Counter-Terrorism Laws on Human Rights - Assignment Example

Is Counter- Terrorism laws a Necessary Evil to Safeguard Human Rights? “Everyone is entitled to all the rights and freedoms set forth in this Declaration, without distinction of any kind, such as race, colour, sex, language, religion, political or other opinion, national or social origin, property, birth or other status. Furthermore, no distinction shall be made on the basis of the political, jurisdictional or international status of the country or territory to which a person belongs, whether it be independent, trust, non-self-governing or under any other limitation of sovereignty.” (Article 2 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, 1976) It is difficult to forget Dr. Mohamed Haneef, the doctor of Indian origin who was wrongfully arrested on grounds of suspicion, of aiding the terrorists of Glasglow airport in the year 2007 (Martin, 2007). This episode forced the Australian government to redefine its stand on Human Rights while engaging in counter-terrorist activities. The bombings at Glasglow (2007, Scotland) and the subsequent arrest of Dr. Haneef by the Australian government as a counter-terror measure in response to the same, is just one example to demonstrate the fragile nature of Human Rights enforcement. The government-states are justified, even compelled to prevent violence through counter- terrorism measures. However, of late, one wonders if counter-terrorism has become a strategy to defeat dissent? Have Human Rights conventions become the tools of annihilation, destroying what they were meant to protect? This essay shall discuss counter terrorism strategies and the conflict it presents to protecting human rights. The nature of Human Rights and the compulsions to using force as a preventive measure in countering terrorism contradict the fundamental ideas of human rights. This essay shall argue that violence of terrorist acts is no different to violence of the state perpetrated as counter-terrorism also considered legalised violence, and will only increase fear, insecurity, hatred, and paranoia. Instead, effective steps to counter-terrorism giving due respect to Human Rights may include steps like a) genuine paradigm shift in perspective from an Euro-centric one to one that is inclusive on equal basis. Talks on Human Rights began in the year 1948, at the end of the World War II, when the United Nations was formed with the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. However, it has become a tool that is used to suit the convenience of nation-states more than to protect individual rights. The attack of the WTO twin towers in Manhattan, on September 11, 2001 caused the world to take serious note of terrorism that threatened the most fundamental of Human Rights, which is the right to live; it prompted the United States under the Bush administration to “declare war on terror” (Shah, 2011). This led to the formulation of a number of counter-terrorism laws, which were framed purportedly, to defend individuals and help them live in peace and security. The counter-terrorism measures include a wide range of scrutiny and surveillance mechanisms, including ‘racial profiling’ (Townsend, 2012), the right to detain and question anyone on mere suspicion of association with terrorists, as happened in Mohamed Haneef episode (Martin, 2007), bio-metric scanners, full-body scanners etc., ; Strategies include “to strengthen the legal framework for international cooperation and common approaches to the threat of terrorism in such areas as preventing its financing, reducing the risk that terrorists might acquire weapons of mass destruction and improving cross-border information-sharing by law enforcement authorities, as well as establishing a monitoring body, the Counter-Terrorism Committee, to supervise the implementation of these measures. The list is long and exhaustive, and can be harassing to victimised suspects” (UNHCFHR Fact Sheet 32 2008, p. 19). Counter-terrorism as a concept has been formed to protect HR as Human Rights empower individual men and women “to act against practices... that are ratified by the weights and authority of their cultures" (Ignatieff 2000, p. 68) and this includes terrorists too. However, HR laws (UN Fact Sheet 32 2008, pp. 8-9) pose problems for the nation-states, as the states frequently use ill-treatment and torture to elicit information from the captured, as a counter-terror strategy measure. This has been admitted by UNHCFHR (Fact Sheet 32 2008, p. 1), “the measures adopted by States to counter terrorism have themselves often posed serious challenges to human rights and the rule of law”. Conflicting issues in counter-terror strategies HR exist, like 1) use of torture and other ill-treatment despite legal protection against torture 2) freedom of Judiciary being undermined or manipulated in the trial of civilians through special courts 3) civilian intellectuals, HR activists, journalists, religious and ethnic minorities, indigenous groups and civil society being subjected to various forms of coercion and repression 4) diverting development programme funds to increase military and defence power (NHCFHR Fact Sheet 32, 2008 p. 1-2). These factors have worsened after the WTO attacks. The scale of counter-terrorist strategies that have been propounded by the U.S. and it’s allies has led Ignatieff (2002, p. 1) to lament, “The question after Sept. 11 is whether the era of human rights has come and gone.” Ignatieff observes that a “chill” (2002: p. 1) was setting over the world politics, wherein the world nations were using the shield of ‘war on terror’ to wage their own internal war on dissenting ethnic conflicts within the state-control. He points to collusion of Germany and Russia on the tackling of Chechnya, the repressive actions of China in Xinjiang, and the governments of Australia, Egypt, and Sudan, all join hands in order to buy the silence and support of the other nation-states for the perpetration of force to quell rebellion. Thus, rather than genuinely respecting HR laws, many nation-states appear to be making HR as a form of badge to gain some form of attention; It has become a matter of politics with the third-world nations, “…ratifying international human rights covenants has become a condition of entry for new states joining the family of nations” (Ignatieff 2000, p. 290). Echoing similar sentiments, Allen Feldman (2004, p. 17) remarks how the attack on the WTO divided the victims and the perpetrators as “civilized” and “barbaric” civilisations. Feldman (2004, p. 17) further analyses terrorism and states that, “Deterritorialized war promotes and ideology of paranoid space and is an aggressive response to the depolarisation of the post-cold war period, and more recently to the cultural-economic vertigo of globalization”. According to Feldman (2004, p. 20) using violence to induce ‘shock and awe’ is being widely practised as a counter-terrorism strategy. “The police concept of history is an ocular concentration of managing social surfaces and their possible clandestine subversion, as well as an investment in managing public visualisation of ‘events’ or risk intrusions” (Feldman 2004, p. 20) of which suicide bombing is one good example. If suicide bombing is an example of terrorist strategies to perpetrate violence, then torture and ill-treatment can be stated as an example of counter-terrorist strategy that perpetrates violence. It is relevant to discuss how they impact each other, and also understand how HR becomes the casualty in such situations. Suicide bombings are a recent phenomenon and the Middle-East conflict has a number of examples of such attacks. Hage (2003) analyses this phenomenon at length and points out that all acts of violence is terrorism. “What is meant by terrorism has never been very clear” (p. 70) he argues; in his view, he defines terrorism as those acts that target and kill/destroy with a further aim of waging “psychological violence” (p.71). Hage (2003, pp. 86) shows how such acts of terror divides completely, “In a war/siege culture the understanding of the other is a luxury that cannot be afforded; on the contrary, the divisions between Us and Them are further emphasised. War emphasises the otherness of the other and divides the world between friends and enemies and good and evil.” Hage (2003, p. 72) presents a very pertinent argument that perspective makes all the difference whether a violent act is terrorism or not, “The fact that we approach suicide bombing with such trepidation, in contrast to how we approach the violence of colonial domination, for example, indicates the symbolic violence that shapes our understanding of what constitutes ethically and politically illegitimate violence.” According to him, both a martyr/freedom-fighter and a terrorist, essentially commit the same acts of violence, but differ on their ideologies; this does not make the terrorist more condemnable than the state when it carries out attacks on civilian targets to flush out terrorists as a part counter-terror strategy (Hage 2003pp.75-77). On the same line, Ignatieff (2000, p. 296) critiques “The classic case of this preference for national rights rather than human rights is, of course, the state of Israel.” Considering that innocent civilian lives are lost and HR laws defeated thus, Hage’s (2003) point is valid. In his analysis of the Palestine-Israel conflict, Hage (2003) observes that there are other far more worse forms of violence than terrorism, and that the state of Israel has inflicted far more violence on the Palestinians even before the invasion of the West Bank, than all the fifty-nine PSBs that killed 125 Israelis (p. 72). The ‘deep internalization’ of the discrimination faced by the Israeli-Jews in the then widely-prevalent anti-semitism, shapes their sense of insecurity and the strikes that they engineer to achieve “zero-vulnerability” have all exacerbated the problems (Hage 2003, p.81). He point out that, “this search for zero vulnerability produces a gaze that sees threats everywhere and ends up reproducing the very vulnerability it is supposedly trying to overcome” (Hage 2003, p. 81). Hage (2003 pp. 88-9) concludes his valid arguments by stating that “Suicide bombings are undoubtedly a form of social evil, but their evil is also the evil of the living conditions from which they emanate. That evil resides more in certain social conditions of life where the possibilities of a meaningful life are shrinking, rather than in the individuals trying to survive in such conditions”. While suicide bombings are worse forms of violence that are not legitimate, torture is another form of violence that is widespread and used mostly by the states as a tool to terrorise aliens and citizens. Allen Feldman (2004, p. 22) discusses how even HR and ‘humanitarian’ considerations can become skewed when combined with ‘militarization’ and illustrates his point with the example of Guantanamo Bay. The inmates/prisoners of this war-camp are neither treated as falling under the American civil law, nor the Geneva conventions; and yet they are covered with health-care policies, and allowed to practice religious ceremonies, carry out dietary observances while simultaneously being subject to severe harassment in the form of questioning and ‘sensory deprivation’ (Feldman 2004, p. 22). The guardian (25 April, 2011) reports that this camp was set up to give the inmates religious freedom; the irony is that most of the 779 detainees who ranged from senile old men to children as young as fourteens years of age http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/apr/25/guantanamo-files-lift-lid-prison, were all classified as being equal to dangerous terrorists or enemy fighters while in truth their only pretext to semblance of terrorist acts may have been in the form of knowing some mullahs in Afghanistan. Many were imprisoned for years and treated so badly that they were hardly fit for interrogation when brought to trial (guardian, 2011). Furthermore, the newspaper reports, that even though there were allegations of torture including “widely-condemned techniques that were employed to obtain "intelligence" and "confessions" from detainees such as waterboarding, sleep deprivation and prolonged exposure to cold and loud music”, the authorities only admitted to ‘harsh interrogative techniques’ (http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/apr/25/guantanamo-files-lift-lid-prison). The isolation of the Guantanamo Bay inmates in their confinements which is very similar to the cages of birds; the spatial exception of the detainees, and the manner in which they were allowed to live their lives physically, while the tortures they were subjected to inclusive exclusion that killed their spirits (Architektur 2003, p. 1), reminds one of Giorgio Agamben’s Homo Sacer (1998). Agamben’s (1998) description of the devotee who “is a paradoxical being, who, while seeming to lead a normal life, in fact exists on a threshold that belongs neither to the world of the living nor to the world of the dead: he is a living dead man, or a living man who is actually a larva…” (Agamben 1998, p. 60) fits the identities of the detainees. Thus, it seems plausible that violence in the form of torture is as evil and as disrespectful of HR even though it is carried out in the name of legitimate action called Counter-terrorism, may appear as much an illegitimate acts of terror. The solution to this cycle of violence in the form of terror and counter-terror strategies lies in taking a paradigm shift to inclusiveness; it is the most reliable path to a pluralistic, peaceful world. Michael Ignatieff (2000, pp. 348-9) discusses the various paths to a solution to terrorism and re-establishment of HR to its rightful place and advocates a paradigm shift of the hitherto upheld perceptions of the superiority of western culture. Ignatieff (2000, p. 347) cites Donnelly (1999) to state that the Universal Declaration’s historical function was not to universalise European values, but actually to put certain of them—racism, sexism, and anti-Semitism for example—under eternal ban.” Taking relevant points from Amartya Sen’s (1999) views on the necessity of civil and political rights, and economic developments as pre-cursors to freedom, Ignatieff (2000, p. 346) reiterates that this development can be the best guarantee against “coercive governments schemes and projects”. As Salma Yusuf (2012, p. 1) observes, the biggest shift in thinking may be one that allows people to be seen for what they actually are, and not by the culture, country or religion they come from; this means, unconditional inclusiveness. An inclusiveness which views others as equal to one self, with legitimate right to freedom of thought and speech and practice religion and culture which though different is still accepted without bias. A change in the basic ideology that uphold the supremacy of the Caucasian race as compared to other non-Caucasian cultures to one that holds all cultures and civilisations as equal. All human beings belong to the species of Homo- Sapiens irrespective of their physical features like skin, hair or eye colour, religious beliefs, the language they speak, or their socio-economic class. If this is ingrained in the minds of all human beings then a genuine change in the way human being respect each other shall as equals. Ignatieff (2000) illustrates that, economic globalisation is not necessarily moral globalisation; however, “This does not mean the end of the human rights movement, but its belated coming of age, its recognition that we live in a plural world of cultures that have a right to equal consideration in the argument about what we can and cannot, should and should not, do to human beings.” (pp. 348-9). He predicts that the abolition of “the hierarchy of civilizations and cultures” may be the most significant and “central historical importance of human rights in the history of human progress” (Ignatieff 2000, p. 349). While Counter-terrorism strategies were formed in the name of HR, they became convenient tools to put down dissent, and worse, came to be used as rhetoric to gain mutual acceptance among repressive states. Violence remains undesirable, whether it is used by sectarian forces or the nation-states. It leaves the world divided and increases hatred. The sure way to peace is a paradigm shift to more inclusive worldview that treats all cultures and civilisations as equal. This will allow human beings to be treated for what they actually are without bias, which may bring peace in a pluralistic world. These points could opens the doors for future research to further identify practical ways to implement the ideas and concepts raised in this essay. List of References Agamben, Giorgio (1998). Homo Sacer- Sovereign Power and Bare Life Translated by Daniel Heller-Roazen. Stanford University Press, Stanford, California. Pp. 9-110. Architektur (2003). “Guantanamo Bay: Exterritories and Camps. Juridical-Political Spaces in the 'War on Terrorism'” in no lager webpage translated by Aileen Derieg [Accessed 20/05/2012]. http://nolager.de/blog/node/119/ Feldman, Allen (2004). “Deterritorialized Wars of Public Safety Social Analysis” in State, Sovereignty, War: Civil Violence in Emerging Global Realities.Volume 5 of Critical Interventions, Volume 48, Issue 1 of Social analysis. Ed. Bruce Kapferer, Berghahn Books. Pp. 16-28. Hage, Ghassan (2003). “Comes a Time We are All Enthusiasm: Understanding Palestinian Suicide Bombers in Times of Exighophobia” in Public Culture 15(1): 65-89. [Accessed 20/05/2012]. http://www.kent.ac.uk/politics/carc/reading%20group/Hage%20Understanding%20Palestinian%20Suicide%20Bombers.pdf Ignatieff, Michael (2000). “I. Human Rights as Politics – II. Human Rights as Idolatry” in The Tanner Lectures on Human Values. Princeton University. pp. 287-249. Online version [Accessed 20/05/2012] http://www.tannerlectures.utah.edu/lectures/documents/Ignatieff_01.pdf Ignatieff, Michael (2002). “Is the Human Rights Era Ending?” in The New York Times, Opinion page. Online version [Accessed 20/05/2012] http://www.nytimes.com/2002/02/05/opinion/is-the-human-rights-era-ending.html?pagewanted=all&src=pm Martin, Lisa(2007). “Tilting scales of justice” in The Age Education Resource Centre Online version [Accessed 20/05/2012] http://education.theage.com.au/cmspage.php?intid=135&intversion=214 Ramonet, Ignacio (2004). “Torture in a Good Cause” in Le Monde Diplomatique Online version [Accessed 20/05/2012]. http://mondediplo.com/2004/06/01leader Shah, Anup. “War on Terror.” Global Issues. 24 Sep. 2011. Web. 27 May. 2012. . the guardian (2011). “Guantánamo leaks lift lid on world's most controversial prison” by David Leigh, James Ball, Ian Cobain and Jason Burke in Guantánamo Files- World News – News page, dated 25 April, 2011. http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/apr/25/guantanamo-files-lift-lid-prison The Universal Declaration of Human Rights (1976) Online version [Accessed 20/05/2012] http://www.un.org/en/documents/udhr/ Townsend, Mark (2012). “Stop and search 'racial profiling' by police on the increase, claims study” the guardian  Saturday 14 January 2012. Online version [Accessed 20/05/2012] http://www.guardian.co.uk/law/2012/jan/14/stop-search-racial-profiling-police UNHCFHR Fact Sheet 32 (2008). “Human Rights, Terrorism and Counter-terrorism” Online version [Accessed 20/05/2012]. http://www.ohchr.org/Documents/Publications/Factsheet32EN.pdf Yusuf , Salma (2012). “Protecting Human Rights while Countering Terrorism” in e-International Relations Online version [Accessed 20/05/2012]. http://www.e-ir.info/2012/02/14/protecting-human-rights-while-countering-terrorism/ Read More