One year after the horrific suicide attacks on the United States, the shockwave has reached all the continents, provoking regional destabilization, an unacceptable legitimization of serious human rights violations, and unjustified restrictions on individual liberties. Manicheanism and opportunism seem to have taken the place of rationalism and of the rule of law; the fight against the "axis of evil" has replaced the construction of a more just and peaceful world.
Dumbfounded, hurt and humiliated by this aggression, the American superpower reacted in an extremely resolute fashion. First, at the domestic level, the Patriot Act, adopted in October 2001, has considerably restricted some of the most basic civil liberties of American citizens and aliens. Second, the rather belated and fallacious interpretation of the Geneva Conventions of 1949 was supposed to justify the detention of suspects at the Guantanamo base.
In this context, several hundred arrests, detentions and interrogations occurred in the most dubious of cirumstances, internet sites and music were censured, CIA scriptwriters viewed and corrected war movies. This return to McCarthyism did not seem to surprise very many US citizens. The media chose to play on patriotic feelings, practically refusing to ask "why?" Today, few judges, few human rights organizations and few intellectuals denounce this Orwellian deviation of American society that dangerously favors security over liberty. International mechanisms for the protection of fundamental rights seem powerless.
Encouraged by the American example, many leaders around the world have taken advantage of the situation to activate or adopt similar laws, and to reinforce their repressive arsenal under the guise of fighting against terrorism. In China, Russia, Egypt, Algeria, Tunisia and Columbia, for example, such measures have been taken or implemented, whether to repress citizens, minorities or political opponants by equating them with Ben Laden’s dangerous accomplices, or to muzzle human rights organizations. In Georgia, Kazakhstan, and Malasia, human rights defenders have been repressed. For President Mubarak of Egypt, the establishment of military tribunals in the United States "prove(s) that we were right from the beginning in using all means, including military trials, [in response to] these great crimes that threaten the security of society". These repressive initiatives, taken by regimes that violate human rights on a daily basis, are not surprising, and have not surprised anyone. Amalgams are employed for opportunistic reasons. The war in Chechnya is an additional example that illustrates the fallacious use of the fight against terrorism.
Even more surprising was the attitude of other democratic regimes, that not only failed to oppose the implementation of these measures, but partially or completely supported them. What is worse, many of these measures also adopted identical provisions within their own legislative systems. In England, Germany, and even in Canada, a plethora of security laws were adopted, often undermining the respect of the most basic human rights. Racial profiling, expulsions, an excess of security laws, as in France: this has been the year of all the dangers posed for public freedoms.
As for the multilateral institutions created to protect international human rights norms, they often follow the logic of the States of which they are composed. On the one hand, the United Nations Committee Against Terrorism, created in fall 2001 by the Security Council, has received 207 reports from 163 countries to this day. On the other hand, the six United Nations committees, protectors of the human rights conventions, deplore the delay of 1371 reports of just as many States. The United Nations Commission on Human Rights, provided by the UN Charter, behaved in spring 2002 as if nothing had happened, despite the urgent appeals of Kofi Annan, Mary Robinson, of independent surveillance mechanisms and of NGOs.
The new world order created by United States’ reaction to the aggression exceeds the most pessimistic predictions. Indeed, the Taliban regime held in contempt - once installed by this superpower to fight against yesterday’s enemy - has been eradicated. But we no longer count the "collateral damage" provoked by massive B52 bombardments. One is barely surprised by the discovery of a "war crime" - the death by suffocation of nearly one thousand Taliban fighters during a transfer of prisonners - committed in full complicity with the American troops. Also, we pretend to ignore the substantial oil profits that American and/or Pakistani companies will obtain with the military campaign in the region, with the control and the distribution permitted from now on of deposits of the Caspian Sea. Destabilized, this year the region even escaped the triggering of a conflict between two recognized nuclear powers, India and Pakistan. What can be said about the Middle East, a region that has harshly faced the counterattacks of September 11 and of the fight against "international terrorism," and that has been abandoned to the increasing build-up of violence. In this region as well, all the amalgams have been made, thus ruling out all chance of hope to a return to peace, even a precarious one.
The excesses of the American unilateralism, with regards to the environment, international cooperation or disarmament, have been accentuated since the events of September 11. All who attempt to construct a more just world, a world in which State leaders and other officials and authors of heinous crimes do not go unpunished, are at a loss of words faced with the United States’ attitude.
Involved militarily in southeast Asia, in Afghanistan, in Africa, and even in Latin America, the United States refuses any judicial collateral damage to their intervention presented under the seal of reestablishing international peace and security. For Donald Rumsfeld, "the risk that the ICC attempts to affirm its jurisdiction on our American civilians and officials involved in counter-terrorism and other military operations is a possibility that we cannot accept." At least this is clear. The anti-International Criminal Court arsenal is currently quite extensive and renowned: the American Service Members’ Protection Act (ASPA), which entered into force August 2, 2002, establishes the principle of non-cooperation of the United States with the Court, and stipulates a system of pressure and retaliation against any non-ally State that cooperates with the ICC. The ASPA even endows the American President with "all the necessary means" to free an American detained by the Court! This is not necessary since Resolution 1422 of the Security Council, adopted July 12 after the Americans proposed it, guarantees automatic immunity to officials of States non-parties to the Court engaged in United Nations operations. As for the other American officials or nationals, they are protected by bilateral agreements that the American administration tried to impose on the most States as possible. However, the argument given for the need for American courts to monopolize all investigations of war crimes committed by Americans does not hold any water. The offensive currently lead is directed at the delegitimization of the International Criminal Court. How is it not evident that the obstinancy of the United States to refuse - at all costs - the implementation of the ICC constitutes a fleeing of responsibility and an encouragement to the worst regimes?
Political, economic and military blackmail have become the explicit privileged tools of President Bush’s policy that is wholly dedicated to a delinquent conception of national interest. We know how the new allies of the United States in its fight against the "axis of evil," Vladimir Putin, Jiang Zemin and Ariel Sharon, see to it on a daily basis that the values of freedom, democracy and human dignity triumph...
In the final analysis, however, we are convinced that history will prove these opportunists wrong. The essential and legitimate fight against terrorism needs to be carried out in full respect of human rights, of all human rights.
This is true because, far from all dogmatism, these norms constitute the only system of reference universally acceptable for the organization of national and global societies. Also, the respect of all human rights is the only universal umbrella framework acceptable by the people, as States must guarantee them and as individuals and private entities must respect them.
Further, this is true because the post- September 11 chaos underlined the importance of responding to the injustice, inequality, poverty, and under-development, problems which plague the world.
Additionally, the need for democracy and development is more urgent than ever.
These are the simple, vital reasons that justify our renewed mobilization.