"A high court judge yesterday delivered a stinging attack on America, saying its idea of what constituted torture was out of step with that of “most civilised nations”.
The criticism, directed at the Bush administration’s approach to human rights, was made by Mr Justice Collins during a hearing over the refusal by ministers to request the release of three British residents held at Guantánamo Bay.
The judge said: “America’s idea of what is torture is not the same as ours and does not appear to coincide with that of most civilised nations.” He made his comments, he said, after learning of the UN report that said Guantánamo should be shut down without delay because torture was still being carried out there."
And on Question Time last night, Peter Hain, a government minister said that he believed Guantanamo should never have been opened and should be closed as soon as possible. He also said that he believed that Tony Blair felt the same.
How much longer can the British Government remain publicly silent about human rights abuses at Guantanamo now that the above has been said and even Kofi Annan has called for the closure of the facility.
If the government came out forcefully and honestly about its beliefs about Guantanamo it would strip away one of the fig leaves available to the US.
Is this going to happen. How will history judge the British Government when ICRC records are released and they show that the US Human Rights abuses in Guantanamo were massive and hidden.
I agree with both assessments, but I don’t think the Administration nor its supporters will care. I think the Blair government can remain silent fairly long, so long as it isn’t brought up during PM Questions - in fact, I suspect that’s what they are going to do. If it’s brought up, they’ll say something like, “we share the honorable gentleman’s concerns and obviously we’re disturbed by torture allegations and are looking into the matter.”
I don’t know why the ICRC records would show anything up, since AFAIK, they don’t have access to most of the site.
Well, OK, to stretch my IMHO’s into a Debate, I think an important element in all of this is this phrase “civilised nations”, and whether the US has (or even desires) membership of such a set. The OP suggests that a senior British justice labelling the US as outside the set of civilised nations in this instance is a “whammy”.
But is it really? What if the US administration (and indeed electorate) not only didn’t give a hoot what the British government thinks (which is pretty self-evident, IMO) but actually didn’t care any more about being civilised? If that were the case, its entire relationship with the rest of the industrialised democratic world would seriously have to be examined. What would be the point, for example, of holding summit after summit on issues of mutual concern if it was perfectly clear from the outset that the US would only ever solely act in its own interest? One might even argue that including the US in the debate at all only served to delay and water down what might otherwise be accomplished by the other nations alone had the US never even turned up.
In short, if the US genuinely do not care for the opinions of “other civilised nations”, might it be best not to invite them to say so?
I don’t want to speak for them but I’m sure both of them would have no problems whatsoever in pointing out why Britain is also failing in it’s responsibilities. Do you think you can’t criticise a country for its actions just because your country is making the same mistakes?
This thread is about the US and UN reactions to GITMO. I sure the two posters would have something to say in a thread about the latest video of British soldiers abusing Iraqis.
Which I absolutely agree makes the UK less civilised, gum. But note that the UK government, nor any significant potrion of its electorate, is defending the right to abuse the human rights of prisoners.
It is not Abu Ghraib which Justice Collins attacked (assuming that they were the actions of individuals rather than policy), it was Guantanamo. It is a fallacy typical of US conservatism to draw equivalence between things which are clearly distinct in this way. If the UK were operating such a camp in, say, Ireland, I would advocate UN sanctions against the UK until it started behaving “like other civilised nations”.
To tell you the truth for some reason I thought I was reading the other GD thread "** UN to U.S.: Shut down Guantanamo Bay prison now!** which is why I said this thread is about UN and US. Your point about Britain makes more sense than I thought in did since I was incorrect about the thread I was in.
Heh - the equivalent would actually be a cricket riot, of which we have very few.
As for soccer riots, we haven’t had a proper one of them for many years (and the US isn’t far behind on that score either). But all this tu quoque-ing is by the by. I will object to British authoritarianism wherever I can. But this government policy of arbitrary imprisonment for 5 years and the torture inflicted on such prisoners is what Justice Collins is talking about here, and it shows that the US is truly at odds with most civilised nations in this respect.
I agree. What’s the point of talking if people are just going to be so barbarous and uncivilized as to disagree? Frightful. I think I might swoon at the very thought. Perhaps one of the servants can fetch me a silken pillow upon which to rest my wise, swollen head.
On the subject of torture and arbitrary detention? I’m really not sure whether civilisation can consider these negotiable, really. At the very least, any country must certainly consider withdrawing from the charter they signed promising not to ‘disagree’ in this way.
I believe that the ICRC have had access to the whole site- it was one of the thing necessary for the US Govt to say that althought the detainees were not being accorded POW status, they were being treated in accord with the Geneva Conventions.
I will look for a cite but would ask you to provide a counter cite that the ICRC have been excluded from access to ‘most of the site’. You may be confusing this with access by others than the ICRC.
I have started a separate thread about that very issue together with the latest torture pictures from Abu Ghraib:
However, I would point out that two cases were disimilar in the extreme. I in no way condone the actions of the British soldiers. However, their actions were similar to a nasty street fight after a football match- hitting with staves, nutting, kicking in the balls- certainly bad enough. Abu Ghraib by contrast showed extreme humiliation, forced masturbation, attack dogs, threatened genital torture, sexual humiliation, forced nudity and forced sex acts between men, restraint in uncomfortable positions apparently leading to loss of consciousness, torture leading to considerable blood loss, and the exhibition of corpses in lewd and mock-humorous poses.
The British troups engaged in a quick and inexcusable act of physical revenge on people who probably had been abusing them a few moments before (still totally unacceptable). The US transgressions took place in a secured environment over a considerable period of time and seem to mimic ‘skills’ learned and developed in Gitmos by Intelligence Officers (there’s an Oxymoron).
Both events bad. One event considerably worse than the other.
