Spare the world lectures on rights

July 18, 2008

Spare the world lectures on rights

AMNESTY International's call for the immediate release of a Canadian citizen being held at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, has brought attention to the brutality with which the US treats those held in detention but also the indifference to conventions on treatment of minors.
It might not be surprising to the world — which has seen the images from Abu Ghraib in Iraq — that the US authorities have little time to respect human rights when it comes to people from this part of the world. But the case of Canadian Omar Khadr takes the abuse of rights to new heights.
The torture to which Omar Khadr was subjected to at Guantanamo was exposed when a Canadian court ordered Canadian intelligence to surrender videos of the teenager being questioned. Khadr was under 15 when he was captured by US forces in Afghanistan and was 16 when the video was taken as he was being questioned by Canadian intelligence agents in 2003. Khadr, who is of Egyptian roots, is facing charges of killing an American soldier with a grenade during fighting in Afghanistan. He was taken from the battlefield badly wounded and near death.
In the video-footage released by his lawyers, then-teenage captive sobs and repeatedly cries, "Help me." That is only a scratch on the surface.
According to his own account, reported by Amnesty International, “during interrogations a bag was placed over his head and US personnel brought military dogs into the room to frighten him.” He was “not allowed to use the bathroom and was forced to urinate on himself.” Like many other prisoners, he was also hung from his wrists, and “his hands were tied above a door frame and he was forced to stand in this position for hours.” An article in Rolling Stone, in August 2006, added further details, noting that he was “brought into interrogation rooms on stretchers, in great pain,” and was “ordered to clean floors on his hands and knees while his wounds were still wet.”
If this is the way the authorities treat a teenager in Guantanamo, it does not need much imagination how they treat adults.
That is not all. The US authorities designated Khadr in November 2005 as one of 10 Guantánamo detainees to be tried by a military commission, which is "empowered" to try detainees and even pass the death sentence using secret evidence that would never be revealed to either the detainees or their government-appointed defence lawyers.
Amnesty International's argument is very clear.
"The treatment of Omar Khadr throughout his detention violates the USA’s obligations under international law, which requires that in all actions concerning children the best interests of the child must be a primary consideration," it says.
"No one who was a child at the time of their alleged crime should be tried by military commissions, which have no juvenile justice provisions whatsoever," the group said. "Omar Khadr should either be repatriated and tried in Canada by an ordinary court or released."
Regardless of the charge against Khadr and of the circumstances of his capture in Afghanistan, the US authorities should have treated him like a juvenile. His age might not have made a difference to the US authorities, but it did to lawyers and human rights groups and that is why the Bush administration finds itself again facing charges of abusing the rights of a minor.
The US could perhaps argue that since it has not ratified the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child, it is free to violate the human rights of juveniles in its "war on terror." It is highly unlikely that Washington would heed the call for Khadr's release from the Bay.
But the posture surely deprives the sole superpower of the world of any right to assume the high moral ground and lecture others on how to respect human rights.