Free Republic

NEW YORK (Reuters) - The United States abused a law intended to keep witnesses from fleeing when it jailed dozens of Muslim men after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, according to a report Monday by two major rights groups. The 70 men, all but one of them Muslim, were suspected by the Justice Department of involvement in terrorism but were held as material witnesses rather than criminal suspects, said Jamie Fellner of Human Rights Watch, which released the report with the American Civil Liberties Union. The designation, intended to hold people who have information about a crime but may want...

As millions of children look forward to a break from school, millions of oth­ers only wish they could begin. For these children, summer days will not be spent in ballparks and play­grounds, but on battlegrounds or in fields. These children have no time for play. It's all work. And the work is dirty, hard and dangerous. According to the International Labor Organization's (www.ilo.org) global report, "A Future Without Child Labor," 246 million children worldwide are in­volved in child labor, which should be abolished. The study found that 179 mil­lion children ages 5 to 17 are exposed to forms of child...

NEW YORK, May 19, 2005 (IslamOnline.net & News Agencies) – The US should investigate the humiliation of Muslim detainees and the abuse of their religious beliefs rather than attack those who expose them, an international human rights group has said. “Around the world, the United States has been humiliating Muslim detainees by offending their religious beliefs,” Reed Brody, a special counsel for the New York-based Human Rights Watch (HRW), was quoted as saying by Agence France-Presse (AFP). “If the United States is to repair the public relations damage caused by its mistreatment of detainees, it needs to investigate those who...

When The New York Times, “Nightline,” and CNN nominate a young blonde for sainthood ahead of the Pope, it’s time for a reality check. Especially when that blonde, Marla Ruzicka’s sole purpose is to legitimize our enemies, cause problems for U.S. troops already in harms way, and morally equivocate dead terrorists with victims of 9/11. Jane Fonda lite—but unfortunately without having been spat upon by right-thinking veterans. The recent death of Ruzicka, an American “activist” in Iraq, elicited an orgy of gush—everywhere from Time Magazine to The Guardian of London to Al-Jazeera. A 28-year-old San Franciscan, Ruzicka was in Iraq...

Human Rights Watch has begun a project to track how allegations of abuse and homicide against U.S. soldiers are dealt with in the military justice system. “What we’re trying to get a handle on, is how successful the military justice system has been in investigating and prosecuting allegations of abuse,” said John Sifton, lead researcher on counter-terrorism and military affairs for the non-profit group based in New York City. “We’re not on a witch hunt against troops; our concern is systematic failures.” The project to collect and analyze data from more than 100 cases began in December, which includes allegations...

Human rights group accuses Ethiopian military of attacking civilians NAIROBI, Kenya: Ethiopian troops have committed widespread killings, rapes and torture of the Anuak population in the southwestern corner of the country since late 2003, Human Rights Watch said Thursday. Numerous attacks by soldiers and civilians from other ethnic groups have killed more than 500 people and driven several thousand Anuaks from their homes in the Gambella region, the New York-based group said in a 64-page report released in Nairobi. The most serious attack took place in December 2003 when civilians attacked several Anuak villages, killing more than 400 people, the...

(via Geopolitical Review) Ken Roth and Human Rights Watch have employed Lucy Mair as a researcher in Israel/Occupied Territories. Ms. Mair's qualifications include writing for the "Electronic Intifada" and work with Grassroots International, a radical pro-Palestinian political organization. (Since HRW's employment process is secret, and not subject to independent review, we are unable to compare her credentials and expertise on universal human rights issues with the other candidates.) Her descriptions of Life in Palestine, and articles for "Palestine Now" etc., focus exclusively on Palestinian "fear and the loss and the humiliation and the despair", with no mention of terror, suicide...

Iraq: Torture Continues at Hands of New Government Police Systematically Abusing Detainees (Baghdad, January 25, 2005) -- Iraqi security forces are committing systematic torture and other abuses against people in detention, Human Rights Watch said in a new report released today. The people of Iraq were promised something better than this after the government of Saddam Hussein fell. The New Iraq? Torture and Ill-treatment of Detainees in Iraqi Custody Report, January 24, 2005 The 94-page report, The New Iraq? Torture and Ill-treatment of Detainees in Iraqi Custody, documents how unlawful arrest, long-term incommunicado detention, torture and other ill-treatment of detainees...

LONDON (AP) - Iraqi security forces are arbitrarily arresting people and systematically torturing and abusing detainees, Human Rights Watch said in a report released Tuesday. With few exceptions, Iraqi authorities have not acted to stop such mistreatment, the report said. International police advisers, largely funded by the U.S. government, "have turned a blind eye to these rampant abuses," it said. "The Iraqi interim government led by Prime Minister Ayad Allawi ... appears to be actively taking part, or is at least complicit, in these grave violations of fundamental human rights. Nor has the United States, the United Kingdom or other...

America's human rights abuses have provided a rallying cry for terrorists and set a bad example to regimes seeking to justify their own poor rights records, a leading independent watchdog said yesterday. The torture and degrading treatment of prisoners in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Guantánamo Bay have undermined the credibility of the US as a defender of human rights and opponent of terrorism, the New York-based Human Rights Watch says in its annual report. "The US government is less and less able to push for justice abroad because it is unwilling to see justice done at home," says Kenneth Roth, the...

Denis Boyles is a must read to follow the ongoing hypocrisy of our "allies" in Europe. He is also wicked funny.

JERUSALEM (AP) -- Israel has violated international law by systematically destroying Palestinian homes in the Gaza Strip town of Rafah in a bid to create a buffer zone along the border with Egypt, according to a human rights report released Monday. The Human Rights Watch report also accused the Israeli military of exaggerating the threat posed by weapons-smuggling tunnels running from Rafah to Egypt -- the main justification for the home demolitions. "We've seen the piece by piece destruction of up to 10 percent of Rafah," said Kenneth Roth, executive director of the New York-based group.

NEW YORK (AFP) - Human Rights Watch listed the names of 11 senior Al-Qaeda suspects it said were held by the CIA (news - web sites) in secret locations overseas, where some had reportedly been tortured. The suspects were detained with no notification to their families, no Red Cross access and, in some cases, no acknowledgement that they are even being held, the New York-based watchdog said in a 46-page report. "'Disappearances' were a trademark abuse of Latin American military dictatorships in their 'dirty war' on alleged subversion," said Human Rights Watch special counsel Reed Brody. "Now they have become...

The EU and the UN have finally decided to take the first timid steps to try to put an end to what it happening in Darfur in the Sudan. The recent report by Human Rights Watch on Darfur corroborates the worst suspicions of those who have followed developments in western Sudan. There have been killings on a massive scale, expulsions, the systematic torching of villages and – last and not least – the use of rape as a weapon of intimidation and humiliation against the province's black population. These are not just the depredations of unruly Arab militias. They are...

A refugee from the village of Kailek tends a camp fire in Kas, Sudan. (Sudarsan Raghavan/Knight Ridder) Muslim killing Muslim in Sudan By Sudarsan Raghavan Knight Ridder News Service     KAILEK, Sudan -- The white-robed men on horseback shot two of Hamid Rahman's boys that scorching afternoon. They were 3 and 6. But they weren't the youngest or the weakest to die. The Arab marauders targeted the blind, the disabled, the women carrying children -- anyone who couldn't run fast enough.     "They killed even babies," recalled Rahman, 40, a survivor with sad, glassy eyes.     Here, in the...

Sorry, Sorry, Sorry! On Thursday, May 6, Pres. Bush publicly apologized to Jordan’s King Abdullah II for the abuse of Iraqi prisoners at Abu Ghraib. I wasn’t aware that Abdullah was the king of Iraq. Apparently, when America screws up, our leader must apologize to any and every Moslem in the world, to people who exuberantly support torture, as long as it is carried out by Moslems. I must have missed King Abdullah II’s apology for the butchering of four American civilians in Falluja. King Abdullah is a “moderate, pro-U.S.” Arab, which means that his statements in support of genocidal...

Kabul: Human Rights Watch (HRW) has flayed the actions of US military and intelligence units in the war-torn Afghanistan. In a new report, the US-based group has accused US personnel of using excessive force, carrying out arbitrary detentions and mistreating people in custody. Washington keeps about 9,000 troops on Afghan soil, involved primarily in fighting the Taleban and al-Qaeda terror network. But the human rights body says many US actions violate international law. Entitled Enduring Freedom - Abuses by US Forces in Afghanistan, the report focuses on the American system of detaining people at bases across the country, which it...

A leading human rights group has said the US and UK are wrong to use the toppling of a brutal regime in Baghdad to justify going to war against Iraq. The group, Human Rights Watch asked why George Bush and Tony Blair did not try remove Saddam Hussein much earlier. Its report comes as the former US chief weapons inspector questioned the CIA's assessment of the threat from Iraq. Tony Blair is also under pressure, awaiting the findings of an inquiry into the death of a UK weapons expert. Mr Blair and Mr Bush have come under increasing pressure...

Iraq War Not Humanitarian, Group Says Monday January 26, 2004 4:16 PM By MICHAEL McDONOUGH Associated Press Writer LONDON (AP) - The war in Iraq cannot be justified as an intervention in defense of human rights even though it ended a brutal regime, Human Rights Watch said Monday, dismissing one of the Bush administration's main arguments for the invasion. While Saddam Hussein had an atrocious human rights record, his worst actions occurred long before the war and there was no ongoing or imminent mass killing in Iraq when the conflict began, the advocacy group said in its annual report. President...

<p>December 13, 2003 -- The activist group Human Rights Watch has claimed that "hundreds of civilian deaths" in the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq "could have been prevented" if only America hadn't used cluster munitions or tried to "decapitate" the Iraqi leadership using intercepts of satellite phone calls. This could be true. After all, war is an inherently messy thing - a kingdom of difficult, often deadly choices.</p>