The United States takes its first-ever ranking not as a reprieve but as a responsibility to strengthen global efforts against modern slavery, including those within America. This human rights abuse is universal, and no one should claim immunity from its reach or from the responsibility to confront it.
So why did he seek asylum in the U.S. rather than relocate to nearby Austria or another European country that allows homeschooling? Romeike's wife Hannelore tells TIME the family was contacted by the Virginia-based Home School Legal Defense Association (HSLDA), which suggested they go to the U.S. and settle in Morristown, Tenn. The nonprofit organization, which defends the rights of the U.S. homeschooling community — with its estimated 2 million children, or about 4% of the total school-age population — is expanding its overseas outreach. And on Jan. 26, the HSLDA helped the Romeikes become the first people granted asylum in the U.S. because they were persecuted for homeschooling.The ruling is tricky politically for Washington and its allies in Europe, where several countries — including Spain and the Netherlands — allow homeschooling only under exceptional circumstances, such as when a child is extremely ill. That helps explain why in late February, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement formally appealed the Romeike ruling, which was issued by an immigration judge in Memphis, Tenn. His unprecedented decision has raised concerns that the already heavily backlogged immigration courts will be flooded with asylum petitions from homeschoolers in countries typically regarded as having nonrepressive governments.
"It's very unusual for people from Western countries to be granted asylum in the U.S.," says David Piver, an immigration attorney with offices in a Philadelphia suburb and Flagstaff, Ariz. In 2008, the most recent year for which data are available, only five Germans received asylum in the U.S. (The Justice Department declined to comment on specific cases.) Piver, who is not involved in the Romeike case, predicted the U.S. government would appeal the decision "so as not to offend a close ally."
"When sexual orientation became an option [as a basis for asylum
claims] in 1994, the Internet was in its infancy, and it was difficult for
people to find out they could seek safe haven in the U.S.," says Rachel B.
Tiven, executive director of Immigration Equality [http://www.immigrationequality.org/]. "Now we are seeing a steady
increase." Last week the nonprofit won its 60th case of the year, and it has
several others still pending. Immigration Equality won 55 cases in 2008 and 30
cases in 2007.
UPDATE: The State Department held a roundtable discussion on strategies for US participation in the Human Rights Council. It was attended by representatives human rights NGOs and US Ambassador to the UN, Susan Rice. Vital Voices has a blog post about it; I'll post more information if I can find any.By perversely casting proponents of a commission of inquiry as "trying to undermine Sri Lanka's efforts in countering terrorism," Sri Lanka has created an utterly false dichotomy between combating terrorism and protecting human rights. Its unwillingness to have potential human rights violations investigated only casts doubt on its wartime conduct, rather than exonerating its actions at a stroke, as the government absurdly claims.
For the United States to make a difference in changing this dynamic on the Council, it goes without saying that it will have to accept and embrace what should be an uncontested truism: that effectively countering terrorism not only allows for, but in fact requires, wholehearted defense of human rights. This means, once again, fully renouncing torture and working to undo years of policy and rhetoric that make it little surprise where Sri Lanka's leaders incubated such a supreme self-confidence in their own war on terrorism.
Blogger Larisa Alexandrovna notes that pictures like these have already been released. On UN Dispatch, Mark Leon Goldberg thinks the victims' right to privacy should be taken into account as well.Allegations of rape and abuse were included in his 2004 report but the fact there were photographs was never revealed. He has now confirmed their existence in an interview with the Daily Telegraph.
The graphic nature of some of the images may explain the US President’s attempts to block the release of an estimated 2,000 photographs from prisons in Iraq and Afghanistan despite an earlier promise to allow them to be published.
Maj Gen Taguba, who retired in January 2007, said he supported the President’s decision, adding: “These pictures show torture, abuse, rape and every indecency.
“I am not sure what purpose their release would serve other than a legal one and the consequence would be to imperil our troops, the only protectors of our foreign policy, when we most need them, and British troops who are trying to build security in Afghanistan.
“The mere description of these pictures is horrendous enough, take my word for it.”
“Danger, bombings,” Silewa says, “everyday killings.” Denho explains that his parents, who are Christian, still live in Baghdad and receive threats because of their religion. “Now they can’t [step] outside,” he says. “They can’t buy anything.” A Muslim militia member killed a friend who lived near his parents. I ask Denho if he wants to bring his parents to the United States. “I wish,” he says, “but how?”As Mark Leon Goldberg points out on UN Dispatch:
Silewa came to America in order to gain permanent residency and bring his wife and two sons, who ended up in Germany. But he hasn’t seen his family in three years. The family-reunification process can stretch on for many years, and even if all their papers were in order, Silewa says, he has no idea how he would pay for their airfare from Germany. With no car and no job, Silewa sits in his apartment and thinks about his family.
“I still can’t sleep,” he says through a translator from the local Chaldean Middle Eastern Social Services office. “I am still thinking a lot about my family. What really makes it worse is that I’m not finding a job to support myself and to help my family [come here].” He and Denho, Silewa says, “both sit all night and just cry. I really want to cry just to release it.” Almost every night is the same, their American dreams just out of reach.
As opposed to other western countries that have received large numbers of Iraqi asylum seekers, the United States has a smaller social safety net. . . . [R]efugee families in the United States face the double hurdles of chronic poverty and adapting to life in a country in which they do not speak the language. It is a pretty tragic situation.
On Christmas in 2006, Boumediene recalled, he started a hunger strike in an effort to get someone to listen to his pleas of innocence. Twice a day, about 6 a.m. and 1 p.m., he was strapped to an iron chair and force-fed through a tube in his nose that reached into his stomach.
Until a meal with his lawyers as he was about to leave Guantanamo, Boumediene said, he broke his fast only twice, once when he learned of President Obama's election and again when the judge ordered his release.
"I have no idea why this happened to me," he said. "I'm a Muslim like any other. I pray and I observe Ramadan. But I don't have any hatred against anybody."
Grateful to be settling in France with government help, his first goal is to draw close to his family again, Boumediene said. But down the road, he added, he wants to sue the U.S. government or its senior officials to hold them accountable.
"I don't know whether it will be possible," he said. "But even if it takes 100 years, I am determined to bring suit."
Defense Secretary Robert Gates says the Obama administration had no choice but to order the shutdown of the prison at Guantanamo because "the name itself is a condemnation" of U.S. anti-terrorism strategy.In an interview broadcast Friday on NBC's "Today" show, Gates called the facility on the island of Cuba "probably one of the finest prisons in the world today." But at the same time, he said it had become "a taint" on the reputation of America.
"I urge those who think about standing with the spoilers of peace not to miss this opportunity to walk away," he said.
The White House said the visit by the vice-president was meant to reinforce US support for "an independent and sovereign Lebanon".
"We welcome President Obama's stated commitment to the Constitution, the rule of law and the unequivocal rejection of torture. But unlike the president, we believe that continuing with the failed military commissions and creating a new system of indefinite detention without charge is inconsistent with the values that he expressed so eloquently at the National Archives today," ACLU Executive Director Anthony Romero said, in a press release sent out after the speech.
--------------------------
"He wraps himself in the Constitution and then, in our view, proceeds to undermine it," Center for Constitutional Rights (CCR) President Michael Ratner said. Obama spoke this morning in the Rotunda for the Charters of Freedom at the National Archives, where the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence are displayed.
"If his legacy is preventive detention and military commissions, that's a real step backwards," Ratner said. "It would be a legacy for the future that I think will cause untold damage to constitutional rights in this country...it's very sad to me."
The level of the public debate is sickening. I'm glad Alex Gibney is pointing that out and moving the focus in a more constructive and meaningful direction. The entire film can be view online. It is heartbreaking but necessary.Well, Ms. Coulter, work on this: is murder a frat prank?
There has been a lot of arcane talk about the memos produced by the Office of Legal Counsel about specific "no-touch" torture techniques which, out-of-context, can sound harmless, if a bit weird. (In one of Office of Legal Counsel memos written by Stephen Bradley, he notes that, while it's OK to strip a detainee naked and make him wear a diaper, one must be careful not to chafe the skin with the Velcro straps when taking them on and off.)
What has been mostly missing from the recent debate about detainee abuse is that over 100 detainees died in custody during the war on terror. Nearly half of those deaths have been classified as homicides. For all sorts of reasons, it's worth looking at one case in particular. It's the story of Dilawar, a 22-year old taxi driver whose murder was at the center of my film, "Taxi to the Dark Side."
-------------------------------
What could have caused such trauma? A criminal investigation revealed that the Military Police at Bagram had pummeled Dilawar's legs with peroneal strikes, an "approved" control measure that the MPs had learned one day in their guard training. It involved slamming their knees into the nerve endings on Dilawar's thighs. "It drops 'em pretty good," said one MP.
At first, soldiers told me, they used strikes to control the 122-pound Dilawar because he would often try to take off his hood, perhaps because he suffered from severe asthma. Later, as Dilawar continued to moan and cry out for his mother and father - which MPs, who couldn't understand him, may have mistaken for the signs of a troublemaker - the guards would pummel him with knee strikes over and over again, just to shut him up, or sometimes, for their amusement, just to hear him scream "allah."
-------------------------------Now, let's move on to the results of Dilawar's interrogation. After all, the "torture-is-tough-but-necessary" crowd maintains that torture always delivers the goods. Let's see what actionable intelligence was obtained: After the third day of trying to find out about the rocket attack, Dilawar's interrogators concluded that he was utterly innocent. Yet the beatings continued for another two days until Dilawar was dead.
To cover-up the fact that the Army had murdered an innocent man, the Army sent his passengers (who had also been incarcerated at Bagram) to Guantanamo. There they sat until March 2004, when military officials concluded that the unlucky passengers "posed no threat" to American forces and sent them, without explanation, back home to the peanut fields of Yakubi. Upon further investigation, it turned out that Afgans who had originally detained Dilawar and his passengers were the very ones who were actually responsible for the rocket attacks on Camp Salerno. They had a record of arresting innocents, proclaiming them guilty and turning them over to US troops in order to curry favor with the Americans.
The return of the tribunals is troubling from a human rights perspective because of the due process concerns they create.Two senior administration officials outlined several of the rules changes, which will be carried out by executive authority, to The Associated Press on Thursday night. They include:
_Restrictions on hearsay evidence that can be used in court against the detainees.
_A ban on all evidence obtained through cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment. This would include statements given from detainees who were subjected to waterboarding, a form of simulated drowning.
_Giving detainees greater leeway in choosing their own military counsel.
_Protecting detainees who refuse to testify from legal sanctions or other court prejudices.
The White House may seek additional changes to the military commissions law over the next 120 days, but it was not immediately clear Thursday what they could include.
Marc Ambinder makes a useful point."It's disappointing that Obama is seeking to revive rather than end this failed experiment," said Jonathan Hafetz, a national security attorney at the American Civil Liberties Union. "There's no detainee at Guantanamo who cannot be tried and shouldn't be tried in the regular federal courts system. Even with the proposed modifications, this will not cure the commissions or provide them with legitimacy. This is perpetuating the Bush administration's misguided detention policy."
Critics of the Guantanamo commissions, including Obama as a senator in 2006, called them a violation of U.S. law because of the limits on detainees' legal rights. Pushed by President George W. Bush, Congress created the current tribunal system in 2006 after scrapping an earlier version that gave detainees additional rights.
Obama voted for the earlier version of the tribunals plan that also had the support of four moderate Republicans on the Senate Armed Services Committee. But he opposed the system that Congress ultimately approved, calling it "sloppy."
"We have rushed through a bill that stands a good chance of being challenged once again in the Supreme Court," Obama said in a Sept. 28, 2006, speech on the Senate floor. "This is not how a serious administration would approach the problem of terrorism."
Later, on the presidential campaign trail in February 2008, Obama described the Guantanamo trials as "a flawed military commission system that has failed to convict anyone of a terrorist act since the 9/11 attacks and that has been embroiled in legal challenges."
This point has been overlooked in the first round of coverage about President Obama's decision to use military commission tribunals for some of the Gitmo detainees: according to an administration official, most of the remaining 241 detainees will be afforded Article III trials -- that is, fully-fledged, regular trials, unless they're released without trial. Some of them might be shunted to a newly-created national security court, if the administration and Congress team up to create one. The remaining detainees -- presumably dangerous folks who the administration wants to detain but who haven't had the right type of evidence accumulated against them -- will be tried by the military. The AP says about 20 military commissions will be held.
On first read, then, the military commissions are being used as a way to justify indefinite detention -- to create a means through which habeas corpus rights for these prisoners can be exercised (but not fully granted) and then exhausted.
One question: it's totally true that the criminality, so to speak, of the Gitmo detainees ranges from innocent to murderous. Where does the administration draw the lines -- release, Article III, commission -- and in doing so, do the lines appear capricious enough to provoke the ire of the regular judicial system and Congress?
U.S. Ambassador Susan Rice said Washington still believed the body was flawed, but added: "We are looking forward to working from within with a broad cross-section of member states to strengthen and reform the Human Rights Council."
Hillel Neuer of Geneva-based group UN Watch said the presence of China, Cuba, Russia and Saudi Arabia on the council would result in "the foxes guarding the chickens." He said the council's credibility was at stake over its failure to hold an emergency session over the bloody fighting in Sri Lanka.
Steve Crawshaw of New York-based Human Rights Watch welcomed U.S. council membership but criticized its uncontested election. "The message that was understood around the world ... (was) that somehow elections without competition make sense," he said.
[South Carolina Senator Lindsey] Graham dismisses today's hearing as a "political stunt" because "we would not be having this hearing if we were attacked this afternoon." What this really means is that for all his talk of legality and law and the rule of law, in his view the law means one thing "in the quiet peace of the moment" and something entirely different in the immediate aftermath of a terrorism strike. It's sort of like a national Twinkie defense, but Graham is willing to strap a saddle onto that Twinkie today and ride … and ride and ride.
Former State Department counselor Philip Zelikow is also thinking about how we will all go crazy after the next terror strike when he testifies: "We could be hit again and hit hard. But our decision to respect basic international standards does not appear to be a big hindrance in this fight. ... Others may disagree. They may believe ... that America needs an elaborate program of indefinite secret detention and physical coercion in order to protect the nation. The government, and the country, needs to decide whether they are right. If they are right, our laws must change and our country must change. I think they are wrong."
Hafed al-Ghwell, a Libyan-American and prominent critic of the Kaddafi regime, says there were plenty of reasons to question the report that Libi had committed suicide. (The report appeared Sunday in Oea, a newspaper owned by Saif al-Islam, the influential son of Kaddafi, but contained no details about how Libi was supposed to have killed himself.) "This idea of committing suicide in your prison cell is an old story in Libya," Al-Ghwell explains. In the past, he adds, there have been a number of cases where political prisoners are reported to have committed suicide. Then the families get the bodies back and discover the prisoners had been shot in the back or tortured to death. "My gut feeling is that something fishy happened here and somebody in Libya panicked," he says. With the prospect that the Obama administration might release more Bush-era documents about the treatment of CIA detainees, officials in the Kaddafi regime had reasons to be concerned that their "complicity" in the U.S. war on terror would be exposed Al-Ghwell says.
After NEWSWEEK reported that Libi's recanted claims had been the basis for the bogus claims about Iraq-Al Qaeda ties, the Bush administration dropped all official references to Libi. He was conspicuously not among the "high-value detainees" sent to Guantánamo in September 2006 and was later reported to have been secretly shipped back to Libya. Only three weeks ago, on April 27, two workers with Human Rights Watch visited with Libi at the Al Saleem prison. The visit represented the first time any outsiders had been able to see Libi since his original capture by U.S. forces nearly eight years ago. Although Libi had previously been reported to have been ailing from tuberculosis, he appeared to be healthy and had no apparent physical ailments, says Heba Morayef, one of the Human Rights Watch workers present. Morayef says she and her colleague explained to Libi that they wanted to talk to him about the torture he had experienced while in custody. But after a few minutes, Libi grew visibly angry. "Where were you when I was being tortured in an American prison?" he said, according to Morayef. At that point, he walked out—never to be seen or heard from again, until his reported death this week.
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