The worst human rights abusing nations set for seats on the UN’s Human Rights Council
The news that Saudi Arabia, Russia, Pakistan, Cuba and China are set to take seats on the United Nations Human Rights Council today has sent shock waves around the world. How can it be that the world’s worst abusers of human rights get to be in a perfect position to frustrate the work of the UN?
China is the world’s largest executioner of its citizens the precise numbers being a state secret. It is committing what amounts to cultural genocide with the Uighurs in Xinjiang. Around a million are incarcerated for what is claimed are programmes of re-education. Women are being forcibly sterilised. It is hard at work trying to stifle freedoms in Hong Kong. It’s activities in Tibet have drawn years of censure. Torture is common and many are held incommunicado.
Russia is another state with a dismal human rights record. Here in Salisbury we have experienced months of
Bench in Salisbury where the Skripals were found. Pic: Salisbury Amnesty
disruption following the attempted murder of the Skripals. There are no free elections in the country and it looks as though there was an attempt on the life of opposition leader Navalny with Novichok. Many journalists have been murdered, simply gunned down in the street.
Freedom of association is severely restricted. Torture and mistreatment are common. Human rights defenders and NGOs are targeted. Corruption is on a massive scale aided and abetted by the City of London.
Saudi Arabia is almost in a league of its own. We have featured on these pages for many years the continuing bombing of civilians and civilian targets in Yemen and recently we have noted the disgraceful decision by the UK government to resume arms sales to the country. Torture is common, and they are one of the world’s worst executioners often in public displays of barbarity. Women’s rights are highly restricted.
These countries, under their despotic and dictatorial leaders, are simply not fit to be on a council for human rights. They have no intention of changing their laws and systems to improve matters, indeed it can be argued that all three are getting steadily worse.
The Council is supposed to ensure that all people know their rights and are treated fairly. It is supposed to ‘check what governments do to protect the rights of its people in their countries’. How it can do this with countries like this sat on the governing body is a mystery.
On 10 October 2020, the 18th World Day Against the Death Penalty, Amnesty hosted a discussion with three people who are closely connected with the campaign to end the practice. They were Kim Manning Cooper; Dr Bharat Malkani and Chiara Sangiorgio. It was chaired by Paul Bridges. It was a fascinating talk in which they discussed different aspects of how the death penalty works in the USA. Amnesty has maintained a consistent policy of condemning the use of the death penalty in all circumstances. It is fundamentally about human dignity.
Amnesty is also opposed to life sentences without the chance of parole.
USA
Much of the discussion focused on the miscarriages of justice in the USA. The death penalty does not do what its proponents claim it does. It does not deter violent crime. States who do not use the penalty have some of the lowest murder rates in the Union. It is expensive, with 724 people on death row in California alone, which has cost the state $4bn since 1978. Mistakes are common and of course cannot be put right. Since 1973, 170 prisoners on death row have been exonerated, a quite staggering level of error. The One for Ten movement was referred to, which notes that for every ten people executed in the US, one has been exonerated and released, having spent, on average, ten years on death row.
Dr Malkani’s talk explored the effects on innocent people. Following arrest for a crime they did not commit, there is a feeling of a sheer sense of disbelief. Their first concern is for their loved ones. How would they cope without them and if they have children, how will they handle school when everyone will know that their parent has been arrested for murder? He mentioned the ‘ripple effect’ which results in trauma being felt among a wide community of individuals, not just the immediate family.
There follows a sense of hopelessness, realising that the might of the State is trying to kill you. Next comes anger when you know you are innocent. (No reference was made to the fact that that the US does not have the equivalent of PACE, which requires evidence indicating innocence to be disclosed to the defence. This evidence is often not disclosed with the aim of a securing a conviction.)
Release
Dr Malkani went on to discuss the effects on people released after a long period of captivity. Understandably, they want to return to their previous life, but they find this impossible as so much has changed both in society and in their families. Their children have grown up without knowing them. It is also difficult to achieve a personal identity having spent the many years in captivity as just a number. Now free, they are always described as someone who was on death row.
Because they were on death row, they received no training or attempts at rehabilitation since they were destined for execution. The pace of modern technology meant the world was a completely different place. There were no support systems in place. There was also relationship breakdown after such long periods of separation. Sadly, many die quite soon after their release.
Troy Davis
Kim Manning-Cooper spoke of the infamous Troy Davis case. An off-duty policeman was murdered and a witness came forward claiming that Troy was the killer. It now appears possible that the witness himself may have been the culprit. There are too many irregularities to list but include witnesses who were threatened with being charged themselves, police statements signed by people who could not read or write, some witnesses were threatened by the police, no forensic or DNA evidence was submitted, and no gun was ever found. An evidentiary hearing was held by the Supreme Court but, despite the multiple failings in the prosecution case and some misgivings, the appeal failed and Davis was executed in September 2011. His sister had campaigned tirelessly in his support. Amnesty International campaigned for justice in the Davis case, a cause the Salisbury group took part in.
Kim said people often say ‘the system is failing black men but in reality, the failure is in the way the system was designed’.
‘the system is failing black men but in reality, the failure is in the way the system was designed’
This theme was developed by Dr Malkani. The issue of race was built into the legal system in the USA he said. It
Screenshot: Dr Bharat Malkani
dates back to the 13th amendment of the US Constitution which abolished slavery ‘except as a punishment for a crime’. When lynching ended in the 1920’s, executions skyrocketed, as evidenced by the Death Penalty Information Center. The bias extended to the prosecution process, with district attorneys unwilling to prosecute a black person murdered by a white but all too willing to prosecute the other way around. Some members of juries in the state of Georgia are quoted as saying ‘black people have no souls’. Many murders of black people remain unsolved. Only 21 white people have been executed for killing a black person but 296 black people for killing a white person.
Finally, he said the effects on wardens and prison guards can also be profound as was shown in the award winning film Clemency.
Forensic evidence
The question was posed ‘could the justice system ever be error proof?’ This was related to things like the use of DNA. The answer was that no system could be error proof, DNA was not infallible and was not a silver bullet, although sometimes evidence is found years later. The justice system could not be used to solve issues of bad housing, drug addiction and social problems generally. We needed to advocate for prison reform as well as ending the death penalty and life sentences without the prospect of parole.
Campaigning
In addition to Amnesty International’s Death Penalty Urgent Actions, the work of Reprieve was highlighted, and writing to people on death row organised by Lifelines.
Comment
This was a most interesting discussion. There is a slow decline in the number of executions and Americans themselves are increasingly wanting the practice ended. The role of Black Lives Matter is likely to have an effect. There are other countries in the world with far worse records – Saudi Arabia, and Iran – but especially China. The numbers executed in China run into thousands but details are a state secret.
For American readers: PACE – the Police and Criminal Evidence Act provides a range of protections to people arrested in the UK one of which is the defense must see all the evidence collected by the police, not just that which indicates possible guilt.
A 20 year old man scheduled to be executed in Malaysia
We are asking you to spend a few moments to put your name to a petition being run by Amnesty Australia on behalf of a 20 year old man, Hew Yew Wah, in Malaysia who is condemned to death. We are against the death penalty in all cases and this sentence is disproportionate for the crime he admits he committed.
Today (10 October 2020) is the 18th World and European Day Against the Death Penalty
Amnesty is opposed to the use of the death penalty in all circumstances and we have campaigned for many years against the practice. There has been a gradual decline but still there are too many countries which continue the barbaric practice. It is neither humane nor effective. It does not deter violent crime or murder and studies in America have shown that there is no difference in murder rates between those states which retain the penalty and those that don’t.
While working towards the total and complete abolition of the death penalty worldwide for all crimes, it is crucial to alert civil society and the international community to the necessity that, at all stages of the legal proceedings, those facing the cruel, inhuman and degrading punishment of execution should at least have access to effective legal representation. Such legal aid can provide the basic protection of either avoiding the sentence or appealing the verdict.
We are pleased to announce the release of Narges Mohammadi (pictured) who was unjustly jailed in 2015. She was facing a prison sentence of 16 years. Since June she has been in declining health and was showing signs of coronavirus but declined health care. She has been the subject of an Amnesty campaign. She has been reunited with her husband and she can now receive health care.
We are grateful for all the support of all those who wrote or sent emails as part of the campaign.
In 2019 the Court of Appeal ruled that the UK government had acted unlawfully by licensing weapons to the Saudi armed forces for use in the Yemen conflict without assessing whether incidents had occurred in breach of International Human Rights law. Our weapons – along with those supplied by other countries principally the USA – have cause immense damage and suffering to the people of Yemen. The UN has estimated around 7,700 dead since beginning of the conflict in 2015. To that must be added the thousands of injured and the destruction of major parts of the country. The effects on the civilian population have been devastating.
Hospitals, schools, market places, residential areas, agricultural areas and production facilities have all been bombed using our planes and weapons. Although mistakes do happen in war and the wrong thing is bombed, the extent of these ‘mistakes’ leads one to assume that there is a deliberate attempt to bomb civilian targets. We must also note that UK personnel – including people from the RAF – are involved in advising the Saudis so something is going seriously wrong.
[…] I have assessed that there is not a clear risk that the export of arms and military equipment to Saudi Arabia might be used in the commission of a serious violation of IHL. (House of Commons written statement 7 July 2020)
It is worth reading the key passage in this statement which purports to give a justification for this decision:
This analysis has not revealed any such patterns, trends or systemic weaknesses. It is noted, in particular, that the incidents which have been assessed to be possible violations of IHL occurred at different times, in different circumstances and for different reasons. The conclusion is that these are isolated incidents.
This reasoning is tenuous in the extreme. Because violations ‘occurred at different times, in different circumstances and for different reasons’ the minister concluded that they are ‘isolated incidents’. Surely a key factor is the frequency of these incidents especially if your argument is based on the numbers? The sheer number of civilian targets is way beyond what anyone could describe as ‘isolated’. The Oxford dictionary describes isolated to mean ‘untypical, unique’: these bombings are neither untypical nor unique. Another curious aspect of this statement is the phrase ‘for different reasons’ implying knowledge of what the purpose of the raid was yet the statement is full of uncertainties and the difficulty of assessing the incidents.
Kate Allen, director of Amnesty international said:
How the Government can seriously describe a five-year Saudi-led aerial assault on Yemen which has seen numerous examples of civilians killed in schools, hospitals, funeral halls and market places as a set of ‘isolated incidents’ is almost beyond comprehension.
This seems like an attempt to rewrite history and disregard international law. The UK is bypassing its obligations under the international arms control framework. Its approach to this decision has effectively rendered our own protections meaningless. (New York Times, 7 July 2020)
It is small wonder that human rights organisations have reacted with horror at the decision and the speed with which the minister set about reinstating arms shipments to Saudi. The Campaign Against the Arms Trade described the decision as ‘rank hypocrisy’.
The government is determined to sell arms to the Saudi and seems genuinely unconcerned at the fate of those on the receiving end. Liz Truss’s argument about isolated incidents is almost insulting. So great is the scale of the business that stopping it or seriously scaling it back is economically impossible. Truly it is the tail which wags the dog.
Sources: BBC, CAAT; New York Times; Human Rights Watch; Independent; The Guardian
We are pleased to attach our monthly death penalty report for the current month thanks to group member Lesley for the work in compiling it. Note that China – the world’s largest executioner – does not feature in this report because details are a state secret.
Pope issues encyclical against the use of the death penalty
Amnesty International has longed campaigned against the use of the death penalty and so the recent encyclical by the Pope is to be welcomed. Fratelli Tutti issued on 3 October 2020, takes an uncompromising line against this penalty and against imprisonment for life.
The local group has campaigned for many years against this barbaric punishment and we produce a monthly report on developments around the world. The country which is believed to execute more of its citizens than the rest of the world – China – does not feature as details are a state secret.
It will be interesting to see how this fares in the US, the only country in the Americas which retains the penalty. Despite evidence of its ineffectiveness as a deterrent, the impossibility of correcting mistakes of which there are plenty, and the fact it is the poorest in society who are disproportionately executed, some states retain it. Catholicism is strongly represented so it is likely they will make their feelings felt.
Neglect of the elderly in our care homes: Amnesty Report
Amnesty International has published a reportAs if Expendable, of the scandalous treatment of the elderly in our care homes.
The UK government was clearly aware that the 400,000 residents of care homes in the UK – many of whom live with multiple health conditions physical dependency, dementia and frailty – were at exceptional risk to coronavirus. Yet at the height of the pandemic, despite this knowledge, it failed to take measures promptly and adequately to protect care homes.
Contrary to the claim by the secretary of state for Health and Social Care that a “protective ring” was put around care homes “right from the start,” a number of decisions and policies adopted by authorities at the national and local level in England increased care home residents’ risk of exposure to the virus – violating their rights to life, to health, and to non-discrimination.
Some of the UK government’s decisions with regard to care homes seem heedless at best. Up until 13 March 2020, two days after the World Health Organization (WHO) declared COVID-19 a global pandemic, and despite having received information warning of asymptomatic coronavirus cases from its own advisers, the government advised care homes against the use of PPE. Its official guidance for care homes stated:
If neither the care worker nor the individual receiving care and support is symptomatic then no personal protective equipment is required above and beyond normal good hygiene practices.
In contrast to measures taken to boost NHS capacity, care home managers and staff told Amnesty International of a “complete breakdown” of systems in care homes in the first six weeks of the pandemic. They spoke of waiting to receive guidance, of struggling to access adequate amounts of PPE, and of having no access to testing, despite having to manage patients urgently discharged from hospitals, including those infected with COVID-19. These deficits put many of those most vulnerable to the virus at great risk—as well as endangering care home staff—and, in doing so, violated care home residents’ right to life, right to health, and right to non-discrimination.
The full report can be accessed from the link above.
While the somewhat absurd leaks from the Home Office about wave machines in the Channel, using redundant ferries as holding centres, or sending refugees to Moldova, Morocco – or at enormous cost even to Ascension Island, 4000 miles away – may not be true, these stories do at least give an indication of the mindset of the authorities charged with dealing with a continuing flow of migrants across the Channel to this country. It seems likely that these proposals were put out to cause alarm, so that when real ones come out, they will be regarded as relatively mild.
Use of the Navy has also been touted: Steve Valdez-Symonds, Amnesty International UK’s Refugee and Migrant Rights Programme Director, said:
Deploying the Navy to prevent people exercising their right to seek asylum in the UK would be unlawful, reckless and dangerous. It is wholly legitimate for people to seek asylum in this country – even though relatively few people do – and sadly, for some, these dangerous journeys are the only means available.
Meanwhile, the senior civil servant at the Home Office has stated that “all options are on the table.” This suggests that either (a) they don’t have a clue what to do or (b) all options are equally valid, so they don’t care. Ms Patel’s speech to the Conservative Party conference today [4 October 2020] will give a sense of her ideas, but she starts from the assumption that the system is “broken”; it may be that her proposals will take some time to emerge.
The government are believed to be keen to follow the methods employed by recent Australian governments in keeping prospective immigrants in offshore holding camps. But, as Andonea Jon Dickson explains, “a main function of [the Australian] Operation Sovereign Borders is the interception of boats at sea and their forced return to offshore immigration or their origin. This conflicts with the Refugee Convention (1951) and Protocol (1967) in a number of ways, not least by denying a right to asylum.
The UK has been removing asylum seekers to France this year as part of a European Union policy that allows one member state to return asylum seekers to another. When the UK leaves the EU on December 31, however, this policy will no longer apply. There is nothing yet to suggest France would be willing to continue to accept these asylum seekers. Lawyers have also recently exposed how the UK has been removing asylum seekers to France illegally without providing an asylum procedure.”
While there are distinctions to be made between refugees, asylum seekers and economic migrants (in terms of the threats they face at home), to the general public they will be seen as one group, dangerous or benign according to taste (and, according to a recent YouGov poll 49% of people here have admitted they have little or no sympathy for those crossing the Channel on dangerous boats).
Once again, an inconvenience has been turned into an existential threat. In 2019, the average rate of asylum applications in the EU was 14 per 100,000 residents. In the UK it was 5 per 100,000. So, although, for example, the universality of the English language is a ‘pull factor’ for migrants, it isn’t that significant, and most migrants have a clear view of where it is best for them to aim for.
Dan O’Mahoney, the preposterously titled ‘Clandestine Channel Threat Commander’ – whose job is to work on “legislative, legal and operational barriers” to migrants – said Border Force is continuing to “crack down on the criminal gangs responsible”. The total number of migrants crossing the Channel this year is around 7,000 so far (it is reckoned that 84,000 attempts to enter were made in 2015), so the crisis may not be quite as great as suggested. In any case, putting the blame on the traffickers as procurers is pointless – they may be heartless, but they are not the cause.
Ms Patel may be playing to her gallery, or she may genuinely dislike enterprising Third World migrants, but inhumane policies cannot just be defended on political grounds, as they have a moral context.
These proposals are unkind. They are morally wrong, regardless of their efficacy or legality. They lack compassion, a basic ethical temperament which it is not fashionable to talk about but forms a fundamental requirement of government decision-making. 2 October 2020
Amnesty International has been working for many years with other organisations, nationally and internationally, in the fields of refugees and asylum seekers. We campaign for a world where human rights can be enjoyed by everyone, no matter what situation they are in. Amnesty has championed the human rights of refugees, asylum-seekers and migrants for decades. We campaign to make sure governments honour their shared responsibility to protect the rights of refugees, asylum-seekers and migrants. We condemn any policies and practices that undermine the rights of people on the move.
Amnesty in Salisbury & South Wiltshire 