The International Federation for Human Rights and its 115 member organisations wish to draw the attention of the Commission of Human Rights to the attacks on public liberties and on human rights perpetrated in the name of the struggle against terrorism.
We condemn all acts of international terrorism. The attacks committed against a civilian population cannot be justified and their perpetrators must be brought to justice, strictly within the universal norms established for the protection of human rights.
Faced with terrorist attacks, the necessity of justice must prevail over the temptation of revenge. Justice cannot be achieved without international norms of human rights and international humanitarian law.
Moreoever, a great number of countries have allocated themselves with particularly severe security arsenals which restrict collective and individual liberties and the fundemental rights of citizens. An internet site (" www.enduring-freedoms.net ") listing the violations of human rights has been set up by FIDH, Reporters Without Borders, and Human Rights Watch since November 2001.
Two types of states hostile to individual liberty can be distinguished: those who have surrendered to the " panic " following the attacks and those who have allocated themselves with legal weapons which restrain freedoms beyond the limits authorized by international law. But also the "opportunist states", who abuse the struggle against terrorism to initiate measures hostile to individual liberty.
In the United States, the antiterrorist struggle sanctions massive preventive detentions. The detention on the military base of Guantanamo Bay of those presumed guilty of belonging to the network Al-Qaeda is completely arbitrary, lacks legal justification, and violates the rules governing the conditions of the detention of prisonners, subjecting them to inhuman and degrading treatment.
The " hunt " for terrorists increases racial profiling against people of Middle Eastern origin, encouraging recourse to denunciations in exchange, for foreigners, for facilitated availibility of visas.
In Great Britain as in the United States, the Anti-Terrorism Act and the USA Patriot Act permit authorities to detain for an undetermined period non-nationals on the simple suspicion of their participation in terrorist activities or of links with terrorist organisations. Such a detention violates Articles 9 and 14 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (PIDCP), recognized as inalienable by the Human Rights Committee in its General Recommendation 29. These dispositions violate the Convention Against Racial Discrimination as well, discriminating against non-nationals, infringing on the inalienability of the non-discrimination clause recognized at the Conference of Durban.
In Germany, immigration and asylum can be refused on a simple suspicion of belonging to a terrorist group or of participation in terrorist activities. Instead of effectively handling a true threat, these dispositions deprive refugees of their fundemental right to be heard. They also violate Article 3 of the Convention Against Torture, which prohibits the rejection of asylum to an applicant at risk of becoming victim to acts of torture in his country.
In Italy, antiterrorist laws give unlimited license to secret police to commit offenses (theft, illegal searches, interference in private domains, etc.). In France, exceptional measures, designated " temporary " by international law, have been adopted for a duration longer than two years!
In China, the struggle against terrorism allows the reinforcement of repression in complete impunity against minorities Ouigoures, Tibetans, Mongols or members of the Falun Gong Movement, victims of a staggering death penalty campaign. In India, the anti-terrorist law lengthened the period of incarceration without justification to thirty days. The anti-terrorist coalition also permitted President Poutin, in Russia, to obtain clear support for his repression of the Chechen population. An FIDH mission announces that, in Chechnya, the increase of raiding and pillaging of villages by Russian soldiers.
In Indonesia, Jordan or in Zimbabwe, the anti-terrorist laws define very broadly the crime of terrorism, rendering guilty, at the instigation of Zimbabwe, all political opposition or journalist " sapping the authority of the President " by a terrorist act, or, as in Jordan, all people undermining the Constitution.
At the occasion of the publication of the Annual Report 2001 of the Observatory for the Protection of Human Rights Defenders, FIDH and the OMCT have sounded the alarm: in the context of the struggle against terrorism, the defenders of human rights find themselves in situations of maximum risk. The national security opportunism of numerous states exceeds very largely its ostensible purpose, and in this moment, the passivity of the entire international community, places the defenders in a situation of ultimate safeguard against arbitrary authority. It is needless to say that, in these conditions, human rights defenders are still more vulnerable to multiple forms of repression due to their activities.
Even as measures hostile to liberty increase, FIDH and its leagues thank the High Commissioner for Human Rights for her courageous appeal guaranteeing the preservation of the mainstays of the International Law for Human Rights.
1. They call upon the Commission not to sacrifice human rights and their defenders on the alter of the struggle against terrorism. The Commission has the principal responsability to state clearly the limits posed by international law and to condemn abuses.
2. They demand the member states of the Commission to join their voices to the call initiated by 17 independent experts of the Commission on 10 December 2001, expressing their deep concern regarding the adoption of national security laws or of other measures which undermine the exercise of fundamental rights and freedoms, deploring all violations of human rights or measures which target defenders of human rights, migrants, refugees, ethnic or religious minorities, as well as members of opposing political groups or the media.
FIDH, Amnesty International, the Cairo Institute for Human Rights, the International Commission of Jurists, Human Rights Watch, are mobilising jointly and invite the states of the Commission to an informational meeting next Friday to put forth an appeal for the protection of human rights in the context of the struggle against terrorism.
Mr. President, I thank you.