Examination of Witnesses (Questions 1-19)
MS KATE
ALLEN, MR
TIM HANCOCK
AND MR
STEVE CRAWSHAW
16 NOVEMBER 2005
Witnesses: Ms Kate Allen, Director,
and Mr Tim Hancock, Head of Policy, Amnesty International
UK, and Mr Steve Crawshaw, London Director, Human Rights
Watch, examined.
Q1 Chairman: Good afternoon. Can I begin
by apologising to our witnesses. We had a very large amount of
business that we had to conclude, and, rather than call the Committee
back at five o'clock, we decided to plough on for 10 minutes.
I am sorry for keeping you. Welcome to Amnesty and Human Rights
Watch. Perhaps I can begin by saying that we always greatly appreciate
the memoranda, the submissions and the annual report we receive
from Amnesty and, similarly, the information we get from Human
Rights Watch which is always of great benefit to us as a committee
and we are very glad you are here today to give us evidence in
person. We have a huge number of areas that we want to cover.
We will try, as far as possible, to have short questions, and
I would be grateful if, as much as possible, we can have short
answers and then we will get through it all, but I understand
that these are very big areas. Can I begin by asking you whether
you would like to comment on the decision of the United Nations
General Assembly to establish a Human Rights Council, and do you
think getting rid of the UN Commission on Human Rights and having
the Human Rights Council will make any difference to the effectiveness
of international human rights, and what can be done to make it
more efficient and effective?
Ms Allen: Thank you very much,
Chairman. Can I thank you and thank the Committee, on behalf of
Amnesty International, for inviting us to give evidence. Moving
to the Human Rights Council, we at Amnesty International are hugely
supportive of this move and we have great hopes that the Human
Rights Council will become a part of the UN where human rights
get greater attention, more focus and more prominence. We have
very much supported this. We hope that the Human Rights Council
becomes a principal organ of the UN. We hope that it is at the
same level as the Economic and Social Council and that it has
that kind of authority within the UN. We think that there are
some key elements that need to be part of that equation. We think
that it needs to meet regularly, we think it needs to examine
all countries, and we think it needs to have the ability to deal
with urgent situations. We hope it retains some of the very few
strengths of the Commission, including NGO participation and the
independent rapporteurs, and we also hope that there are some
effective rules for electing the members of it, providing really
effective membership of the Council. We are also concerned that
the budget is fully reflective of the role that the Human Rights
Council will have; we think that it should at least be double
the current budget and we hope very much that Security Council
members will not exercise their veto when addressing situations
of genocide, war crimes and crimes against humanity. If all of
that could happen, if we could have a council set up with those
kinds of features, then we think we have the ability to get away
from the weaknesses of the Commission and that, by examining human
rights of all countries on a rotational basis and, as I say, having
a mechanism to deal with large scale abuses, we should be able
to see a position where the Human Rights Council is something
to which we can all look to protect and promote the situation
of human rights and move us on from the inadequacies of the Commission.
Mr Crawshaw: Can I echo Kate Allen's
words of thanks to the Committee for inviting us here today, and
that is much more than just a courtesy. As we know from past experience,
the Committee's interest is enormously important and clearly has
considerable impact. Taking note of your words earlier—and
I promise not to repeat—I can also echo pretty much everything
that Kate Allen has just said. Indeed, Amnesty and Human Rights
Watch work together strongly. The importance of the Human Rights
Council is very great. We have seen the problems with the Commission
for Human Rights repeatedly in the past. I would pick a couple
of elements out from what Kate has said just to particularly emphasise
perhaps if only for the reason that they are ones which we are
worried about at the moment that might slip away without attention
to them. One is the idea of it being a standing body, in other
words of it being able to meet constantly, and there are discussions
going on. Understandably, people are saying, "Well, yes,
but it does involve resources", and so on and so forth. To
be honest, if we end up with something that only meets say a couple
of times a year, then in effect you have got some of the problems
that were already there with the Commission. It needs to have
the feel of constantly being there, and calling it back, especially,
is perhaps also problematic because of lots of procedural stuff
that that would involve. Again, as mentioned by Kate Allen in
the sense of openness to NGOs again being discussed, and I suppose
from their point of view they see it as slimmer or easier to work,
or whatever, if it is not quite so open as the Commission was.
If we were to exchange the rather problematic commission but which
did at least have open access for NGOs for a body that did not
allow the same access, then we would think that would be a step
backwards. I would hope that will not just sound like specialty.
I would hope that you on the Committee would also feel that the
input of organisations like ours and others like them would be
useful. It would be a pity for that to fall away. On the question
of the composition of the body, it is very difficult to make up
exact rules at this stage for further discussion, but we feel
that some kind of a sense of a commitment to human rights in the
broader sense and how that would be worked out would be for further
discussion.
Chairman: We will watch the progress
closely. Can I ask Fabian Hamilton to come in with some questions
about the International Criminal Court?
Q2 Mr Hamilton: Thank you, Chairman.
As you know, the UK has been a longstanding supporter of the International
Criminal Court. We were one of the first to sign the treaty that
set up the court. The annual report describes the first referral
to the International Criminal Court by the UN Security Council
in March 2005 on Darfur. It also points out the investigations
into the abuses in the Democratic Republic of Congo and, of course,
the Lord's Resistance Army in Uganda and mentions the total budget
of £46.4 million for 2005 of which the UK pays 5.9 million,
or 12.8%. The question I wanted to ask you was around the essential
membership of the United States. Not only is the US not a member
of the ICC but, it seems, has tried to undermine it. Do you think
the United Kingdom has done enough to persuade, cajole, argue
that the United States should be brought into the process, and
if we have not done enough, what more can we do?
Mr Crawshaw: Given I think some
of the themes about which we will be hearing later, you will be
hearing lots of criticism. I am glad to say at least partially
my response would be that the UK has played a positive role. Some
Members of the Committee may remember that in past years we were
very worried, we were very unhappy, frankly, that the UK seemed
to be, if you like, giving the US a soft ride on various of the
underminings that the US wanted to introduce for the court and
different kinds of impunity and the UK was not really standing
up to that. It was our impression—I would say more than
an impression—that that was happening at some stage when
the campaign started for an ICC referral on Darfur, but there
was a happy ending in two senses, that by the end of that process—in
other words in the spring of this year—the UK did actually
play an important role in persuading the United States that there
really was not something that could logically be resisted—it
did not make sense—this was the most appropriate thing,
and, therefore, we had the following happy end; and not only the
UK, but the UK did play, by the end if not at the beginning, a
positive role in saying there is no alternative, to use an old
political phrase, and we therefore had the United States withholding
its veto and allowing that referral to take place, which, although
it did not get an enormous amount of newspaper coverage, is absolutely
a moment of history, it seems to us, because it makes it very
much more difficult for the United States to attempt to sabotage
and undermine in the future. To go to your question directly of
the United States signing up for it, I would love the United States
to sign up for it. I hope that one day it will do. Again, living
in the real world which we are forced to, there are other things,
which we will no doubt come to later, of the United States' behaviour.
We regret that they are not part of the Court, but there are some
things that they could do right now which would make the world
a safer place, and I would like to think that in due course they
will understand the positive role the court can play and join,
but I think what really needs to be confronted, which I hope we
will discuss, is some of the behaviour of the country itself.
Ms Allen: Also, Amnesty very much
welcomed the Security Council referral of Sudan. I think was a
very key moment for the future of the International Criminal Court.
We also have continued our work on countries signing up to the
court, and in October this year Mexico became the one hundredth
state to ratify the Rome Statute, so the US is increasingly a
different voice on this issue, and we will continue our work to
get countries to sign up.
Q3 Mr Hamilton: Mr Crawshaw mentioned
Darfur. There are, of course, a number of cases pending. Do any
of you think that the Court is functioning effectively so far
and that it was right to choose the Democratic Republic of Congo
and the Lord's Resistance Army situation in Uganda as appropriate
cases for the ICC, or are there more pressing cases?
Mr Crawshaw: Darfur was very pressing
and it was quite right that that happened. We felt those were
appropriate cases, both the Congo, where, as you will remember,
it was the government itself which referred, and it was true that
in eastern Congo, in Ituri, the government's writ simply did not
run there and it became entirely appropriate to have the force
and the power of an international body to come in and do work
on that. On northern Uganda we also felt it was entirely appropriate,
broadly, in the sense that justice brings long-term stability,
which I can say is a thread of all of our work, and that simply
putting things to one side is not seen to be helpful in the longer
term. If there is a concern which we have had with northern Uganda—and
I hope the lessons have been learnt—it is that the presentation
of that referral was done at a press conference by the Ugandan
president, and it almost appeared to be a government initiative
all about the Lord's Resistance Army, whose crimes are, of course,
well documented, but it is also true that there have been serious
abuses by the Ugandan Army as well, and I think that it was very
unfortunate for the prosecutor to be standing there publicly side
by side with the president—it gave the wrong signal
of independence—and, beyond, that there was a reluctance
to engage with civil society, which I hope, again, the lessons
have been learnt. There were a lot of misunderstandings in Uganda
itself about what was happening, and I would hope that the lessons
that have been learnt from the Hague Tribunal, for example, on
Yugoslavia where that sense of outreach to the society affected
is very important. As I say, I hope that is a lesson which has
been learnt for the future.
Q4 Chairman: You have mentioned the Hague
Tribunal and the former Yugoslavia. There has been a rather strange
timing of the statement by Carla del Ponte with regard to Croatia
which seemed to be rather convenient in terms of the opening of
the negotiations on Turkey's accession to the EU. It has been
denied that there is any connection, but nevertheless the statements
made on 4 October were rather helpful to getting a resolution
of the impasse in the EU. Can I ask you whether you believe that
that decision to reactivate Croatia's candidacy from the EU on
the basis of reported progress with regard to the case of Ante
Gotovina undermines the credibility of the International Criminal
Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia or do you think the two are
not connected?
Mr Crawshaw: As you say, there
has been a lot of discussion on this issue. Let me put it this
way. We would regret very deeply if political deals were done
which meant that justice was put to one side. I think that you
do have to stand up for justice, and you are not doing yourself
any favours if political deals are done. I would leave it at that.
Clearly we want to see him brought to justice, and, as you say,
there was a fairly marked turn around in the statements that we
had from the prosecutor on that issue. It is certainly very regrettable
if politics has entered into that matter. Justice should not be
influenced by politics, clearly.
Q5 Chairman: Do you think that this sends
unfortunate signals to other states in the region, like Serbia,
who also have indictees to be dealt with at some point?
Ms Allen: I think that the real
emphasis now must be on Croatia to ensure that General Gotovina
is produced for the tribunal. I think that that is Amnesty's concern
now, that we do see that action by the Croatian Government.
Q6 Mr Pope: Could I ask you to say a
word about Guanta«namo and the nature of the human rights
abuses at Guanta«namo, and perhaps you could also say a word
about the British response, because it seemed, certainly to me,
that the British response seemed to be centered on British nationals
who had been held there. Now that those British nationals are
back in the UK—they not have been charged incidentally—the
UK Government seems to have been quite silent since the beginning
of this year when the UK nationals came back. Can you say something
about the nature of the abuses and the British response to it?
Ms Allen: I think we are now about
to see the fourth anniversary of Guanta«namo Bay's existence
and in fact there are over 500 men still held there from many
different nationalities. I think Amnesty's concern and our comment
on the FCO's Human Rights Report this year would be that I think
we have moved from commenting in that report on Guanta«namo
to an attempt to offer an explanation as to why Guanta«namo
might be necessary. I think we, at Amnesty, view the UK Government's
record on this as lamentable and not improving. We are obviously
very pleased that the UK citizens have been returned to the UK.
There are UK residents in Guanta«namo and they are UK residents
whose families are in many cases UK citizens and can only look
to the UK Government for support here; so we are very concerned
that we are not getting the response that we would like to see
from the United Kingdom Government about taking up those cases
of residence and the wider general point of the existence of Guanta«namo
and the damage it does. We are seriously concerned at the moment
about the fact that 210, we understand, men in Guanta«namo
are on hunger strike. We understand that six of those are UK residents
and we have reports that people are critically ill, and we are
not getting the response from the UK Government that we would
like to see to taking an active interest and concern in the situation
of those people. Therefore, we are incredibly concerned and disappointed
by the UK Government's current role in terms of Guanta«namo.
Q7 Mr Pope: What sort of practical things
could the UK Government do? Would we be best raising this diplomatically
as part of the special relationship or should we take a more public
stance in being critical? What is the most effective way forward?
Ms Allen: I think four years into
Guanta«namo, if the diplomatic routes have been used and
they are not working, I think there really ought to be a much
more public voice by the UK Government. We increasingly hear from
people who have come back from Guanta«namo stories of abuse,
of cruel, inhuman, degrading treatment of people, we increasingly
hear stories from people of the way in which they have been dehumanised
in their time at Guanta«namo and I think it is time the UK
Government used its influence with its major ally about the UK
residents and the whole wider issue of Guanta«namo.
Q8 Mr Purchase: Continuing on the theme
of America and camps of one kind or another, there have been a
number of reports, I think, by Human Rights Watch on a possible
string of camps across Europe and Asia set up by the Americans
through the CIA where very similar matters are being pursued such
as those at Guanta«namo—people being tortured and so
on and so forth. Is there any real evidence to support that claim
that has appeared in the press as well as from Human Rights Watch?
Mr Crawshaw: There is absolutely
definitive evidence of the fact that people are being "disappeared",
and I use that word carefully. We remember it from Latin America,
and they are perhaps not being killed, but the fact is that people
are being taken out of circulation. The United States has, indeed,
admitted that they are taking people out of circulation. They
are being held somewhere in secret prisons. It is an extraordinary
underlying fact of the whole way that the US has conducted what
it calls its war on terror that it seems not to believe that the
rules apply. Many of the people who they have taken out of circulation
in this way may indeed have committed terrible crimes—some
on that list are known to be strong al-Qaeda suspects—but
the idea that that means that therefore you should not say where
they are being held and how they are being held is extraordinary.
As regards the latest ones which you mention, which again is partly
to do with the flight logs and where people have landed and the
pattern, we have said—it has sometimes got down to a kind
of shorthand—that there are strong indications from what
we are seeing—in other words, the pattern of the logs, direct
flights from Afghanistan to Romania, to Poland and the pattern
of what we are seeing, strongly suggests that there are camps
being held there—and, frankly, even if they are not there,
there are others elsewhere, it is our strong feeling. The available
evidence points only in that direction.
Q9 Mr Purchase: Has anybody emerged to
say, "I have been stuck in this camp" anywhere?
Mr Crawshaw: No, all of those
people are still there.
Q10 Mr Purchase: It must be very difficult
for organisations such as yourselves to get real, hard information.
How unhelpful are the Americans? Do they completely clam up, do
they give you a clue or any information at all?
Ms Allen: Can I just quote for
the Committee. You will remember the Taguba Report by Major General
Taguba into the scandal at Abu Graib. His report was leaked and
in it he referred to "ghost detainees" and he referred
to these as detainees who were held in secret and moved around
prisons to hide them from visits by the International Committee
of the Red Cross. He described in his report, "This is deceptive,
contrary to army doctrine and in violation of international law."
We do have reports from the US's own internal inquiries, which,
we would hold, are not adequate enough by any means, but even
in those terms we have clear documentation that these are the
practices that the US administration is using.
Q11 Mr Purchase: Do you think the British
intelligence services are in the loop on this one?
Ms Allen: We have no evidence
of that.
Mr Crawshaw: Could I say as a
postscript to that, I think merely to say, "Oh we did not
know", is a most inappropriate response, which we are hearing
to some extent from the British Government. If they did not know,
why are they not asking the questions? You have available the
pattern of behaviour which, as Kate Allen has said, as I was laying
out, we have done entire reports on the subject. The evidence
there is available that there is a problem that exists, and it
does it seem to us that the British Government should absolutely
be challenging that, including the intelligence services.
Q12 Mr Purchase: You say there is evidence
that it exists. I am perfectly prepared to believe you. On the
other hand, with such a lack of hard information and evidence,
it is difficult to make all this stick, is it not? Particularly
I ask you: is Britain in the loop? You think not, but may be they
are.
Mr Crawshaw: To clarify, it is
not a fact that we have a US government denying these things and
therefore one is left slightly baffled, saying, "We do not
say it is happening." Other people say, "Well, we think
it is." You are then, I think you will probably accept, left
slightly with a stalemate. The reality is that you have got a
pattern which the US has never denied. As Kate Allen mentioned,
there was one US official who gave the very clear rationale for
the process of extraordinary renditions, as it called them. We
do not kick the expletives out of them, we send them back to other
countries so they can kick them out of them. Precisely what has
been happening is, "Oh, we better not do it on US soil, but
somewhere else it really does not matter." That has been
more or less public—we have not heard it quite from the
mouth of the president, but it has not seriously been denied that
is what is happening. Given that it has not been denied, indeed
could not be denied given the extraordinary pattern of clear evidence
of what has happening, it is surprising—I would put it at
its very mildest—that the British Government does not raise
the issues. Just as a postscript to what Kate Allen was saying
on Guanta«namo, there again it is extraordinary that it is
treated as British—you know, the focus on the Brits—as
though somehow if we deal with our citizens, which is perfectly
logical for diplomats to do in a narrower context—you focus
on your own people—but not to see the message that is being
sent by the trampling of international law, in the broadest sense,
I think is really remarkable.
Q13 Mr Purchase: On the question of finding
hard evidence, does Human Rights Watch or, indeed, Amnesty International
have resources that you could devote to discovering at least a
tiny little the gap anywhere?
Ms Allen: We do have hard evidence.
In our report "The USA Torture and Secret Detention Testimony
of the Disappeared in the War on Terror" we have documented
the cases of people. We have the cases of two men, Muhammad Bashmilah
and Salah Salim Ali, who were from Yemen, who were arrested, detained
and tortured for seven days in Jordan, they were held incommunicado
for more than a year. They were transported between detention
facilities, held, and interrogated by guards that they say came
from the US and they were subsequently detained without charge
in Yemen where we visited them in June this year. We do have documented
cases of people who have told us about being moved.
Q14 Mr Purchase: You have presented this
to the British Government?
Ms Allen: This is a public report
which has certainly been presented to the British Government this
year.
Q15 Mr Maples: I just want to take you
back to Guanta«namo along the same lines really. I forget
the exact words you used, but in your written statement you talked
about evidence of torture and widespread cruel, inhuman and degrading
treatment and this was in relation to Guanta«namo. I am interested
in a similar question, what hard evidence there is of that, because,
interestingly, when the second batch of British detainees came
back they did not actually seem me to make any serious allegations,
and they certainly were not taken up by any sections of the British
press where you might have expected them to be taken up. I wonder
what hard evidence there is particularly of torture. I suppose
they are all the same thing: cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment
probably amount to torture.
Ms Allen: I think we have very
strong accounts, particularly from young men from Tipton, who
documented on their return to the UK what had happened to them,
of being kept awake, of loud music, of threats being made to them,
of being held and interrogated endlessly day after day. We had
a lot of accounts from—
Q16 Mr Maples: Would you call that torture?
Ms Allen: I think that amounts
to torture.
Q17 Mr Maples: We are talking about people
who have been responsible for killing 3,000 American citizens.
Where does the distinction between a tough interrogation technique
and torture begin? That sounds to me like a tough interrogation
technique.
Ms Allen: We are talking about
young men who were selling electrical goods in Tipton at the time
of September 11.
Q18 Mr Maples: They were arrested in
Afghanistan?
Ms Allen: They were not people
that were responsible. They have never been charged. They are
back in this country.
Q19 Mr Maples: No, but it is the torture
aspect. If the Americans are torturing people at Guanta«namo
I think we would all be very worried about that.
Ms Allen: I think if you hold
people incommunicado and you interrogate them endlessly day upon
day, that you have extremes of temperature that are used, that
you do not allow them any contact with their families, that you
have loud noise playing continuously, that you threaten people
in terms of their lives and their well-being, I think that adds
up to torture.
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