Main focus of Friday, February 24, 2006

Amnesty denounces UK antiterrorist policy

In a report published on February 23, the human rights organisation Amnesty International accuses the United Kingdom of contravening basic human rights with its antiterrorist legislation and of failing to speak out with real vigour against the US detention camp at Guantanamo Bay. Prime minister Tony Blair faces torrent of criticism.

Le Monde - France

"Amnesty criticises the Blair administration for 'breaking the promise it made' in 1997 to promote human rights and for implementing, first in 2001 then in the wake of July 2005, an anti-terrorist policy that pays scant heed to the rights of suspects. Amnesty describes as "Kafkaesque” the plight of foreign terrorist suspects held in custody for years without trial on evidence that is kept secret,” writes Jean-Pierre Lengellier, the paper's London correspondent. "The organisation criticises 'the cruel, inhuman and degrading' treatment meted out to detainees in the Belmarsh maximum security unit in London. Detainees are confined to a single wing twenty-hours a day and suffer from physical and mental disorders arising from their conditions of detention and uncertainty over their fate.” (24/02/2006)

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El Mundo - Spain

"Tony Blair's government flouts human rights, attacks freedoms, jeopardises the independence of the judiciary, and is even threatening the rule of law in the world's oldest democracy," the head of Amnesty International Spain, Esteban Beltrán, told the daily . He believes that the attacks of September 11 2001 in New York and July 7 2005 in London (where some fifty people perished) "does not justify policies that threaten the rule of law. Spain experienced the outrages of March 11, which claimed 200 lives and injured 1,500 people. Yet it has not adopted similar measures.” (24/02/2006)

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The Independent - United Kingdom

"The Prime Minister has demonstrated almost as little concern for human rights at home as President Bush has abroad," bemoans a leading article in the liberal daily. "Mr Blair's condemnation of Guantanamo Bay was pathetically weak. And his defence of his domestic anti-terror agenda was equally depressing." The piece goes on the same vein. "The human rights legacy of the Blair era is taking shape. Abroad, the Prime Minister is content to turn a blind eye to torture. At home, he is relaxed about the reintroduction of detention without trial and determined to push through a host of other pointless curbs on our civil liberties. Unless this changes, Mr Blair is in danger of being remembered as the man who squandered Britain's reputation as a civilised nation." (24/02/2006)

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