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U.N. Rights Experts Tell U.S. To Set a Better Example
Alexander G. Higgins
Associated Press
July 18, 2006
GENEVA (AP) - U.N. human rights experts Monday told the United States it had to set a better example for the world in areas ranging from treatment of Latin American migrants to the handling of detainees in the war on terrorism.
U.S. officials, who are to respond Tuesday to a barrage of questions and comments from the U.N. Human Rights Committee, said they would be as forthcoming as possible in the periodic review of Washington's adherence to the 1966 International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights.
"I know that the United States has done very much in the past on behalf of human rights, but human rights are never totally acquired or guaranteed," said committee member Hipolito Solari Yrigoyen, a lawyer and human rights champion from Argentina.
Solari Yrigoyen said he was particularly worried about U.S. efforts to deal with an estimated 9 million illegal migrants, mostly from south of the Mexican border.
"My major concern ... is the level of militarization on the border with Mexico," he said. "Militarization of the border creates a conflict zone."
He said vigilantes linked to extremist groups were already operating along the border, and "there have been many cases where migrants have been kicked or beaten by U.S. citizens. We would like to know what has been done to deal with these criminal behaviors."
As one of the 156 countries that have signed the treaty, the United States was taking its turn before the committee of 18 independent experts. The United States' 120-page report was long overdue. It was a combination of reports due in 1998 and 2003, said panel member Rajsoomer Lallah, an Oxford educated lawyer and retired chief justice of Mauritius.
Criticism by the panel brings no penalties beyond international scrutiny. The committee is expected to issue conclusions before it wraps up its session July 28.
Lallah asked why the United States, with all its resources, had been so late in submitting its report.
"Usually we ask such questions of very poor countries," he said.
Robert Harris, assistant State Department legal adviser, told reporters that the United States was late because of the complexity of compiling the report on such a range of issues, but hopes to be punctual in the future.
Sir Nigel Rodley, a British law professor and longtime human rights expert, criticized the alleged U.S. practice of holding detainees in the war on terror for long periods incommunicado.
"If some other state abducted U.S. citizens, for example those plotting to overthrow the regime in that other state, would the U.S. consider that state could hold them secretly anywhere on the planet for months or years on end without violating (the treaty)?" he said.
"Frankly I can't but express my astonishment and dismay that the state party deems fit to arrogate to itself a right to engage in a practice of such extravagant enormity, not to mention setting such an unfortunate example to others," Rodley said.
Abdelfattah Amor, a senior Tunisian law professor, noted allegations of prisoner abuse in Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo.
"It's only natural if outside the United States one expects a country free from reproach," Amor said. "We who defend human rights are uncomfortable."
The U.S. delegation steered clear of questions about Guantanamo and torture allegations in its oral presentations to the committee Monday, claiming that the treaty applies only within the United States, but, "as a courtesy," it provided written comments already presented to the U.N. Committee Against Torture in May.
"The United States was forced to confront a new threat -- that of large-scale armed attacks by an international terrorist group directed against U.S. territory," Matthew Waxman of the U.S. State Department, who is heading the delegation of about 25 people, said in his opening remarks.
"While the U.S. obligations under the covenant do not apply outside of U.S. territory, it is important to recall that there is a body of both domestic and international law that protects individuals outside U.S. territory," Waxman added.
In May, the top U.N. anti-torture panel recommended the closure of the U.S. detention center for terrorist suspects at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, and criticized alleged U.S. use of secret prisons and suspected delivery of prisoners to foreign countries for questioning.
The current committee hearing has attracted great interest from human rights organizations, about 40 of which sent representatives to meet separately with the committee and monitor proceedings. Amnesty International said it had raised a number of issues, including the death penalty, supermaximum security prisons and life sentences for those who committed crimes as juveniles.
Other questions from the panel concerned racial discrimination, the rights of native Americans and the treatment of African-Americans in the GulfCoast area before and after Hurricane Katrina.
"Our hope is that the human rights committee ... will not try to hold the United States to a higher standard than some of the other governments which it has reviewed in the last five years, which have included Syria, Egypt, Russia, Uzbekistan, Vietnam and North Korea," said Mark Lagon, a U.S. deputy assistant secretary of state.
"But the United States recognizes that it will be held to the highest standard," Lagon added.
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