNews

Immigrant Advocates Decry Ruling On Lawyer Error

When immigrants face possible deportation, they don't have the right to a state-appointed attorney. Now, Attorney General Michael Mukasey says this means they also don't have the right to a new hearing if the lawyer they hire turns out to be incompetent or a fraud.

Immigrant advocates say a Justice Department ruling issued Wednesday by Muksasey could hurt thousands of immigrants seeking to stay in the U.S

Read More At NPR

US Rejects Request to Let Haitians Temporarily Stay in US

The Miami Herald reports the Bush administration has rejected a request by Haitian President René Préval and others to allow tens of thousands of undocumented Haitians living in the United States to stay until their homeland recovers from a string of deadly summer storms. Randy McGrorty of Catholic Legal Services criticized the decision. McGrorty said, “The successive storms destroyed 15 percent of Haiti’s GDP. That’s the equivalent of eight to ten hurricane Katrinas hitting the United States in a month’s period of time.”

From Democracy Now!

Australia tells US it won't accept Gitmo detainees

Australia has told the United States for a second time that it will not resettle detainees freed from the Guantanamo Bay military prison in Cuba, the acting prime minister said Saturday.

Most come from Yemen, but others are from Azerbaijan, Algeria, Afghanistan, Chad, China and Saudi Arabia. Some have been held without charge since the prison camp opened in 2002 to hold so-called "enemy combatants" accused of having links to the al-Qaida terror network or Afghanistan's ousted Taliban regime.

Read More At NPR

Tortured Reasoning

George W. Bush defended harsh interrogations by pointing to intelligence breakthroughs, but a surprising number of counterterrorist officials say that, apart from being wrong, torture just doesn’t work. Delving into two high-profile cases, the author exposes the tactical costs of prisoner abuse.

In researching this article, I spoke to numerous counterterrorist officials from agencies on both sides of the Atlantic. Their conclusion is unanimous: not only have coercive methods failed to generate significant and actionable intelligence, they have also caused the squandering of resources on a massive scale through false leads, chimerical plots, and unnecessary safety alerts—with Abu Zubaydah’s case one of the most glaring examples.
Here, they say, far from exposing a deadly plot, all torture did was lead to more torture of his supposed accomplices while also providing some misleading “information” that boosted the administration’s argument for invading Iraq.

Read More At Vanity Fair

Eritrean asylum-seekers face deportation

A group of up to 104 Eritrean asylum-seekers held in a detention facility in Sinai in Egypt are at risk of imminent deportation to Eritrea. The group is believed to comprise 78 men, 23 women, including one pregnant woman, and three children.

Any member of the current group, if forcibly returned, could also face torture or other ill-treatment, particularly as many of them are believed to have left Eritrea to avoid forced conscription. The standard punishment for those evading or escaping military service in Eritrea is detention without trial and torture or other ill-treatment by beatings and being tied in painful positions.

Read More At Amnesty International

US balks at backing condemnation of anti-gay laws

"Alone among major Western nations, the United States has refused to sign a declaration presented Thursday at the United Nations calling for worldwide decriminalization of homosexuality.

In all, 66 of the U.N.'s 192 member countries signed the nonbinding declaration — which backers called a historic step to push the General Assembly to deal more forthrightly with any-gay discrimination. More than 70 U.N. members outlaw homosexuality, and in several of them homosexual acts can be punished by execution."

Read More AT SF Chronicle

Cheney Defends Use of Torture

Vice President Dick Cheney has admitted for the first time that he was directly involved in approving the use of torture by the CIA. In an interview with ABC News, Cheney was questioned about the treatment of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, who was held in a secret CIA prison where he was waterboarded over 100 times.

Read More At Democracy Now!

Escapee Tells of Horrors in North Korean Prison Camp

In Camp No. 14, the North Korean political prison where Shin Dong-hyuk was born and where he says he watched the hanging of his mother, inmates never saw a picture of Kim Jong Il.

Inmates did not need to know the face of their "Dear Leader," as Kim is called. Behind electrified fences, they tended pigs, tanned leather, collected firewood and labored in mines until they died or were executed.

The exception is Shin, who is 26 and lives in a small rented room here in Seoul. There are burn scars on his back and left arm from where he was tortured by fire at age 14, when he was unable to explain why his soon-to-be-hanged mother had tried to escape. The middle finger of his right hand is cut off at the first knuckle, punishment for accidentally dropping a sewing machine in the garment factory at his camp.

There are 14,431 North Korean defectors living in South Korea, according to the latest government count. Shin is the only one known to have escaped to the South from a prison camp in the North.

Read More At The Washington Post

A Watershed For Gay Rights

A declaration calling for the global decriminalisation of homosexuality will be put before the United Nations general assembly in the next two weeks. It will be the first time in its history that the UN General Assembly has considered the issue of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) human rights.

If you want to understand why this decriminalisation declaration is so important and necessary, ponder this: even today, not a single international human rights convention explicitly acknowledges the human rights of LGBT people. The right to physically love the person of one's choice is nowhere enshrined in any global humanitarian law. No convention recognises sexual rights as human rights. None offers explicit protection against discrimination based on sexual orientation or gender identity.

Yet 86 countries (nearly half the nations on Earth) still have a total ban on male homosexuality and a smaller number also ban sex between women. The penalties in these countries range from a few years jail to life imprisonment. In at least seven countries or regions of countries (all under Islamist jurisdiction), the sentence is death: Saudi Arabia, Iran, Yemen, Sudan, Mauritania and parts of Nigeria and Pakistan.

Read More At The Gaurdian

Iraqi Refugee Sinks Roots In Atlanta: Part I

"Since the war in Iraq began in 2003, an estimated 4.7 million Iraqis have fled their homes, scattering within the country and beyond. Some 2 million now live outside their homeland, mostly in Jordan and Syria. In mid-2007, the U.S. government began resettling Iraqi refugees in this country: Some 15,000 Iraqi refugees already have arrived, and 17,000 more are expected in the next year. Atlanta is a prime destination for them.

Last year, we introduced NPR audiences to a single mother of three who heads one of the first refugee families to arrive in Atlanta. Bothinaa Mohammed had worked for the U.S. Army in Iraq and was targeted as a traitor. She brought her family to the United States in late August 2007, after three years in Jordan. In Atlanta, she got a job as a hotel maid."

Read More At NPR

Iraqi Refugee Sinks Roots In Atlanta: Part II

"Among those displaced is Alaa Naji, a single mother of two small children who lost her husband in a terrorist attack. A United Nations employee, he was fatally injured when a car bomb exploded at the Jordanian Embassy in Iraq in August 2003. To support their two small children, Naji — who has an English degree — found work with the U.N. and the U.S. Army in Baghdad. But within a couple of months, she started getting notes that threatened her family.

"And they said, 'Prepare yourself. You gonna be killed,'" Naji recalls. "And the colleagues, they said, 'Alaa, your life very dangerous, your work is very sensitive. You work in a very dangerous place. Please think for your kids.'"

Read More At NPR

Ex-Brazilian cop questioned in death of 13 gays

A retired police officer has been detained in connection with the murders of 13 gay men in a low-income suburb of Sao Paulo, police said Thursday.

Retired state police Sgt. Jairo Francisco Franco was taken into custody Wednesday night after a witness identified him as the killer of a homosexual man on Aug. 19, said police inspector Paulo Fortunato.

Franco is suspected of acting alone in all of 13 killings between February 2007 and August 2008 at Paturis Park, a favorite meeting point for gay men, Fortunato said.aulo, police said Thursday.

Read More At SF Chronicle

UN Declaration of Human Rights Marks 60th Anniversary

"Diplomats and rights activists have marked the 60th anniversary of the United Nations declaration of human rights that 'all human beings are born free and equal.'

But critics have questioned the effectiveness of the document, saying the UN's focus has shifted to other concerns - such as 'fighting terrorism' - and often at the cost of human rights.

Rights advocates list the suffering of Palestinians, atrocities committed in Sudan's Darfur region, the humanitarian disaster in the Democratic Republic of Congo and the US human rights record following the September 11, 2001 attacks in New York, as failures of the human dignity standard."

Read More At AlJazeera

Disastrous Flight For Deported Kurds

"A plane deporting 49 rejected asylum seekers was forced to return to Britain when it was refused permission to land in Kurdistan.

Two passengers on the charter flight from Stansted had been removed before take-off after wounding themselves in their seats, the Guardian has learned.

The drama comes after reports that a 19-year-old deported to Kurdistan on November 27 killed himself soon after landing."

Read More At The Gaurdian

Senate Report Holds Rumsfeld Responsible For Torture

"A bipartisan Senate report released today says that former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and other top Bush administration officials are directly responsible for abuses of detainees at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, and charges that decisions by those officials led to serious offenses against prisoners in Iraq and elsewhere.

The Senate Armed Services Committee report accuses Rumsfeld and his deputies of being the principal architects of the plan to use harsh interrogation techniques on captured fighters and terrorism suspects, rejecting the Bush administration's contention that the policies originated lower down the command chain.

'The abuse of detainees in U.S. custody cannot simply be attributed to the actions of 'a few bad apples' acting on their own," the panel concludes. "The fact is that senior officials in the United States government solicited information on how to use aggressive techniques, redefined the law to create the appearance of their legality, and authorized their use against detainees.' "

Read More At CommonDreams.org

Palestinian Refugees Trapped on Iraq-Syria Border

"Having fled killings, kidnappings, torture, and death threats, about 3,000 Palestinian refugees from Iraq are currently stranded in three camps along the border between Syria and Iraq. Denied asylum and refugee rights, they are extremely vulnerable in poorly situated camps."

Read More At Refugees International

Musicians Protest the Use of Songs As Weapons

"The auditory assault went on for days, then weeks, then months at the U.S. military detention center in Iraq. Twenty hours a day. AC/DC. Queen. Pantera. The prisoner, military contractor Donald Vance of Chicago, told The Associated Press he was soon suicidal.

The tactic has been common in the U.S. war on terror, with forces systematically using loud music on hundreds of detainees in Iraq, Afghanistan and Guantanamo Bay. Lt. Gen. Ricardo Sanchez, then the U.S. military commander in Iraq, authorized it on Sept. 14, 2003, "to create fear, disorient ... and prolong capture shock."

Now the detainees aren't the only ones complaining. Musicians are banding together to demand the U.S. military stop using their songs as weapons."

Read More At SF Chronicle

UC Professor's 'Torture Memo' At Center of Controversy

"Berkeley's City Council will delve into national policy again next week when it votes whether to demand the United States charge Berkeley resident and former Bush adviser John Yoo with war crimes.

Yoo, a tenured professor at UC Berkeley's Boalt Hall School of Law, wrote the memos offering legal justification for torture while he worked for the White House...arguing that habeas corpus and other legal protections don't apply to CIA detainees because Guantanamo Bay and Abu Ghraib are not on U.S. soil. "

Read More At SF Chronicle

UN Urges End To Abuses of Women

The United Nations secretary general has said the world must do more to combat the abuse of women and girls. Ban Ki-moon spoke as organisations around the world marked the UN's International Day for the Elimination of Violence Against Women.

The UN says at least one in three women will be beaten, coerced into sex or otherwise abused in her lifetime.

Women between the ages of 15 and 44 are at greater risk from rape and domestic violence than from cancer, traffic accidents, war and malaria, says the UN.

Read More At BBC News

Thousands Gather at Fort Benning, Georgia to Stop Torture and Close the School of Assassins

Thousands gathered on November 21-23, at the gates of Fort Benning, GA for what organizers hope may be the last mass protest to close the controversial School of the Americas, renamed Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation (SOA/WHINSEC). With 35 Representatives who voted to continue funding the SOA/WHINSEC losing their seats in Congress on November 4th, human rights advocates have their sights set on pressuring the new Congress to permanently shut down the school in 2009. The last vote to defund the SOA/WHINSEC, in 2007, lost by a margin of only six votes.

"By closing this notorious school of assassins now, Obama and the new Congress can show the world that we genuinely honor human rights." Hundreds of thousands of Latin Americans have been tortured, raped, assassinated, "disappeared," massacred, and forced into refugee by those trained at the SOA/WHINSEC.

Read More At CommonDreams.Org

As Obama Vows to Close Guantanamo, Advisers Reportedly Crafting Plan to Create a New System of Preventive Detention and National Security Courts

During an interview on 60 Minutes last night President-elect Barack Obama said he plans to close the US military prison at Guantanamo Bay and rebuild the nation’s moral stature. Last week, the Associated Press reported Obama advisers are crafting a plan that would put some Guantanamo Bay prisoners in front of a new court system designed to handle so-called “national security” cases.

Read More At Democracy Now!

Crackdown On Political Activists in Myanmar

Sixty-five years in prison each for 14 former student activists. Twenty-and-a-half years for a blogger. Twelve-and-a-half years for a labor leader. Six-and-a-half years for five Buddhist monks. Two years for a poet.

In the space of just three days this week, more than 30 Burmese were sentenced to prison or hard labor by the country's ruling junta, a chilling legal onslaught that sent a clear message to other potential dissidents: speak out, and get used to life in a prison cell. Even for a notoriously repressive regime, the jail sentences were unusually harsh.

Read More At TIME

Persecuted Gays Find Refuge in US

One night in 2003, on the wintry streets of Kosovo, a group of thugs stalked and beat Gramoz Prestreshi almost to death. Police in the war-scarred Balkan province laughed and called him names. The emergency room workers made him mop up his own blood. It was a sordid but hardly unusual episode in the hostile environment homosexuals encounter in societies of all kinds.

Read More At Washington Post

Possible Pardon for US Officials Involved in Torture

Senior intelligence officers are lobbying the outgoing president to look after the men and women who could face charges for following his orders in the war on terrorism.

Most vulnerable are US intelligence officers who took part in intensive interrogations against terrorist suspects, using techniques including water boarding, which many believe crossed the line into torture.

A former CIA officer familiar with the backstage lobbying for pardons, said: “These are the people President Bush asked to fight the war on terror for him. He gave them the green light to fight tough. The view of many in the intelligence community is that he should not leave them vulnerable to legal censure when he leaves."

Read More At Alternative News

Hard Fate For Returning Afghan Refugees

The refugee label sticks. After 23 years of exile in Pakistan, Qayum and his family returned home to northern Afghanistan six months ago. But even today, they are seen as outsiders and the place they live in is known as Mohajir Qeshlaq, or "refugee village," in the local Dari language.

"In Pakistan, people said there's peace in Afghanistan," says Qayum, 35, as he sits with his mother, wife and five children under a UNHCR tent at Mohajir Qeshlaq. "But when we came back, there was no land and no water. My children used to attend school in Pakistan, but here it's difficult to go to school if we have no identity card."

Read More At UN Refugee Agency

Hmong Refugees Being Held By Thailand

Ninety-two children are among a group of 158 Lao Hmong refugees who have been held at a detention centre in Thailand for two years.

Living in harsh conditions, the refugees are constantly in fear of being forcibly returned to Laos, where they are at risk of serious human rights violations. For 21 hours a day, they are locked inside the building where they live in overcrowded, windowless cells. Some have gone on hunger strike or threatened to commit suicide in protest against their detention.

Read More At Amnesty International

Women Migrant Domestic Workers in Jordan Exploited and Abused

Tens of thousands of women migrant domestic workers in Jordan face isolation, exploitation and abuse, with little or no protection from the state.

Migrant domestic workers are crucial to the economy in Jordan, contributing to the well-being of the households where they work and providing vital incomes for their own families and communities. Many face exploitation and abuse, working up to 19 hours per day. Wages are meagre, and some do not receive payment until years later.

Read More At Amnesty International

Judge Tosses Detainee Confession Citing Torture

By DAVID McFADDEN

GUANTANAMO BAY NAVAL BASE, Cuba (AP) — A U.S. military judge barred the Pentagon Tuesday from using a Guantanamo prisoner's confession to Afghan authorities as trial evidence, saying it was obtained through torture.

Army Col. Stephen Henley said Mohammed Jawad's statements "were obtained by physical intimidation and threats of death which, under the circumstances, constitute torture."

Guantanamo's chief prosecutor, Army Col. Lawrence Morris, said he recognized how the judge made his decision and needed to study the ruling before making more comments.

Jawad, who was still a teenager at the time, is accused of injuring two U.S. soldiers with a grenade in 2002. He allegedly said during his interrogation in Kabul that he hoped the Americans died, and would do it again.

But Henley said Jawad confessed only after police commanders and high-ranking Afghan government officials threatened to kill him and his family — a strategy intended to inflict severe pain that constitutes torture.

"During the interrogation, someone told the accused, 'You will be killed if you do not confess to the grenade attack,' and, 'We will arrest your family and kill them if you do not confess,' or words to that effect," Henley wrote in response to a defense motion to suppress the evidence. "It was a credible threat."

Several hours after his interrogation, Jawad was turned over to the Americans.

Air Force Maj. David Frakt, Jawad's Pentagon-appointed attorney, said the ruling is a "further disintegration of the government's case," and that the Afghans' descriptions of Jawad's confession were never credible to begin with. He also praised the judge for "adopting a traditional definition of torture rather than making one up."

The judge said torture includes statements obtained by use of death threats to the speaker or his family, and that actual physical or mental injury is not required. "The relevant inquiry is whether the threat was specifically intended to inflict severe physical or mental pain or suffering upon another person within the interrogator's custody or control," Henley wrote.

Genital Mutilation Victim Gets a New Chance at Asylum in the U.S.

WASHINGTON — In a surprise decision welcomed by human rights groups, the Justice Department moved Monday to expand the opportunities for asylum for women subjected to genital mutilation.

Atty. Gen. Michael B. Mukasey, a former federal judge, threw out a decision by an arm of the Justice Department denying asylum to a 28-year-old woman from Mali who had been subjected to genital mutilation as a girl. Forms of genital mutilation -- often performed under unsanitary conditions with rudimentary instruments -- are common as coming-of-age rituals in more than two dozen countries.

The September 2007 ruling by the U.S. Board of Immigration Appeals and the panel's denial in April 2008 of a request for reconsideration had drawn criticism from immigration and refugee groups and medical ethicists. The board concluded that because the woman had already been mutilated, she no longer had a legitimate fear of further persecution, which is required under U.S. law before asylum can be granted.

But that decision, which was at odds with several federal courts, was replete with "legal and factual errors," Mukasey said in Monday's six-page order.

"To begin with, the board based its analysis on a false premise: that female genital mutilation is a 'one-time' act that cannot be repeated on the same women," he wrote. "As several courts have recognized, female genital mutilation is indeed capable of repletion."

He cited a case where an asylum applicant's vaginal opening was sewn shut five times after being opened to allow for sexual intercourse and childbirth.

"The board was wrong to focus on whether the future harm to life or freedom that [the applicant] feared would take the 'identical' form," he added.

The Malian woman had expressed concern that if she were deported she would be forced into marriage, and that any daughters she might have would also face mutilation.

Mukasey's decision to intervene came as the woman's case was being appealed to the U.S. 4th Circuit Court of Appeals in Virginia. His order -- that the immigration panel reconsider its position -- does not guarantee the woman permanent residency in the U.S., but legal observers said they doubted the agency would oppose the move.

"I think the response now is one of overwhelming relief and jubilation . . . and a feeling of hope that this will set a precedent for future cases," said Jen Smyers, a policy analyst with the immigration and refugee program at Church World Service, a New York-based humanitarian cooperative of churches.

Kevin Johnson, an immigration specialist and dean of the UC Davis School of Law, said the action was something of a surprise.

"This administration has been pretty tough on women who claim persecution," he said. "It is a positive step in the right direction.

"It is not a particularly human gesture to turn your back on people who have been previously persecuted. It is not a particularly generous way of looking at our asylum laws."

Since 1996, the U.S. government has recognized female genital mutilation as a form of persecution that could entitle a woman to asylum in at least some cases.

Attorney General Michael Mukasey intervenes in the case of a 28-year-old woman from Mali.

By Richard B. Schmitt
Los Angeles Times Staff Writer
September 23, 2008

American Psychological Association Members Pass Historic Ban on Psychologist Participation in U.S. Detention Facilities

Today, the membership of the American Psychological Association (APA) passed a referendum banning participation of APA member psychologists in U.S. detention facilities, such as Guantanamo or the CIA's secret "black sites" operating outside of or in violation of international law or the Constitution. The Coalition for an Ethical Psychology congratulates our colleagues, and in particular, we congratulate the referendum authors – Dan Aalbers, Brad Olson, and Ruth Fallenbaum – as well as the activists withholding dues and otherwise protesting professional collusion with unethical behavior.

Dan Aalbers, one of the referendum’s authors, stated: "This is a decisive victory for the membership of the APA and for human rights advocates everywhere. This new policy will ensure that psychologists work for the abused and not the abusers at places like Guantanamo Bay and the CIA black sites. We expect that the APA's leadership will immediately take action to ensure that psychologists are removed from the chain of command at places where human rights are violated or said not to apply."

In recent years revelations from the press, Congress, and Defense Department documents revealed that psychologists have played a central role in Bush administration detainee abuse. These reports conclusively demonstrate that psychologists designed, implemented, disseminated, and standardized detention and interrogation practices that frequently amounted to torture.

The passage of this referendum constitutes a decisive repudiation of the APA leadership's long-standing policy encouraging psychologist participation in interrogations and other activities in military and CIA detention facilities that have repeatedly been found to violate international law and the Constitution. In 2005, the APA's orchestrated Presidential Task Force on Psychological Ethics and National Security [PENS] declared that psychologists' participation in interrogations in these sites helped keep interrogations there "safe, legal, an ethical." Although APA followed this report with resolutions ostensibly condemning participation in torture, the resolutions continued to permit psychologists to serve in sites where human rights are routinely violated. The APA membership has now rejected APA policy in favor of one refusing psychologist participation in the running of detention facilities operating against the law and professional ethics.

"For years APA leadership has insisted that our professions' contributions to the Bush administration detentions made things better. It turns out that the APA membership wasn’t convinced" said Stephen Soldz, a psychologist on the faculty of the Boston Graduate School of Psychoanalysis and a founder of the Coalition for an Ethical Psychology.

Passage of the referendum culminates years of struggle by numerous APA members to change policies that conflict with the best traditions of psychology as a profession. The referendum is a clear statement that APA members take seriously the profession's highest ethical aspiration: "Psychologists strive to benefit those with whom they work and take care to do no harm." Members are not willing to continue colluding with the Bush administration's systematic policies of detainee abuse that often amount to torture.

Referendum proponents collected over 1,000 signatures, forcing APA to submit the policy change to a mail ballot of the entire membership. The ballots went out on August 1 and votes received as of Monday, September 15th were counted. The referendum passed with 8,792 [58.8% ] YES votes to 6,157 votes against. The turnout was the highest ever in APA history.

"With this vote APA members have taken a major step toward restoring unimpeachable ethical standards by prohibiting its members from participating at sites that violate human rights and international law. But until APA communicates this new policy to the White House, the Department of Defense and the CIA, the abuses might continue. We must assure that the policy is implemented quickly" said Steven Reisner, a New York psychologist who is running for APA President.

Passage of the referendum is an important first step in righting APA policies that have cast shame upon the profession. The Coalition for an Ethical Psychology calls upon APA to take additional steps to turn the organization around.

Although the referendum pulls psychologists out of detention sites where human rights are being violated, we call upon APA to take a further step and put APA policy in line with that of the American Medical Association and the American Psychiatric Association and ban psychologists from any direct role in the interrogation of specific individuals in any national security setting.

We call upon the APA to initiate and fund an independent panel to investigate and create a public record regarding the participation of U.S. psychologists in torture and other detainee abuse. The panel should also investigate organizational, policy, and ethical policies contributing to this abuse and make recommendations for change.

The APA should proceed expeditiously to modify its ethics code to remove clauses allowing ethical violations when psychological ethics are in conflict with "law, regulations, or other governing legal authority."

The APA should act quickly on ethics complaints against psychologists reported to have contributed to U.S. torture and detention abuses.

Finally, the Coalition for an Ethical Psychology calls upon APA members to follow up this victory by electing a President, Steven Reisner, who is steadfastly committed to ending psychologist collusion with detainee abuse.

The Coalition for an Ethical Psychology includes Jean Maria Arrigo, Brad Olson, Steven Reisner, Stephen Soldz, and Bryant Welch

U.S. court rejects Salvadoran's asylum appeal

September 09, 2008|By Bob Egelko, Chronicle Staff Writer

A federal appeals court denied asylum Monday to a Bay Area man who said he had fled El Salvador after gang members beat him, killed his brother and threatened his family.

Jose Santos-Lemus said that the assaults and threats amounted to persecution aimed at his family and against young Salvadoran men who opposed gang violence, and that police in his native country were unable or unwilling to protect him.

But the Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco upheld a deportation order against Santos-Lemus, saying he appeared to have been "victimized for economic and personal reasons" and not because of his opinions or membership in a family or group.

Santos-Lemus said he had been targeted by members of Mara Salvatrucha, also known as MS-13, a gang that was started in Southern California and has ties to El Salvador. Law enforcement authorities say it engages in drug dealing, weapons trafficking and extortion. San Francisco police say a man charged with murdering a father and two sons by shooting into their car on June 22 was an MS-13 member, although the man's lawyer denies it.

Santos-Lemus said gang members shot and killed his oldest brother in 2001, beat and robbed two more brothers, and sent many anonymous notes threatening his family over a four-year period, all because of perceived insults. He said he was beaten and stabbed by a group of MS-13 members in 2003 and left El Salvador after receiving a death threat in May 2004.

Santos-Lemus said he and his family had been too fearful to report any of the crimes to Salvadoran police, who they believed were involved with the gang. Although persecution by a foreign government is the most common reason for U.S. courts granting asylum, some applicants have won their cases by arguing that police tolerated criminal attacks motivated by the victim's views or social status.

His lawyer said Santos-Lemus now lives in a Bay Area community, which he did not specify. Santos-Lemus said two of his brothers have also come to the United States, but his mother is still in their hometown of Chalatenango, El Salvador, and two sisters and a brother live elsewhere in the Central American nation.

Santos-Lemus conceded that his relatives who still live in El Salvador have not been attacked by gang members. That undercut his assertion that he had been persecuted because of his family, the appeals court said. The court also turned back his argument that he had been singled out as an opponent of gang violence.

"The harassment appears to have been part of general criminality and civil unrest," Judge J. Clifford Wallace said in the 3-0 ruling. "There is no evidence that they targeted him because they perceived him to be a member of any kind of anti-gang group."

Senate Joint Resolution 19

On Preventing health professionals from engaging in coersive interrogations of detainees

To read the Senate Joint Resolution adopted by California Legislature aimed at preventing California health professionals from engaging in coercive interrogations of detainees at Guantánamo and other U.S. military prisons, click here.

Maputo Declaration Against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment

The World Organization against Torture (OMCT) would like to draw your attention to the Maputo Declaration drawn up by a group of African NGOs committed to ending all forms of torture and cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment. This Declaration was developed at an OMCT regional meeting in Maputo, Mozambique in May of this year. To read the declaration click here.

Torture Survivors Need More Help from California

This op-ed piece, written by Kathi Anderson, the Executive Director of Survivors of Torture, International in San Diego and Gregory Hall, a senior program officer with the California Endownment, urges legislative action to address the needs of torture survivors in California. To read the article, click 'read more.'

Torture survivors need more help from California

By Kathi Anderson and Gregory Hall -

Published 12:00 am PDT Thursday, June 26, 2008
Story appeared in METRO section, Page B7

Imagine waking up one morning and instead of carrying out your daily routine, you are kidnapped at gunpoint and taken to a location where you are systematically and brutally beaten, with the fear that death would be the only escape.

That was a real experience for Carlos Mauricio, who was kidnapped in El Salvador in 1983 and tortured by his captors over a two-week period. Luckily, he survived to tell his story, and so have thousands of other survivors of torture now residing in California.

As detailed in last week's Sacramento Bee series on the treatment of terror suspects, torture isn't just something that happened in Central America in the 1980s. It's been used in the so-called war on terror, in the genocide in Darfur, and in numerous other conflicts where perpetrators - be they dictators, police, paramilitary forces, government officials or opposition forces - find ways to justify its use and avoid accountability.

Our state is home to the largest number of refugees, asylum seekers and immigrants in the United States. Many of them had to flee their homelands from unspeakable cruelty. Some were students, professors or other professionals who excelled in fields such as medicine, government, business, agriculture and community leadership, yet were targeted for persecution by their governments for what they thought, said or did.

Others were tortured as a way of punishing family members accused of opposition to political activities. Some were members of persecuted religious, ethnic, national or social groups. Others were in the wrong place at the wrong time, tortured as part of a government's campaign to terrorize and intimidate populations.

As expected, the lasting physical and psychological repercussions for survivors of torture can be a daily struggle.

Many suffer in silence as they strain to hold down jobs and adjust to a new life in the United States. This is made worse by the fact that most asylum seekers lack access to basic health care until they are granted asylum, which can take years. This presents a public health hazard, in addition to needless pain and suffering on the part of the asylum seeker.

Across the state, treatment centers and law firmswork to minimize these obstacles to care. In the Bay Area, the Center for Justice and Accountability, the Center for Survivors of Torture, the Institute for Redress & Recovery, and Survivors International provide torture survivors with the specialized care they need.

In Los Angeles, survivors can turn to the Program for Torture Victims and the Legal Aid Foundation. In San Diego, Survivors of Torture, International provides a holistic program of services. All the organizations are part of the California Consortium of Torture Treatment Centers.

Mauricio is an example of the positive impact these services can have on a survivor of torture. The centers address the physical and psychological effects of torture, pursue justice for survivors, assist families and provide communities of healing where survivors can build positive relationships.

Yet the centers struggle to meet the needs of torture survivors who have come from more than 100 countries, speak dozens of languages and dialects, and have complex health and mental health needs. States such as Minnesota and New York already have taken the lead in creating health care programs that provide assistance to survivors of torture. Unfortunately, California has been slower to recognize and respond to the needs of survivors.

Today is June 26, the United Nations International Day in Support of Victims of Torture. Representatives from the California Consortium of Torture Treatment Centers are convening in Sacramento to educate state lawmakers about the importance and effectiveness of torture treatment centers.

We encourage members of the Legislature to recognize this unique population, to bring them out of our state's shadows, and to join our effort to ensure torture survivors have access to the specialized treatment they need to become healthy, productive members of our communities. It will benefit us all.

About the writer:

· Kathi Anderson is the executive director of Survivors of Torture, International. Gregory Hall is a senior program officer with the California Endowment, which supports programs addressing the health care needs of torture survivors.

Global Solidarity Statement

International Rehabilitation Council for Torture Victims Statement: "Let's Erase Torture"

The International Rehabilitation Council for Torture Victims (IRCT) has released the statement of global solidarity against torture to be read on June 26th, The UN International Day in Support of Victims of Torture.

STATEMENT FOR GLOBAL READING ON 26 JUNE 2008

Ladies and gentlemen,

For over a decade, the world has marked the 26 June as the occasion of the UN International Day in Support of Victims of Torture. On this day, thousands of individuals and organisations around the globe speak out against torture and insist that torture survivors’ needs and rights be fulfilled.

Among those who raise their voice on this day are the treatment centres and programmes affiliated with the International Rehabilitation Council for Torture Victims – the IRCT. Today, on behalf of Survivors International, I am proud to read out this statement, which is being delivered by dozens of human rights defenders in many other countries across the world right now. It is a statement of global solidarity, to show that regardless of where we are, we raise a collective voice to say NO to torture. It is a statement in honour of those who have suffered under torture’s cruel hand; and a reminder to us all that no matter where we live or work, there are torture survivors among us. Daily they show extraordinary courage as they attempt to heal from the physical and mental wounds of their experience.

"Let’s erase torture" is the theme for the global 26 June campaign. With this theme, we’re calling upon policy-makers as well as the general public to act to eradicate torture, and to assist survivors toward erasing the scars of torture from their bodies and minds.

Rehabilitation services – such as medical care, counselling, legal aid and social support – are a way to heal those scars. Within the IRCT’s global membership of 139 treatment centres and programmes, each year more than a hundred thousand torture survivors and their families receive such services.

However, in spite of the vital services they provide, many of these centres struggle to find the resources to continue their work, and to extend their hand to those in need. But you can help by ensuring, in whatever capacity you are able, that they can keep their doors open. If you are a policymaker, you can help to prioritise rehabilitation services by passing legislation that supports survivors’ rights to treatment and redress. If you are a donor, you can financially support your local treatment centre or the IRCT. And as a citizen there are many ways you can offer your support - through donation of time, resources or money to your local centre or by speaking out about the importance of rehabilitation in your community.

Your efforts are important! Because sadly, torture is not a phenomenon that exists "somewhere else" – it is widespread in more than one hundred countries, and anyone can become its victim. The good news is that there are tools to help us wipe the slate clean and create societies without torture.

Among them is the United Nations Convention against Torture, which came into force on 26 June 1987. This convention commits the authorities in each and every country to actively prevent torture and to support survivors and their families when torture has taken place. Another key tool is the Convention’s Optional Protocol, which obliges its signatories to establish mechanisms for independent monitoring places of detention – one of the primary places where torture occurs. Important as they are, many states have not ratified these instruments, and among those who have, some continue to systematically practice torture and ill-treatment.

Ladies and gentlemen,

As concerned citizens we must call upon our governments to ratify and abide by these and other international conventions, which aim to protect men, women and children from the awesome power of the state. Speaking out against torture – breaking the silence – is a vital first step to bring perpetrators to justice and to honour survivor’s needs and rights.

Today, let us pay tribute to the dignity and strength of torture survivors everywhere. It is in their name that we issue the call "Let’s erase torture" – so that all of us can live in a world where the man-made disaster called torture is wiped away.

California Immigrant Policy Center Guide to Assisting Survivors of Trafficking and Domestic Violence in California

In January of 2007, California became the first state in the nation to provide assistance to survivors of trafficking, domestic violence and other serious crimes while they take steps to qualify for federal support. The California Immigrant Policy Center (CIPC) in alliance with advocates for survivors of domestic violence and trafficking and the San Francisco District Attorney's Office, sponsored this legislation which has offered a veritable lifeline of support to trafficking and other victims, helping them and their children find a safe environment and become self-sufficient.

CIPC is happy to announce the release of a guide to assistance for victims of trafficking, domestic violence and other serious crimes in California. To read, click here

Although this document is a technical guide for advocates who help victims of trafficking and domestic violence, it is really much more. It helps open the door to a new life for people who in many cases have suffered unspeakable crimes and have no where else to turn. CIPC thanks authors Tanya Broder of the National Immigration Law Center and Sheila Neville of the Legal Aid Foundation of Los Angeles for the extraordinary work they did to provide this critical information.

The report, which is called "Benefits for Immigrant Victims of Trafficking, Domestic Violence and Other Serious Crimes in California," includes information about state and local benefits available to survivors of trafficking and others who are in that critical period when they have not yet qualified for federal aid, but are in great need of medical attention and other services to help them cope with the abuse they have suffered. These include health care services under Medi-Cal and Healthy Families, as well as assistance under the CalWORKs program, the Cash Assistance Program for Immigrants (CAPI), nutrition assistance, job training and other critical services.

The 13-page report includes a helpful benefits chart that can be used to determine what benefits are available to a client and a list of websites for further information. It also includes a list of organizations that provide legal services if a client or advocate is having difficulties determining a person's eligibility for benefits.

Physicians for Human Rights Report: "Broken Laws, Broken Lives"

In Physicians for Human Rights' new report, Broken Laws, Broken Lives, we have for the first time medical evidence to confirm first-hand accounts of men who endured torture by US personnel in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Guantánamo Bay. These men were never charged with any crime. To download the Executive Summary of the free report Broken Laws, Broken Lives: Medical Evidence of Torture by US Personnel and Its Impact, click here.

Miles: Torture and the Courage to be Inconvenienced

Bioethicist Steven Miles - author of Oath Betrayed: Torture, Medical Complicity, and the War on Terror - recently gave a moving talk to St. Joan of Arc Catholic Church in which he deals with the moral challenges posed by torture and the ways in which torture affects all of us by destroying community.

Torture and the Courage to Be Inconvenienced

Steven Miles MD

[I was invited to give this talk at adult education at St. Joan of Arc Catholic Church on May 4, 2008 and lead a discussion of this topic on the evening of May 6. The Archdiocese of Minneapolis and St. Paul informed me that Minnesota Citizens Concerned for Life information@mccl.org encouraged people to contact the diocese to not allow me to speak because I am pro-choice on abortion and pro-euthanasia. Although I am pro-choice on abortion, I have written and spoke against physician-assisted suicide and euthanasia. This talk on torture addresses neither. My wife and I have adopted and raised a disabled foster child. The Archdiocese unications@archspm.org instructed St. Joan's that I could not appear at the adult education in the church. St. Joan's arranged for a college venue.

The author hereby grants permission to redistribute, download, copy and use this material in any electronic or printed form. No further permissions need be requested.]

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I am deeply honored to be able to speak with you today about the issue of torture.

Torture is not an exotic or esoteric topic. Although we rarely speak of it, it has directly wounded most of us. It is government policy in more than half of the world’s 200 nations. Our relatives fled the torture in East Europe, Latin America, or East Asia. Some of us were dispossessed by torture which enforced United States racial policies. Some of us have lost colleagues to torture in mission. Some of us sent or lost relatives who fought against torturing regimes. Forty thousand families in Minnesota have a torture survivor; we all bear the costs of their diminished parenting abilities, earning power, and sadness.

My family has been touched by torture too. My wife’s ancestors disappeared in the Holocaust of Belarus. Our adoptive son survived the Cambodia’s killing fields and as a nurse put himself in service of the refugees of Ruanda. I have worked with survivors of torture on three continents and assist several groups, including Minnesota’s Center for Victims of Torture, which strives to treat or prevent torture.

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The word “torture” comes from the word for “twist” capturing the design of devices like the rack or the wheel that contort the body. We should however not allow our empathic recoil from the image of a person’s agony to cause us to miss the point that torture is aimed to destroy a community. The destruction of a person is the path-the destruction of a community is the goal. The Passion story has all the elements of torture and cruel, inhuman, and degrading treatment.

The ostentatious and unnecessary use of an inside informer,

The mocking purple robe and the public label, “The King of the Jews,”

The scourging and the nails.

Jesus was not some Nazarene carpenter who was picked at random. He was selected and tortured in a manner that was designed to destroy the community carrying His message. In today’s scripture, Jesus reflected on that communitarian nature of his impending arrest and execution,

I glorified You on earth
by accomplishing the work that You gave me to do.
I pray for them. And I have been glorified in them.
And now I will no longer be in the world,
but they are in the world, while I am coming to You.
John 17:1-11a

Torture is generally used to attack and suppress civil society. This is why it is aimed at the monks in Burma, the political leaders of Zimbabwe, the playwrights of Czechoslovakia, the journalists of Russia, the students of Chile, or the union leaders of Uruguay.

In this use, torture is a strategy to maintain

• The corrupt against the civic minded,
• The empowered over the disenfranchised, and
• The best fed in lands where most are poor and hungry.

Torture is government by intimidation, horror, fear and division. It is antithetical to those who would create societies to flourish by lovingkindness, justice, and inclusion.

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In the still space of our confession, we must speak of our active and acquiescent, personal and collective, complicity with the culture of torture.

• We must acknowledge that torture is a problem for all of us. It has found fertile ground in the lands of Islam, on the Buddhist ground of Cambodia’s killing fields, in the fatherland of the Reformation, in the topsoil of communist nations, in the democratic motherlands of Turkey and the United States and in the loam of the Catholic lands of Latin America.

• We must confess that every people seem capable of torture, even the United States - Convener of the Trials at Nuremburg, co-author of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, and instigator of the Geneva Conventions for the protection against “torture, or cruel or inhuman or degrading treatment.”

• We should note that the National Catholic Reporter of March 24, 2006 reports that Catholics–more than the public at large, more than Protestants, and more than Evangelicals, support interrogational torture. Secular Americans were most likely to reject interrogational torture.

Then, we must turn from confessing complicity with the culture of torture to the abolition of torture and to reconciliation in societies of justice and lovingkindness.

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After the crucifixion, Jesus’ community-the real target of His torture–gathered at Olivet.

All these devoted themselves with one accord to prayer, Acts 1:12-14

They reaffirmed their faith in the message, the movement, and the kind of civil society that had been entrusted to them.

Whoever is made to suffer as a Christian should not be ashamed,
but should glorify God because of the name. 1 Pt 4:13-16

Reconciliation means accepting our responsibility for building a culture against torture.

We are responsible for knowing the facts. Research by the CIA, the Army, and the National Defense Intelligence University all show that interrogational torture is ineffective. It does not defuse ticking time bombs. The television show “24″ lies. Torture:

• Produces bad information that leads to bad policy and needless dangerous battlefield sorties.
• Radicalizes survivors
• Makes it impossible to recruit human intelligence.
• Alienates populations.
• Causes an enemy to fight to the death rather than to surrender.
• Undercuts the possibility of appealing for the humane treatment of our own soldiers who are taken POW.

We are responsible for resisting the culture of torture.

• Bishop Tutu and Nelson Mandela were freed by our solidarity with their cause.
• Our amens enabled Martin Luther King to beat back the culture of Jim Crow.
• Our complacency allowed Major Roberto D’Aubuisson to assassinate Archbishop Romero and his forces to oversee the defiling and murder of the Maryknoll sisters.
• Our complacency allowed the sadistic guards at Abu Ghraib to go about their business; but our unwillingness to put their photographs aside saved countless lives.

Oona Hathaway, a law professor at Yale University studied 160 nations some of which torture and others of which do not. She found that the witness of the Mothers of the Plaza in Argentina, the honesty of the Chilean Medical Association, or the dignified protests of the lawyers of Pakistan summoned nations towards curbing the scourge of torture.

In such facts and examples, we can discern the path of reconciliation.

We must summon the courage to be inconvenienced by the culture of torture.

We must accept responsibility for rejecting the culture of torture in our personal and collective actions, including our acts of citizenship.

We must lift our voices and hands in solidarity with civil communities of justice and lovingkindness in order to move from confession to the abolition of torture.