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Abandoning Human Rights Principles

by James O. Goldsborough

10/20/03: (Union-Tribune) Charges against the Bush administration for human rights violations keep rolling in. Last week the International Red Cross - which rarely comments - added its voice to the list.

It is a new role for America, accustomed to the moral high ground from which it launches arrows at nations such as China, Russia, Cuba, South Africa, Iraq, Iran, Burma for denial of civil and human rights.

As if to signal that even civil disobedience is no longer tolerated, last week Attorney General John Ashcroft indicted the environmental group Greenpeace for a harmless act of civil protest already punished 18 months
ago. Prosecutors conceded the indictment could have "a chilling effect on First Amendment rights."

America is rooted in human rights, inalienable rights derived from natural law and embodied in our founding documents. In adopting practices America long has condemned, President Bush squanders our moral authority. When the Red Cross joins Amnesty International and the Justice Department's own inspector general in criticism, it is a sign we are perilously close to joining those nations where a knock on the door at night means to disappear.

More than 5,000 foreigners have disappeared since Sept. 11, 2001, with only a few charged with any serious crime. Most are held in secret with no access to lawyers or the outside, a procedure that has drawn the complaint of the Justice Department's inspector general - who is independent of the attorney general.

Immigration violators are being held indefinitely, denied access to lawyers, their names kept secret in violation of the Constitution's requirement that persons (not just citizens) be given a speedy and public trial.

The 600 Guantánamo prisoners (who are not Americans although two Americans, Yasser Hamdi and Jose Padilla are being held in similar conditions of isolation), are the most egregious cases of violations. The Red Cross - the only independent group with access to them - broke its policy of no comment to condemn unacceptable conditions and complain of "a worrying deterioration" in the mental health of the Guantánamo prisoners. It reported numerous suicide attempts and cases of sedation.

Three staffers (two in the U.S. military, including a chaplain, all Muslims) are being prosecuted for contacts with the prisoners. One is accused of "expressing sympathy for the detainees, including providing unauthorized items of comfort."

Guantánamo is Arthur Koestler's "Darkness at Noon," with Americans replacing Soviets (except that even in the gulag one found friendly guards). What once distinguished U.S. justice was the rights of the accused - to counsel, to hear charges, to obtain a speedy and public trial.

The prisoners will be held "until the war on terrorism is over," says Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, an impossible condition since there will never be a peace treaty. If war determines their status, why are they not
classified as prisoners of war? None has been able to present his defense against detention before a court or military tribunal.

Rumsfeld is in charge in Guantánamo, but Ashcroft has custody of Hamdi and Padilla, the two Americans held in secret as "enemy combatants." A federal trial judge has ordered Ashcroft to give Padilla's lawyer access to his client. Ashcroft is appealing. Hamdi is in similar limbo.

Under Ashcroft, these Americans are protected neither by the Geneva Conventions, which protect prisoners of war, nor by the Constitution. If the lower court decision is reversed, Ashcroft can lock them up without trial
and throw away the key. We don't know how many more Americans may be in similar situations.

Throughout our history, courts have granted government legal leeway in war denied to it in peace. Only in retrospect, do we come to terms with our excesses, as we did with the internment of Japanese-Americans. Even this leeway, however, must pass through the courts: The right of habeus corpus requires judicial review if it is to be suspended.

We are not Soviets. Bring the prisoners before a judge. Present the evidence against them. Make it legal. That is what distinguishes our nation from the totalitarians.

Ashcroft's current campaign to intimidate the courts by telling prosecutors to report judges deemed "lenient," is an attempt to neutralize the judiciary, weaken habeus corpus and enhance police powers. Now Ashcroft has asked Congress to amend the so-called Patriot Act to let federal agents obtain private records (for example, library reading lists) and compel testimony without court approval.

The move against Greenpeace is the latest violation. Two activists served time for trying to unfurl a banner on a cargo ship they said was illegally importing mahogany from the Amazon. Ashcroft, having found an obscure 1872 law intended to keep boarding house proprietors from preying on sailors, now seeks to disable Greenpeace itself.

Bush has admitted that Iraq was not onnected to Sept. 11. Now let him allow our courts and tribunals to determine if the thousands arrested after Sept. 11 had anything to do with those events, in accordance with our laws.

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