You know things are bad in your country when someone like the United Nations Special Rapporteur on human rights and counterterrorism assembles a report warning about your government’s abuse of human rights and assaults against liberty. We here in the United States are used to hearing about such reports describing the despotic governments of other countries.
Now, Americans must face a report of this nature about their own country. UN Special Rapporteur Martin Scheinin has issued a report decrying the role of the Military Commissions Act in allowing human rights abuses by the US government, in defiance of some of the most ancient traditions in law.
“It is most regretful,” Scheinn writes, “that a number of important mechanisms for the protection of rights have been removed or obfuscated under law and practice since the events of 11 September, including under the USA PATRIOT Act of 2001, the Detainee Treatment Act of 2005, the Military Commissions Act of 2006, and under Executive Orders and classified programmes.”
Scheinn also points out that the American government is in violation of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, which as a treaty ratified by Congress and signed by the President has the force of law within the United States. The Military Commissions Act, he writes, ” purports to expressly deny the jurisdiction of ordinary courts to hear an application for habeas corpus. The Special Rapporteur reminds that according to the Human Rights Committee, article 9(4) [of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights] cannot be derogated from even during a state of emergency.”
The USA should not have to be lectured about respect for human rights and the need to obey the law. America should be leading the way on these issues, a positive example for other nations to follow. Instead, our government is serving as an example of how to break the law and get away with it.
(Source: Addendum to the Report of the Special Rapporteur on the promotion and protection of human rights and fundamental freedoms while countering terrorism, October 25, 2007)
