World descends to new level of brutality, says Amnesty

THE world stooped to a new level of brutality last year with increasingly shocking acts of terrorism, Amnesty International said yesterday.

Nearly four years after the September 11 attacks, the promise to make the world a safer place remained “hollow”, the human rights group’s annual report said.

The organisation criticised the US for its failure to observe international law, and said America was setting a bad example for rogue governments across the globe.

Terror groups reached a ghastly new low in the year which saw hundreds of children massacred at Beslan, the televised beheading of hostages in Iraq and the Madrid train bombings, said the report.

“When the most powerful country in the world thumbs its nose at the rule of law and human rights, it grants a licence to others to commit abuse with impunity,” said Amnesty secretary-general Irene Khan.

“A new agenda is in the making, with the language of freedom and justice being used to pursue policies of fear and insecurity.

The US was highlighted for its “gross human rights abuses” in Iraq, including unlawful killings and arbitrary detentions.

Terror groups in Iraq were also condemned for their “gross human rights abuses” such as hostage killings.

Ms Khan added: “Governments are failing to confront their lack of success in addressing terrorism, persisting with failed but politically convenient strategies. Four years after 9/11, the promise to make the world a safer place remains hollow.”

Further criticism was levelled at the US over its attempt to “dilute the absolute ban on torture” by using phrases such as “stress positions” and “sensory manipulation” to describe the tactics used against detainees, and for failing to carry out a full independent investigation into ill-treatment at Iraq’s Abu Ghraib prison.

Britain was accused of “trying to circumvent domestic and international human rights obligations by asserting that human rights law did not bind UK armed forces in Iraq”.

The British government had also failed to establish an independent inquiry into the murders of solicitor Patrick Finucane, shot dead in front of his family in his north Belfast home by the UFF in 1989, it added.

Concern was also expressed at the 100-plus deaths in British prisons during the year.

Amnesty’s annual report said thousands of people had been failed by the international community’s “indifference and paralysis”, such as those subjected to human rights abuses in Darfur, Haiti, the eastern Democratic Republic of Congo and Zimbabwe, plus Chechen women who were suffering at the hands of Russian soldiers.

Ms Khan further criticised the US war on terrorism as she spoke at the report’s launch in central London.

“The detention facility at Guantanamo Bay has become the gulag of our times, entrenching the practice of arbitrary and indefinite detention in violation of international law,” she said.