You are being watchedwww.hrw.org
Human Rights Watch (HRW) is younger, smaller and somewhat more militant than Amnesty International. Established in 1978 as Helsinki Watch to monitor the compliance of Soviet bloc countries with the human rights provisions of the landmark Helsinki Accords, it grew to cover other areas of the world, and acquired its current name and mandate in 1988.
The largest human rights organization based in the United States, HRW investigates abuses wherever they may occur and publishes its finding in scores of reports which receive extensive media coverage and generate considerable pressure upon the offending parties. Among its achievements: It successfully led an international effort to adopt a treaty banning the use of child soldiers and raising the minimum age for participation in armed conflict to 18. It has supplied extensive evidence to the war crime tribunals for Rwanda and the former Yugoslavia, and played a key role in the legal action against former dictator Augusto Pinochet in London, which marked an important step toward establishing the principle that even former heads of state can be held accountable for human rights violations. The “Pinochet precedent, as it came to be known, holds that dictators who block their prosecution at home can be tried anywhere in the world.
Like Amnesty International, HRW prides itself on its independence. Its financing comes from individual donors and private foundations. Reflecting its geographic base, many of its campaigns take up American causes and there is a campaign for the distribution of condoms in prison to prevent the spread of the AIDS virus, and another to stop violence against gay students in U.S. schools, and yet another to end the “cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment and unlawful incarceration of terror suspects at Guantánamo Bay or other places of detention overseas. Other campaigns take up causes overseas by targeting their U.S. connection: In one recent effort, visitors to the HRW Web site were urged to ask the Chairman of Caterpillar Inc. to stop the sales of bulldozers to the Israeli army as long as the machines were used to destroy Palestinian homes.
But HRW is a truly international organization, and it does not mince words when it comes to particularly heinous abuses. Regarding Egypt, for instance, it notes that the doctors at the Forensic Medical Authority conveniently ignore the scars of torture on arrested gay men and even humiliate them further with abusive rectal exams. Visitors are asked to write the World Health Organization and the World Medical Association and urge them to condemn this practice. The related reports in this instance are numerous and specific. Particularly detailed is the story of “Khaled, who was in his fourth year of college when he was picked up by a detachment of the Cairo Vice Squad. Khaled was taken along with other suspects to the Azbakeyya police station where they were beaten with sticks and whips and forced to sign arrest reports which mentioned that they had been engaging in homosexual activity. Khaled believed that he had been turned in by an informant. Vice Squad officers also cruise nightclubs where gays are known to congregate, or troll cyberspace for visitors to gay dating sites.
Some stories, however, have happy endings. In December 2005, a police force nearly 4,000 strong surrounded an encampment of Sudanese refugees who had been demonstrating outside the offices of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees since September 29 seeking to be relocated to other countries. Twenty persons reportedly died when the police fired water cannons into the crowd then beat the protesters indiscriminately. HRW publicized the event worldwide, demanding an independent investigation into the use of force by the police. Eventually, the Egyptian government bowed to the pressure and rescinded its decision to deport the protesters back to Sudan, where they faced torture and even death.
The Stain of Painwww.irct.org
It’s not only dictatorial Third World regimes that engage in torture as we have all seen those pictures from the Abu Ghraib prison. American soldiers bringing democracy to the Middle East at the point of a gun can be just as brutal as the henchmen of any police state. Luckily, there are organizations like the International Rehabilitation Council for Torture Victims (IRCT). The IRCT is based in Denmark and has two objectives. One is the treatment and rehabilitation of torture victims by medical professionals, and the other is the prevention of torture. Torturers should not operate with impunity, and there should be a legal mechanism whereby they face some serious consequences for their actions, which include compensation for the victims. And in this respect, the most recent object of the IRCT’s attention has been none other than . the United States. On February 17, 2006, the IRCT offered to send a medical team to examine all prisoners at Guantánamo Bay with the aim of establishing whether they had been tortured. The Bush administration has ignored the request, and has consistently denied allegations of abuse at Guantánamo.
The IRCT has a worldwide network of affiliates, which include the El Nadim Center for the Psychological Treatment and Rehabilitation of Victims of Violence in Egypt.
Readers interested in following the situation at Guantánamo Bay should visit the Guantánamobile Project at guantanamobile.org.
