By William Fisher
After months of performing like Egypt’s Cinderella leader, jet-setting between Cairo and his old home in Vienna, Mohamed ElBaradei has finally reached the limits of his frustration.
At a press conference last week, ElBaradei said the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces, which took over from Mubarak, had governed "as if no revolution took place and no regime has fallen".
"My conscience does not permit me to run for the presidency or any other official position unless it is within a democratic framework," the former head of the UN nuclear watchdog said.
His surprise resignation came as a protest to the ruling military council's failure to put the country on the path to democracy. The Supreme Council of the Armed Forces, a group of the Egypt’s highest military officers, took over as “interim rulers” of the country immediately after the February 11 resignation of 30-year-dictator Hosni Mubarak, Mubarak, now 83 years old, is currently on trial along with a number of high-level political and military figures for corruption and for killing peaceful demonstrators in Tahrir Square, where the Arab Spring revolution was born.
In the pre-Tahrir Square days, ElBaradei was among prominent Egyptians constantly mentioned for the post of president, should the revolution succeed. He played a somewhat coy game during this period, expressing reservations about taking on the monumental task of leading his countrymen into a new era of non-corrupt, transparent and responsive government.
The Nobel laureate, regarded as a driving force behind the movement that forced the former president Hosni Mubarak to step down, told the Guardian newspaper that the conditions for a fair election were not in place.
With Parliamentary elections to the lower house over, and the parties of the Muslim Brotherhood and the yet more conservative Salafists winning more than enough seats to effectively control the lower body, it was highly doubtful that ElBaradei could have won enough support from the Liberal parties to gain the presidency.
But it would be a big mistake to count the Nobel-prize-winner out just yet. The historic journey along Egypt’s road to good governance has barely begun.
The polished international diplomat again called on the SCAF and their puppet civilian government to move with all possible speed to enact fundamental political reforms. The citizens of the Arab world's largest nation were "yearning desperately for economic and social change" and that without drastic improvements, a "Tunisia-style explosion" in Egypt would be unavoidable, he told the Guardian.
Nearly half of the country's 80 million citizens live on less than £1.25 a day, and despite record GDP growth the majority of the population has become poorer in real terms over the past 20 years. Unemployment is epidemic, Graduates with PhD degrees are driving taxies or working as waiters. Many of the members of the last two graduating classes of Cairo University have never held any job for which they were trained.
However, Baradei has rejected the idea of a “second revolution” – a huge gathering in Tahrir Square, much like those of the recent past – because of the very real possibility of widespread violence and death.
Thursday, January 19, 2012
Tuesday, January 10, 2012
Rights Group Slams Governments for "Double Standard" on Arab Spring
By William Fisher
Predicting that the current Middle East unrest would continue through 2012, Amnesty International is slamming Western governments for their tepid responses to peaceful protests, for their “double standard,” and for being more concerned with preserving their political and economic interests than with the historic changes sweeping the region.
The charges are being made in a new Amnesty report, “Year of Rebellion: State of Human Rights in the Middle East and North Africa.”
The Report says, “Many powerful governments performed political somersaults or continued to ignore human rights violations in the region.” They “sought to protect their own political and economic interests” through the varying and inconsistent reactions of foreign powers saying they were looking out for their own instead of truly looking after protesters dying in pursuit of legitimate freedoms and rights.”
It says there was an initial reluctance to support the protest movements by western governments, citing the initial silence of the French government on Tunisia and the US administration on Egypt. The US supported Mubarak until his “refusal to resign risked a much deeper social revolution and a much greater threat to the status quo in the region.”
The report was also critical of the UN’s responses, despite the gross human rights violations perpetrated against peaceful protesters across the region.
Amnesty International has three million members and supporters in more than 150 countries.
It contrasted the UN Security Council’s fast response after Libya’s uprising took off, sanctioning a no-fly zone and airstrikes (which it then said surpassed its mandate to “protect civilians”), and the slow and non-existent responses when it came to Syria and Bahrain.
The report also cited the late condemnation by the Security Council of human rights violations in Yemen, saying that it urged Yemen’s Ali Abdullah Saleh to sign a power transfer deal which granted him immunity, an act prohibited by the UN Secretary General’s directives, it argued. That deal was approved by the Yemeni parliament yesterday.
Nor did the European Union’s (EU) response escape criticism. The report said, “The initial reaction [of the EU] was limited to sanitized statements calling for restraint by all sides and negotiations.”
It added: “The EU continued its long-standing relations with repressive states in the region and opted for diplomatic advances rather than openly condemning human rights violations,”
It said that the EU’s belated offers of financial support for pro-democracy and pro-human rights – while a positive development – is seemingly being stalled by the EU.
It blamed the EU for continuing its policies that subordinated human rights to trade and energy interests, which led it to provide political and financial support to authoritarian governments in the Middle East and North Africa.
Amnesty focused special attention on what it called the “double standards” it claimed are present across all the major uprisings taking place in the Arab World in 2011.
The “disjuncture between the words and deeds of powerful governments and institutions were exposed and undermined. It can only be hoped that the year of rebellion signals an end to policies that put an illusory ‘stability.’
Mideast protests and government repression will continue through 2012, the organization predicted.
"With few exceptions, governments have failed to recognize that everything has changed," Philip Luther, Amnesty International's interim Middle East and North Africa director, said in the report.
"The protest movements across the region, led in many cases by young people and with women playing central roles, have proved astonishingly resilient in the face of sometimes staggering repression.
"They want concrete changes to the way they are governed and for those responsible for past crimes to be held to account. But persistent attempts by states to offer cosmetic changes, to push back against gains made by protesters or to simply brutalize their populations into submission betray the fact that for many governments, regime survival remains their aim," he said.
The 80-page report, which describes 2011 as “historic” and “tumultuous,” discusses the rights issue in each country where uprisings, protests and countering repression took place. Other subjects such as promoting human rights in the region and what the organization has achieved on the ground during the revolutions are also included.
Most of the countries currently in turmoil were singled out for criticism.
In Egypt, Amnesty found that the military rulers had been responsible for abuses that were "in some aspects worse than under Hosni Mubarak". About 84 people had died under violent suppression between October and December last year, while more civilians had been tried before military courts in one year than under 30 years of his rule, it said.
In Tunisia, it was "critical" that a new constitution was drafted to ensure it guaranteed protection of human rights and equality under the law, the report said.
Amnesty also criticized international powers and regional bodies for "inconsistencies" in their response to the situations in Libya, Syria and Bahrain, and of "failing to grasp the depth of the challenge to entrenched repressive rule".
The report noted that Bahrain set up acommittee to investigate what happened during the unrest and brutal crackdown, by commissioning an independent inquiry. The inquiry’s results, reported in October 2011, criticized the government for using excessive force and torture, as well as making arbitrary arrests. This critcism was accepted by the King, who vowed to make amends and punish culprits. He said that the time for action is now, while the people still have hope for a new future….”
Amnesty International, in its statement said, “The call for justice, freedom and dignity has evolved into a global demand that grows stronger every day. The genie is out of the bottle and the forces of repression cannot put it back.”
Predicting that the current Middle East unrest would continue through 2012, Amnesty International is slamming Western governments for their tepid responses to peaceful protests, for their “double standard,” and for being more concerned with preserving their political and economic interests than with the historic changes sweeping the region.
The charges are being made in a new Amnesty report, “Year of Rebellion: State of Human Rights in the Middle East and North Africa.”
The Report says, “Many powerful governments performed political somersaults or continued to ignore human rights violations in the region.” They “sought to protect their own political and economic interests” through the varying and inconsistent reactions of foreign powers saying they were looking out for their own instead of truly looking after protesters dying in pursuit of legitimate freedoms and rights.”
It says there was an initial reluctance to support the protest movements by western governments, citing the initial silence of the French government on Tunisia and the US administration on Egypt. The US supported Mubarak until his “refusal to resign risked a much deeper social revolution and a much greater threat to the status quo in the region.”
The report was also critical of the UN’s responses, despite the gross human rights violations perpetrated against peaceful protesters across the region.
Amnesty International has three million members and supporters in more than 150 countries.
It contrasted the UN Security Council’s fast response after Libya’s uprising took off, sanctioning a no-fly zone and airstrikes (which it then said surpassed its mandate to “protect civilians”), and the slow and non-existent responses when it came to Syria and Bahrain.
The report also cited the late condemnation by the Security Council of human rights violations in Yemen, saying that it urged Yemen’s Ali Abdullah Saleh to sign a power transfer deal which granted him immunity, an act prohibited by the UN Secretary General’s directives, it argued. That deal was approved by the Yemeni parliament yesterday.
Nor did the European Union’s (EU) response escape criticism. The report said, “The initial reaction [of the EU] was limited to sanitized statements calling for restraint by all sides and negotiations.”
It added: “The EU continued its long-standing relations with repressive states in the region and opted for diplomatic advances rather than openly condemning human rights violations,”
It said that the EU’s belated offers of financial support for pro-democracy and pro-human rights – while a positive development – is seemingly being stalled by the EU.
It blamed the EU for continuing its policies that subordinated human rights to trade and energy interests, which led it to provide political and financial support to authoritarian governments in the Middle East and North Africa.
Amnesty focused special attention on what it called the “double standards” it claimed are present across all the major uprisings taking place in the Arab World in 2011.
The “disjuncture between the words and deeds of powerful governments and institutions were exposed and undermined. It can only be hoped that the year of rebellion signals an end to policies that put an illusory ‘stability.’
Mideast protests and government repression will continue through 2012, the organization predicted.
"With few exceptions, governments have failed to recognize that everything has changed," Philip Luther, Amnesty International's interim Middle East and North Africa director, said in the report.
"The protest movements across the region, led in many cases by young people and with women playing central roles, have proved astonishingly resilient in the face of sometimes staggering repression.
"They want concrete changes to the way they are governed and for those responsible for past crimes to be held to account. But persistent attempts by states to offer cosmetic changes, to push back against gains made by protesters or to simply brutalize their populations into submission betray the fact that for many governments, regime survival remains their aim," he said.
The 80-page report, which describes 2011 as “historic” and “tumultuous,” discusses the rights issue in each country where uprisings, protests and countering repression took place. Other subjects such as promoting human rights in the region and what the organization has achieved on the ground during the revolutions are also included.
Most of the countries currently in turmoil were singled out for criticism.
In Egypt, Amnesty found that the military rulers had been responsible for abuses that were "in some aspects worse than under Hosni Mubarak". About 84 people had died under violent suppression between October and December last year, while more civilians had been tried before military courts in one year than under 30 years of his rule, it said.
In Tunisia, it was "critical" that a new constitution was drafted to ensure it guaranteed protection of human rights and equality under the law, the report said.
Amnesty also criticized international powers and regional bodies for "inconsistencies" in their response to the situations in Libya, Syria and Bahrain, and of "failing to grasp the depth of the challenge to entrenched repressive rule".
The report noted that Bahrain set up acommittee to investigate what happened during the unrest and brutal crackdown, by commissioning an independent inquiry. The inquiry’s results, reported in October 2011, criticized the government for using excessive force and torture, as well as making arbitrary arrests. This critcism was accepted by the King, who vowed to make amends and punish culprits. He said that the time for action is now, while the people still have hope for a new future….”
Amnesty International, in its statement said, “The call for justice, freedom and dignity has evolved into a global demand that grows stronger every day. The genie is out of the bottle and the forces of repression cannot put it back.”
Monday, January 09, 2012
Saudis to Reinforce Crackdown on Peaceful Protesters, Amnesty Says
By William Fisher
The Arab Spring has been greeted in Saudi Arabia by "a new wave of repression" that saw authorities arresting and imprisoning peaceful protesters demanding political reforms. Now, the Saudi crackdown may be reinforced by a draft anti-terror law that would effectively criminalize dissent as a "terrorist crime."
In a new 61-page report, "Saudi Arabia: Repression in the Name of Security," Amnesty International (AI) said authorities have "used security concerns to justify the arrest of hundreds of people who have been imprisoned after unfair trials." The draft anti-terror law would further strip away rights from those accused of such offenses, Amnesty said.
"Peaceful protesters and supporters of political reform in the country have been targeted for arrest in an attempt to stamp out the kinds of call for reform that have echoed across the region," said Philip Luther of AI.
"While the arguments used to justify this wide-ranging crackdown may be different, the abusive practices being employed by the Saudi Arabian government are worryingly similar to those which they have long used against people accused of terrorist offenses," he said.
AI said that the government "continues to detain thousands of people, many of them without charge or trial, on terrorism-related grounds. Torture and other ill-treatment in detention remain rife." In April 2011, an Interior Ministry spokesperson said that around 5,000 people connected to the "deviant group," meaning al-Qa'ida, had been questioned and referred for trials, Amnesty said.
Meanwhile, Saudi troops continue to serve in Bahrain on behalf of the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC), helping the rulers of the tiny oil-rich monarchy to put an end to many months of peaceful demonstrations seeking reform.
In a statement following AI's release of the draft law, the Saudi government said it "absolutely has a responsibility to protect the public from violent attacks, but that has to be done within the boundaries of international law." It said the new draft law is designed "to assist Saudi Security forces in tackling terrorist activity."
But AI charges it would "allow the authorities to prosecute peaceful dissent as a terrorist crime."
The organization says it has obtained copies of the Draft Penal Law for Terrorism Crimes and Financing of Terrorism. It says, "If passed it would pave the way for even the smallest acts of peaceful dissent to be branded terrorism and risk massive human rights violations."
A Saudi Arabian government security committee reviewed the draft law in June but it is not known when or if it might be passed.
AI says that since February, when sporadic demonstrations began - in defiance of a permanent national ban on protests -- the government carried out a crackdown that included the arrest of hundreds of mostly Shi'a Muslims in the restive eastern province. Since March over 300 people who took part in peaceful protests in al-Qatif, al-Ahsa and Awwamiya have been detained.
Khaled al-Johani, 40, the only man to demonstrate on the March 11 "Day of Rage" in Riyadh, was swiftly arrested. He told journalists he was frustrated by media censorship in Saudi Arabia. Charged with supporting a protest and communicating with foreign media, he is believed to have been held in solitary confinement for two months, Amnesty said.
"Nine months later, he remains in detention and has not been tried. A number of people who have spoken up in support of protests or reform have been arrested. Sheikh Tawfiq Jaber Ibrahim al-'Amr, a Shi'a cleric, was arrested for the second time this year in August for calling for reform at a mosque. He has been charged with "inciting public opinion," AI said.
On November 22, 16 men, including nine prominent reformists, were sentenced to five to 30 years in prison on charges they formed a secret organization, attempted to seize power, financed terrorism as well as incitement against the King and money laundering.
Amnesty says their trial, which began in May, was grossly unfair. "The defendants were blindfolded and handcuffed and their lawyer was not allowed to enter the court for the first three sessions," AI said. "Unless it were radically altered, the proposed draft anti-terror law would make the current situation even worse, as it would entrench and make legal the very worst practices we have documented," according to AI's Luther.
The draft law allows for suspects to be held in incommunicado detention for up to 120 days, or for longer periods - potentially indefinitely - if authorized by a specialized court.
Under the draft law, terrorist crimes would include such actions as "endangering...national unity", "halting the basic law or some of its articles", or "harming the reputation of the state or its position".Violations of the law would carry harsh punishments. The death penalty would be applied to cases of taking up arms against the state or for any "terrorist crimes" that result in death.
Amnesty charges that a number of other key provisions in the draft law run counter to Saudi Arabia's international legal obligations, including those under the UN Convention against Torture.
Amnesty is calling on King Abdullah to "reconsider this law and ensure that his people's legitimate right to freedom of expression is not curtailed in the name of fighting terrorism."
Prof. Chip Pitts of Stanford and Oxford, former Chair of Amnesty International USA, commented on the proposed new law. "Having just renewed the USA Patriot Act, the United States has sadly continued to set the stage for and model such counterproductive, harsh, and illegal approaches, and undermined its ability to credibly and effectively question them," he said, adding:
"The myopic and reactionary approach taken in the new Saudi draft law, which would violate the country's obligations under international human rights law, shows that the Kingdom is battening down the hatches and preparing for a long period of continued feudal rule that contradicts the very premises of expanding human rights that have swept the world in recent centuries."
"Neglecting the lessons of the Arab Spring - that repression ultimately breeds instability and violence - the Saudi regime apparently prefers to look backwards to an error of medieval justice and absolute monarchical power which brooks no dissent. Such backwardness condemns the Saudi regime to greater isolation over time, and the Saudi people and businesses to constricted options for economic and social development, unless wiser heads prevail and move toward more progressive instead of regressive laws," he said.
Prof. Lawrence Davidson, who teaches history at West Chester University, sees the proposed new law in its longer-term context.
He said, "Laws like this essentially blur the lines between the criminal and the authorities. It makes it much harder to tell who is who. Presently, there are two aspects to Saudi power: Force of questionable legitimacy and the ability to buy the loyalty of a portion of their population. In a couple of generations the latter may well go away and then former will probably prove insufficient. This law will not lessen the probability that last of the Saudi royal line dying in exile."
The Arab Spring has been greeted in Saudi Arabia by "a new wave of repression" that saw authorities arresting and imprisoning peaceful protesters demanding political reforms. Now, the Saudi crackdown may be reinforced by a draft anti-terror law that would effectively criminalize dissent as a "terrorist crime."
In a new 61-page report, "Saudi Arabia: Repression in the Name of Security," Amnesty International (AI) said authorities have "used security concerns to justify the arrest of hundreds of people who have been imprisoned after unfair trials." The draft anti-terror law would further strip away rights from those accused of such offenses, Amnesty said.
"Peaceful protesters and supporters of political reform in the country have been targeted for arrest in an attempt to stamp out the kinds of call for reform that have echoed across the region," said Philip Luther of AI.
"While the arguments used to justify this wide-ranging crackdown may be different, the abusive practices being employed by the Saudi Arabian government are worryingly similar to those which they have long used against people accused of terrorist offenses," he said.
AI said that the government "continues to detain thousands of people, many of them without charge or trial, on terrorism-related grounds. Torture and other ill-treatment in detention remain rife." In April 2011, an Interior Ministry spokesperson said that around 5,000 people connected to the "deviant group," meaning al-Qa'ida, had been questioned and referred for trials, Amnesty said.
Meanwhile, Saudi troops continue to serve in Bahrain on behalf of the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC), helping the rulers of the tiny oil-rich monarchy to put an end to many months of peaceful demonstrations seeking reform.
In a statement following AI's release of the draft law, the Saudi government said it "absolutely has a responsibility to protect the public from violent attacks, but that has to be done within the boundaries of international law." It said the new draft law is designed "to assist Saudi Security forces in tackling terrorist activity."
But AI charges it would "allow the authorities to prosecute peaceful dissent as a terrorist crime."
The organization says it has obtained copies of the Draft Penal Law for Terrorism Crimes and Financing of Terrorism. It says, "If passed it would pave the way for even the smallest acts of peaceful dissent to be branded terrorism and risk massive human rights violations."
A Saudi Arabian government security committee reviewed the draft law in June but it is not known when or if it might be passed.
AI says that since February, when sporadic demonstrations began - in defiance of a permanent national ban on protests -- the government carried out a crackdown that included the arrest of hundreds of mostly Shi'a Muslims in the restive eastern province. Since March over 300 people who took part in peaceful protests in al-Qatif, al-Ahsa and Awwamiya have been detained.
Khaled al-Johani, 40, the only man to demonstrate on the March 11 "Day of Rage" in Riyadh, was swiftly arrested. He told journalists he was frustrated by media censorship in Saudi Arabia. Charged with supporting a protest and communicating with foreign media, he is believed to have been held in solitary confinement for two months, Amnesty said.
"Nine months later, he remains in detention and has not been tried. A number of people who have spoken up in support of protests or reform have been arrested. Sheikh Tawfiq Jaber Ibrahim al-'Amr, a Shi'a cleric, was arrested for the second time this year in August for calling for reform at a mosque. He has been charged with "inciting public opinion," AI said.
On November 22, 16 men, including nine prominent reformists, were sentenced to five to 30 years in prison on charges they formed a secret organization, attempted to seize power, financed terrorism as well as incitement against the King and money laundering.
Amnesty says their trial, which began in May, was grossly unfair. "The defendants were blindfolded and handcuffed and their lawyer was not allowed to enter the court for the first three sessions," AI said. "Unless it were radically altered, the proposed draft anti-terror law would make the current situation even worse, as it would entrench and make legal the very worst practices we have documented," according to AI's Luther.
The draft law allows for suspects to be held in incommunicado detention for up to 120 days, or for longer periods - potentially indefinitely - if authorized by a specialized court.
Under the draft law, terrorist crimes would include such actions as "endangering...national unity", "halting the basic law or some of its articles", or "harming the reputation of the state or its position".Violations of the law would carry harsh punishments. The death penalty would be applied to cases of taking up arms against the state or for any "terrorist crimes" that result in death.
Amnesty charges that a number of other key provisions in the draft law run counter to Saudi Arabia's international legal obligations, including those under the UN Convention against Torture.
Amnesty is calling on King Abdullah to "reconsider this law and ensure that his people's legitimate right to freedom of expression is not curtailed in the name of fighting terrorism."
Prof. Chip Pitts of Stanford and Oxford, former Chair of Amnesty International USA, commented on the proposed new law. "Having just renewed the USA Patriot Act, the United States has sadly continued to set the stage for and model such counterproductive, harsh, and illegal approaches, and undermined its ability to credibly and effectively question them," he said, adding:
"The myopic and reactionary approach taken in the new Saudi draft law, which would violate the country's obligations under international human rights law, shows that the Kingdom is battening down the hatches and preparing for a long period of continued feudal rule that contradicts the very premises of expanding human rights that have swept the world in recent centuries."
"Neglecting the lessons of the Arab Spring - that repression ultimately breeds instability and violence - the Saudi regime apparently prefers to look backwards to an error of medieval justice and absolute monarchical power which brooks no dissent. Such backwardness condemns the Saudi regime to greater isolation over time, and the Saudi people and businesses to constricted options for economic and social development, unless wiser heads prevail and move toward more progressive instead of regressive laws," he said.
Prof. Lawrence Davidson, who teaches history at West Chester University, sees the proposed new law in its longer-term context.
He said, "Laws like this essentially blur the lines between the criminal and the authorities. It makes it much harder to tell who is who. Presently, there are two aspects to Saudi power: Force of questionable legitimacy and the ability to buy the loyalty of a portion of their population. In a couple of generations the latter may well go away and then former will probably prove insufficient. This law will not lessen the probability that last of the Saudi royal line dying in exile."
Sunday, January 08, 2012
Too Good to be True? Yep!
By William Fisher
It was going to be a real long-shot, with million-to-one odds.
It was going to be the first time in living memory that the King of a country commissioned and funded a truly independent report on the widespread civil strife taking place in his country, personally heard the authors tell him his army was killing its own people and the police were torturing citizens they took into custody.
More amazing still, the King expressed ignorance of these dreadful actions, accepted the report, and promised reform.
As Steve Royston commented in Voice of the Middle East, “The report is extraordinary in that it deals with events so recent. In the United Kingdom it took a quarter of a decade for the government to commission an inquiry into the events in Londonderry known as Bloody Sunday. The Chilcot Inquiry into the circumstances of the Iraq war of 2003 is not due to report until 2012. Truth and reconciliation commissions in a number of countries where human rights abuses have taken place typically review events from many years in the past.”
The report, prepared by a team headed by a distinguished Egyptian judge, Cherif Bassiouni, was presented to the Sunni monarch, King Hamad bin Isa Al Khalifa of Bahrain, on November 23rd 2011. Today is January 7, 2012. What has happened since?
A 15-year-old teenager was killed by a tear gas canister manufactured in the US and sold to the Bahraini regime. The boy was shot at close range by security forces during an anti-regime protest in Sitra, a town southeast of the capital Manama, on the last day of 2011.
Later, his funeral turned violent after security forces fired tear gas to disperse mourners. Dozens of people have been killed since the beginning of the peaceful demonstrations in February 2011.
An infant and a mother died from inhaling toxic tear gas fumes. Saudi- backed riot police attacked teenage protester stabbed him with a knife during a protest in Malkiya village.
Thousands have been arrested and many of them suffered torture at the hands of the police. Even more thousands have been fired from their jobs for participating in peaceful demonstrations. Students have been dismissed from the University for the same reason.
A large number of doctors and nurses have been imprisoned and sentenced to absurdly long sentences for providing hospital care for people who were injured in the protests.
The country’s leading opposition party said, the courts “are still sentencing the victims with harsh verdicts in cases related to the right of speech and the right of peaceful rallying, no week passes by without a number of victims whose right of freedom and physical integrity are being violated by these verdicts.”
All of those arrested and imprisoned are Shia Muslims, as it the majority of the Bahraini population.
There is more, much more that could be written about the brutality and the mindless roundups of ordinary Bahrainis who started their campaign seeking reforms from the King, but hardened into non-negotiable abdication when the King – or whoever in the Palace is giving the orders – continually ramped up the campaign of repression.
But the Royal Family was not idle. It hired Miami police chief John Timoney, known for his trampling on civil rights of protesters to the 2003 Free Trade Area of the Americas.
It also hired a covey of high-priced public relations firms and communications consultants to do what PR people do: attempt to spin a positive narrative of the All the King’s Men that would supplant the images of soldiers firing tear gas and live ammo on peaceful demonstrators, including women and children.
One of the early fruits of this initiative was an Op-Ed in the conservative Washington Times. The piece appeared under the byline of the King himself. His piece extolled the economic opportunities awaiting foreign investors in peaceful Bahrain. Of the current conflict, he wrote, “Unfortunately, the legitimate demands of the opposition were hijacked by extremist elements with ties to foreign governments in the region.”
But then Justin Elliott at Salon reported that a top executive at Lockheed Martin recently worked with lobbyists for Bahrain to place the op-ed. But the newspaper didn’t bother to tell its readers of the role of the regime’s lobbyists. So how could they know that the pro-Bahrain opinion column they were reading was published at the behest of … Bahrain?
The link between Bahrain and Lockheed Martin isn’t complicated: Each year defense contractor sells hundreds of millions of dollars worth of military hardware to the tiny island kingdom. This was Washington-style Customer Service 101.
The Crown Prince has also been active, traveling to Washington for consultations with the US State Department and a meeting with President Obama, for whom Bahrain has a special strategic priority because it’s the home of the US Fifth Fleet (the fleet now in the center of the dispute with Iran over access to the Strait of Hormuz, in the Persian Gulf).
Obama, seeming to walk on eggs for fear of offending America’s friends, the Saudis, evenhandedly expressed the hope that the government and the people of Bahrain would be able to resolve their differences peacefully.
Seemingly, the only concrete action taken by the Obama Administration was to hold up a scheduled shipment of arms to Bahrain.
So, it seems to me there is only one reasonable conclusion to be drawn from the current perilous situation in Bahrain: The promise of dialogue and reform from His Majesty is rapidly gaining all the credibility of one of Yemeni president Ali Abdullah Saleh’s resignation letters.
It was going to be a real long-shot, with million-to-one odds.
It was going to be the first time in living memory that the King of a country commissioned and funded a truly independent report on the widespread civil strife taking place in his country, personally heard the authors tell him his army was killing its own people and the police were torturing citizens they took into custody.
More amazing still, the King expressed ignorance of these dreadful actions, accepted the report, and promised reform.
As Steve Royston commented in Voice of the Middle East, “The report is extraordinary in that it deals with events so recent. In the United Kingdom it took a quarter of a decade for the government to commission an inquiry into the events in Londonderry known as Bloody Sunday. The Chilcot Inquiry into the circumstances of the Iraq war of 2003 is not due to report until 2012. Truth and reconciliation commissions in a number of countries where human rights abuses have taken place typically review events from many years in the past.”
The report, prepared by a team headed by a distinguished Egyptian judge, Cherif Bassiouni, was presented to the Sunni monarch, King Hamad bin Isa Al Khalifa of Bahrain, on November 23rd 2011. Today is January 7, 2012. What has happened since?
A 15-year-old teenager was killed by a tear gas canister manufactured in the US and sold to the Bahraini regime. The boy was shot at close range by security forces during an anti-regime protest in Sitra, a town southeast of the capital Manama, on the last day of 2011.
Later, his funeral turned violent after security forces fired tear gas to disperse mourners. Dozens of people have been killed since the beginning of the peaceful demonstrations in February 2011.
An infant and a mother died from inhaling toxic tear gas fumes. Saudi- backed riot police attacked teenage protester stabbed him with a knife during a protest in Malkiya village.
Thousands have been arrested and many of them suffered torture at the hands of the police. Even more thousands have been fired from their jobs for participating in peaceful demonstrations. Students have been dismissed from the University for the same reason.
A large number of doctors and nurses have been imprisoned and sentenced to absurdly long sentences for providing hospital care for people who were injured in the protests.
The country’s leading opposition party said, the courts “are still sentencing the victims with harsh verdicts in cases related to the right of speech and the right of peaceful rallying, no week passes by without a number of victims whose right of freedom and physical integrity are being violated by these verdicts.”
All of those arrested and imprisoned are Shia Muslims, as it the majority of the Bahraini population.
There is more, much more that could be written about the brutality and the mindless roundups of ordinary Bahrainis who started their campaign seeking reforms from the King, but hardened into non-negotiable abdication when the King – or whoever in the Palace is giving the orders – continually ramped up the campaign of repression.
But the Royal Family was not idle. It hired Miami police chief John Timoney, known for his trampling on civil rights of protesters to the 2003 Free Trade Area of the Americas.
It also hired a covey of high-priced public relations firms and communications consultants to do what PR people do: attempt to spin a positive narrative of the All the King’s Men that would supplant the images of soldiers firing tear gas and live ammo on peaceful demonstrators, including women and children.
One of the early fruits of this initiative was an Op-Ed in the conservative Washington Times. The piece appeared under the byline of the King himself. His piece extolled the economic opportunities awaiting foreign investors in peaceful Bahrain. Of the current conflict, he wrote, “Unfortunately, the legitimate demands of the opposition were hijacked by extremist elements with ties to foreign governments in the region.”
But then Justin Elliott at Salon reported that a top executive at Lockheed Martin recently worked with lobbyists for Bahrain to place the op-ed. But the newspaper didn’t bother to tell its readers of the role of the regime’s lobbyists. So how could they know that the pro-Bahrain opinion column they were reading was published at the behest of … Bahrain?
The link between Bahrain and Lockheed Martin isn’t complicated: Each year defense contractor sells hundreds of millions of dollars worth of military hardware to the tiny island kingdom. This was Washington-style Customer Service 101.
The Crown Prince has also been active, traveling to Washington for consultations with the US State Department and a meeting with President Obama, for whom Bahrain has a special strategic priority because it’s the home of the US Fifth Fleet (the fleet now in the center of the dispute with Iran over access to the Strait of Hormuz, in the Persian Gulf).
Obama, seeming to walk on eggs for fear of offending America’s friends, the Saudis, evenhandedly expressed the hope that the government and the people of Bahrain would be able to resolve their differences peacefully.
Seemingly, the only concrete action taken by the Obama Administration was to hold up a scheduled shipment of arms to Bahrain.
So, it seems to me there is only one reasonable conclusion to be drawn from the current perilous situation in Bahrain: The promise of dialogue and reform from His Majesty is rapidly gaining all the credibility of one of Yemeni president Ali Abdullah Saleh’s resignation letters.
Saturday, January 07, 2012
Who Puts Kids in the Slammer for Life? We Do!
By William Fisher
You probably know that the United States has more people in the slammer than any other country in the world. The staggering number is 2.3 million. China, which has four times as many people as the US, is a distant second with 1.6 million prisoners.
What you may not know is that the US also tops the charts in the numbers of youth offenders serving life without parole sentences in adult US prisons. The score? The world: 0; the US: 2,570.
Right. The US is only country in the world that incarcerates people in adult prisons for crimes they committed when they were below the age of 18.
Furthermore, those prisoners experience conditions that violate fundamental human rights. That’s the depressing conclusion of a new study by Human Rights Watch, “Against All Odds: Prison Conditions for Youth Offenders Serving Life without Parole Sentences in the United States.”
Three months from now, in March, the US Supreme Court will consider the constitutionality of the life-without-parole sentence for youth offenders.
The 47-page report draws on six years of research, and interviews and correspondence with correctional officials and hundreds of youth offenders serving life without parole. Human Rights Watch found that nearly every youth offender serving life without parole reported physical violence or sexual abuse by other inmates or corrections officers. Nationwide statistics indicate that young prisoners serving any type of sentence in adult prison, as well as those with a slight build and low body weight, are most vulnerable to attack.
“Children who commit serious crimes and who inflict harm on others should be held accountable,” said Alison Parker, director of the US program at Human Rights Watch and co-author of the report. “But neither youth offenders, nor any other prisoner, should endure any form of physical abuse.” Most of the life-without-parole inmates have been convicted of homicide offenses.
“The penalty [of life without parole] forswears altogether the rehabilitative ideal…. For juvenile offenders, who are most in need of and receptive to rehabilitation, the absence of rehabilitative opportunities or treatment makes the disproportionality of the sentence all the more evident,” the report says.
This new research sheds light on the severity of prison conditions for those serving this sentence, Human Rights Watch said.
“ scared to death,” said a youth offender serving life without parole in California. “I was all of 5’6”, 130 pounds and they sent me to PBSP (Pelican Bay State Prison in California). I tried to kill myself because I couldn’t stand what the voices in my head was saying…. ‘You’re gonna get raped.’ ‘You won't ever see your family again.’”
Youth offenders are serving life without parole sentences in 38 states and in federal prisons. They often enter adult prison while still children, although some have reached young adulthood by the time their trials end and they begin serving their sentences. Prison policies that channel resources to inmates who are expected to be released often result in denying youth serving life without parole opportunities for education, development, and rehabilitation, Human Rights Watch found.
Youth offenders commonly reported having thoughts of suicide, feelings of intense loneliness, or depression. Isolation was frequently compounded by solitary confinement. In the past five years, at least three youth offenders serving life without parole sentences in the United States have committed suicide.
The federal government and the states should abolish the sentence of life without parole for crimes committed by children, Human Rights Watch said. Government officials responsible for youth offenders should reform confinement conditions to accommodate their particular vulnerabilities, needs, and capacities to mature, reflect upon the harm they have caused, and change.
“Because children are different, shutting the door to growth, development, and rehabilitation turns a sentence of life without parole into a punishment of excessive cruelty,” said Parker. “Youth offenders should be given a path to rehabilitation while in prison – not forced to forfeit their future.”
Yet, lifers with the opportunity of parole (LWOP’s) experience a lack of educational opportunities. “LWOPs cannot participate in many rehabilitative, educational, vocational training or other assignments available to other inmates with parole dates…. The supposed rationality is that LWOPs are beyond salvagability and would just be taking a spot away from someone who will actually return to society someday,” the report says, quoting a youth offender serving life without parole in California.
Another inmate, this one in Arkansas, told Human Rights Watch (HRW), “I would be ever grateful… for the chance to spend my life now for some good reason. I would go to the most dangerous parts of Afghanistan…or jump on the first manned mission to Mars…. if the state were to offer me some opportunity to end my life doing some good, rather than a slow-wasting plague to the world, it would be a great mercy to me.”
The HRW report said, “Our research has found that youth offenders are among the inmates most susceptible to physical and sexual assault during their incarceration. Many are placed in isolated segregation to protect them or to punish them, some spending years without any but the most fleeting human contact.
Because of their sentence, youth offenders serving life without parole face the additional burden of being classified in ways that deprive them of meaningful opportunities while in prison. Many are denied access to educational and vocational programs available to other inmates. Finally, facing violence, stultifying conditions, and the prospect of lifelong separation from family and friends, many youth offenders experience depression and intense loneliness. Failed by prison mental health services, many contemplate and attempt suicide; some succeed.”
The report found that none of the 560 youthful offenders contacted by Human Rights Watch had managed to avoid violence in prison. When prison officials tolerate such violence, it constitutes a serious human rights abuse.
Youth offenders often spend significant amounts of their time in US prisons isolated from the general prison population. Such segregation can be an attempt to protect vulnerable youth offenders from the general population, to punish infractions of prison rules, or to manage particular categories of inmates, such as alleged gang members.
Youth offenders frequently described their experience in segregation as a profoundly difficult ordeal. Life in long-term isolation usually involves segregating inmates for 23 or more hours a day in their cells. Offenders contacted by Human Rights Watch described the devastating loneliness of spending their days alone, without any human contact, except for when a
guard passes them a food tray through a slot in the door, or when guards touch their wrists.
HRW makes a series of recommendations to federal, state and local judges and prison officials. All are preceded by HRW’s longstanding call to state and federal governments to “abolish the life without parole sentence for all youth offenders and abolish the automatic trial of youth in adult criminal courts and their mandatory incarceration in adult prisons.”
You probably know that the United States has more people in the slammer than any other country in the world. The staggering number is 2.3 million. China, which has four times as many people as the US, is a distant second with 1.6 million prisoners.
What you may not know is that the US also tops the charts in the numbers of youth offenders serving life without parole sentences in adult US prisons. The score? The world: 0; the US: 2,570.
Right. The US is only country in the world that incarcerates people in adult prisons for crimes they committed when they were below the age of 18.
Furthermore, those prisoners experience conditions that violate fundamental human rights. That’s the depressing conclusion of a new study by Human Rights Watch, “Against All Odds: Prison Conditions for Youth Offenders Serving Life without Parole Sentences in the United States.”
Three months from now, in March, the US Supreme Court will consider the constitutionality of the life-without-parole sentence for youth offenders.
The 47-page report draws on six years of research, and interviews and correspondence with correctional officials and hundreds of youth offenders serving life without parole. Human Rights Watch found that nearly every youth offender serving life without parole reported physical violence or sexual abuse by other inmates or corrections officers. Nationwide statistics indicate that young prisoners serving any type of sentence in adult prison, as well as those with a slight build and low body weight, are most vulnerable to attack.
“Children who commit serious crimes and who inflict harm on others should be held accountable,” said Alison Parker, director of the US program at Human Rights Watch and co-author of the report. “But neither youth offenders, nor any other prisoner, should endure any form of physical abuse.” Most of the life-without-parole inmates have been convicted of homicide offenses.
“The penalty [of life without parole] forswears altogether the rehabilitative ideal…. For juvenile offenders, who are most in need of and receptive to rehabilitation, the absence of rehabilitative opportunities or treatment makes the disproportionality of the sentence all the more evident,” the report says.
This new research sheds light on the severity of prison conditions for those serving this sentence, Human Rights Watch said.
“ scared to death,” said a youth offender serving life without parole in California. “I was all of 5’6”, 130 pounds and they sent me to PBSP (Pelican Bay State Prison in California). I tried to kill myself because I couldn’t stand what the voices in my head was saying…. ‘You’re gonna get raped.’ ‘You won't ever see your family again.’”
Youth offenders are serving life without parole sentences in 38 states and in federal prisons. They often enter adult prison while still children, although some have reached young adulthood by the time their trials end and they begin serving their sentences. Prison policies that channel resources to inmates who are expected to be released often result in denying youth serving life without parole opportunities for education, development, and rehabilitation, Human Rights Watch found.
Youth offenders commonly reported having thoughts of suicide, feelings of intense loneliness, or depression. Isolation was frequently compounded by solitary confinement. In the past five years, at least three youth offenders serving life without parole sentences in the United States have committed suicide.
The federal government and the states should abolish the sentence of life without parole for crimes committed by children, Human Rights Watch said. Government officials responsible for youth offenders should reform confinement conditions to accommodate their particular vulnerabilities, needs, and capacities to mature, reflect upon the harm they have caused, and change.
“Because children are different, shutting the door to growth, development, and rehabilitation turns a sentence of life without parole into a punishment of excessive cruelty,” said Parker. “Youth offenders should be given a path to rehabilitation while in prison – not forced to forfeit their future.”
Yet, lifers with the opportunity of parole (LWOP’s) experience a lack of educational opportunities. “LWOPs cannot participate in many rehabilitative, educational, vocational training or other assignments available to other inmates with parole dates…. The supposed rationality is that LWOPs are beyond salvagability and would just be taking a spot away from someone who will actually return to society someday,” the report says, quoting a youth offender serving life without parole in California.
Another inmate, this one in Arkansas, told Human Rights Watch (HRW), “I would be ever grateful… for the chance to spend my life now for some good reason. I would go to the most dangerous parts of Afghanistan…or jump on the first manned mission to Mars…. if the state were to offer me some opportunity to end my life doing some good, rather than a slow-wasting plague to the world, it would be a great mercy to me.”
The HRW report said, “Our research has found that youth offenders are among the inmates most susceptible to physical and sexual assault during their incarceration. Many are placed in isolated segregation to protect them or to punish them, some spending years without any but the most fleeting human contact.
Because of their sentence, youth offenders serving life without parole face the additional burden of being classified in ways that deprive them of meaningful opportunities while in prison. Many are denied access to educational and vocational programs available to other inmates. Finally, facing violence, stultifying conditions, and the prospect of lifelong separation from family and friends, many youth offenders experience depression and intense loneliness. Failed by prison mental health services, many contemplate and attempt suicide; some succeed.”
The report found that none of the 560 youthful offenders contacted by Human Rights Watch had managed to avoid violence in prison. When prison officials tolerate such violence, it constitutes a serious human rights abuse.
Youth offenders often spend significant amounts of their time in US prisons isolated from the general prison population. Such segregation can be an attempt to protect vulnerable youth offenders from the general population, to punish infractions of prison rules, or to manage particular categories of inmates, such as alleged gang members.
Youth offenders frequently described their experience in segregation as a profoundly difficult ordeal. Life in long-term isolation usually involves segregating inmates for 23 or more hours a day in their cells. Offenders contacted by Human Rights Watch described the devastating loneliness of spending their days alone, without any human contact, except for when a
guard passes them a food tray through a slot in the door, or when guards touch their wrists.
HRW makes a series of recommendations to federal, state and local judges and prison officials. All are preceded by HRW’s longstanding call to state and federal governments to “abolish the life without parole sentence for all youth offenders and abolish the automatic trial of youth in adult criminal courts and their mandatory incarceration in adult prisons.”
Obama Immigration Agency Exaggerating Deportations
By William Fisher
Analysts at Syracuse University have concluded that the Obama Administration’s figures for the number of people deported from the US are being grossly overestimated.
Analysis of government immigration data provided to the Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse (TRAC) at Syracuse University in late December -- almost two years after TRAC had requested it -- show that “many fewer individuals were apprehended, detained and deported by the agency than were claimed in its official statements” — congressional testimony, press releases, and the agency's latest 2010 Yearbook of Immigration Statistics, TRAC said.
In its initial FOIA request in May 2010, TRAC asked for specific information about all individuals who had been arrested, detained, charged, returned or removed from the country for the period beginning October 1, 2004 to date. According to TRAC, “in its initial and incomplete response, however, ICE so far has only provided TRAC with information through FY 2005. The agency said it would provide detailed information about the more recent years later.”
When compared with various public statements by the agency, however, TRAC's analysis of this limited case-by-case information provided found vast discrepancies. Among them: ICE statements claimed almost five times more individual apprehensions than revealed in the data, as well as 24 times more individuals deported and 34 times more detentions.
Those records were provided to TRAC by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), part of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA).
When the PBS series, “Frontline,” did an hour-long piece on the immigration situation in the US today, a White House immigration spokesperson confirmed that the Obama Administration is deporting 400,000 people every year and racking up the largest number of deportations of any president in American history
TRAC says, “Details about the vast differences between the agency activities documented by the data and its public statements are laid out in a FOIA appeal filed by TRAC on January 4. The surprising size of the discrepancies, the TRAC appeal said, indicated that either "ICE has been making highly exaggerated and inaccurate claims about the level of its enforcement activities," or it is "withholding on a massive scale."
TRAC's appeal emphasized that this was not an inconsequential bookkeeping problem, noting "that the alleged failure of the federal government to enforce the immigration laws has been a hotly debated topic during both the Bush and Obama administrations."
"Thus, the agency's apparent inability to substantiate the level of its claimed enforcement activities is a very significant matter," the appeal continued. "Indeed it is central to the current public debate on federal enforcement policy in the ongoing presidential election campaign."
Recent press accounts credit the Obama Administration, and President Obama specifically, for ordering the deportation of more undocumented persons than any other president in US history. However, the large numbers of deportees reported by government immigration authorities have themselves become problematic.
Various organizations that specialize in immigration matters have concluded that the total number of people deported has included a preponderance of those whose “crimes” have been minor – broken tail lights at traffic stops, expired driver’s licenses, other minor infractions of the law.
Many of these referrals for deportation have been made by a program that was supposed to isolate serious criminals – the Secure Communities program –in which local law enforcement authorities routinely enter fingerprints and other data of people they arrest locally into an immigration database.
Other parts of the database are provided through a program known as 287(g), which gives local law enforcement personnel the authority to act as proxies for Federal immigration officials in arresting and detaining people they believe are in the US illegally.
Both programs have come under heavy fire from immigration and human rights groups on issues including ethnic profiling, and the inexperience of local law enforcement officers with immigration law, which is one of the most complex branches of law.
TRAC seeks the ICE documents under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA). Given the long delay in responding to the FOIA request, TRAC requested a formal agency investigation of the matter or that it be referred to the Office of Inspector General.
TRAC said, “As the unlawful failure of ICE to provide the requested data continued well beyond the legal deadlines, TRAC engaged in numerous unsuccessful attempts to resolve the matter with agency officials and in late November of 2010 asked the Office of Government Information Services (OGIS) for assistance in persuading the agency to act on our request.”
It added, “OGIS, located in the National Archives and Records Administration, was created by Congress in 2007 to serve as a FOIA ‘ombudsman’ resolving conflicts between requesters and agencies. But TRAC says this approach “was not very successful,” and in mid-October 2011 James V.M.L. Holzer, the Director of Homeland Security's Public Liaison and Director of Disclosure and FOIA Operations, intervened in the case.
The organization added, “The failure of ICE to abide by the mandate of the FOIA in a timely way about its immigration enforcement actions during the five-year period covered by our May 2010 request starkly contrasts with the repeated transparency statements of President Obama, Attorney General Eric Holder and many other administration officials since they came to office almost three years ago.”
TRAC also said ICE’s exaggeration “appears to be a part of a larger pattern.” It said that, in a three-page letter dated September of 2010, for example, ICE informed TRAC that key statistical data it had previously provided us were now "unavailable" and that the agency without explanation, was unilaterally imposing a $450,000 FOIA processing fee.
ICE also claimed that Syracuse University was not an educational institution. Earlier in the same year a sister agency in the Department of Homeland Security — U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) — demanded an $111,930 processing fee.
“While time consuming, these and other Administration feints, have not stopped TRAC from its two decades long campaign to obtain revealing information from ICE, USCIS, the IRS, the Justice Department and other agencies, TRAC declared.
Analysts at Syracuse University have concluded that the Obama Administration’s figures for the number of people deported from the US are being grossly overestimated.
Analysis of government immigration data provided to the Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse (TRAC) at Syracuse University in late December -- almost two years after TRAC had requested it -- show that “many fewer individuals were apprehended, detained and deported by the agency than were claimed in its official statements” — congressional testimony, press releases, and the agency's latest 2010 Yearbook of Immigration Statistics, TRAC said.
In its initial FOIA request in May 2010, TRAC asked for specific information about all individuals who had been arrested, detained, charged, returned or removed from the country for the period beginning October 1, 2004 to date. According to TRAC, “in its initial and incomplete response, however, ICE so far has only provided TRAC with information through FY 2005. The agency said it would provide detailed information about the more recent years later.”
When compared with various public statements by the agency, however, TRAC's analysis of this limited case-by-case information provided found vast discrepancies. Among them: ICE statements claimed almost five times more individual apprehensions than revealed in the data, as well as 24 times more individuals deported and 34 times more detentions.
Those records were provided to TRAC by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), part of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA).
When the PBS series, “Frontline,” did an hour-long piece on the immigration situation in the US today, a White House immigration spokesperson confirmed that the Obama Administration is deporting 400,000 people every year and racking up the largest number of deportations of any president in American history
TRAC says, “Details about the vast differences between the agency activities documented by the data and its public statements are laid out in a FOIA appeal filed by TRAC on January 4. The surprising size of the discrepancies, the TRAC appeal said, indicated that either "ICE has been making highly exaggerated and inaccurate claims about the level of its enforcement activities," or it is "withholding on a massive scale."
TRAC's appeal emphasized that this was not an inconsequential bookkeeping problem, noting "that the alleged failure of the federal government to enforce the immigration laws has been a hotly debated topic during both the Bush and Obama administrations."
"Thus, the agency's apparent inability to substantiate the level of its claimed enforcement activities is a very significant matter," the appeal continued. "Indeed it is central to the current public debate on federal enforcement policy in the ongoing presidential election campaign."
Recent press accounts credit the Obama Administration, and President Obama specifically, for ordering the deportation of more undocumented persons than any other president in US history. However, the large numbers of deportees reported by government immigration authorities have themselves become problematic.
Various organizations that specialize in immigration matters have concluded that the total number of people deported has included a preponderance of those whose “crimes” have been minor – broken tail lights at traffic stops, expired driver’s licenses, other minor infractions of the law.
Many of these referrals for deportation have been made by a program that was supposed to isolate serious criminals – the Secure Communities program –in which local law enforcement authorities routinely enter fingerprints and other data of people they arrest locally into an immigration database.
Other parts of the database are provided through a program known as 287(g), which gives local law enforcement personnel the authority to act as proxies for Federal immigration officials in arresting and detaining people they believe are in the US illegally.
Both programs have come under heavy fire from immigration and human rights groups on issues including ethnic profiling, and the inexperience of local law enforcement officers with immigration law, which is one of the most complex branches of law.
TRAC seeks the ICE documents under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA). Given the long delay in responding to the FOIA request, TRAC requested a formal agency investigation of the matter or that it be referred to the Office of Inspector General.
TRAC said, “As the unlawful failure of ICE to provide the requested data continued well beyond the legal deadlines, TRAC engaged in numerous unsuccessful attempts to resolve the matter with agency officials and in late November of 2010 asked the Office of Government Information Services (OGIS) for assistance in persuading the agency to act on our request.”
It added, “OGIS, located in the National Archives and Records Administration, was created by Congress in 2007 to serve as a FOIA ‘ombudsman’ resolving conflicts between requesters and agencies. But TRAC says this approach “was not very successful,” and in mid-October 2011 James V.M.L. Holzer, the Director of Homeland Security's Public Liaison and Director of Disclosure and FOIA Operations, intervened in the case.
The organization added, “The failure of ICE to abide by the mandate of the FOIA in a timely way about its immigration enforcement actions during the five-year period covered by our May 2010 request starkly contrasts with the repeated transparency statements of President Obama, Attorney General Eric Holder and many other administration officials since they came to office almost three years ago.”
TRAC also said ICE’s exaggeration “appears to be a part of a larger pattern.” It said that, in a three-page letter dated September of 2010, for example, ICE informed TRAC that key statistical data it had previously provided us were now "unavailable" and that the agency without explanation, was unilaterally imposing a $450,000 FOIA processing fee.
ICE also claimed that Syracuse University was not an educational institution. Earlier in the same year a sister agency in the Department of Homeland Security — U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) — demanded an $111,930 processing fee.
“While time consuming, these and other Administration feints, have not stopped TRAC from its two decades long campaign to obtain revealing information from ICE, USCIS, the IRS, the Justice Department and other agencies, TRAC declared.
Tuesday, January 03, 2012
Saudis to Reinforce Crackdown on Peaceful Protesters, AI
By William Fisher
The Arab Spring has been greeted in Saudi Arabia by “a new wave of repression” that saw authorities arresting and imprisoning peaceful protesters demanding political reforms. Now, the Saudi crackdown may be reinforced by a draft anti-terror law that would effectively criminalize dissent as a “terrorist crime.”
In a new 61-page report, “Saudi Arabia: Repression in the Name of Security,” Amnesty International (AI) said authorities have “used security concerns to justify the arrest of hundreds of people who have been imprisoned after unfair trials.” The draft anti-terror law would further strip away rights from those accused of such offenses, Amnesty said.
“Peaceful protesters and supporters of political reform in the country have been targeted for arrest in an attempt to stamp out the kinds of call for reform that have echoed across the region,” said Philip Luther of AI.
“While the arguments used to justify this wide-ranging crackdown may be different, the abusive practices being employed by the Saudi Arabian government are worryingly similar to those which they have long used against people accused of terrorist offenses,” he said.
AI said that the government “continues to detain thousands of people, many of them without charge or trial, on terrorism-related grounds. Torture and other ill-treatment in detention remain rife.”
In April 2011, an Interior Ministry spokesperson said that around 5,000 people connected to the “deviant group,” meaning al-Qa’ida, had been
questioned and referred for trials, Amnesty said.
Meanwhile, Saudi troops continue to serve in Bahrain on behalf of the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC), helping the rulers of the tiny oil-rich monarchy to put an end to many months of peaceful demonstrations seeking reform.
In a statement following AI’s release of the draft law, the Saudi government said it “absolutely has a responsibility to protect the public from violent attacks, but that has to be done within the boundaries of international law.” It said the new draft law is designed “to assist Saudi Security forces in tackling terrorist activity.”
But AI charges it would “allow the authorities to prosecute peaceful dissent as a terrorist crime.”
The organization says it has obtained copies of the Draft Penal Law for Terrorism Crimes and Financing of Terrorism. It says, “If passed it would pave the way for even the smallest acts of peaceful dissent to be branded terrorism and risk massive human rights violations.”
A Saudi Arabian government security committee reviewed the draft law in June but it is not known when or if it might be passed.
AI says that since February, when sporadic demonstrations began – in defiance of a permanent national ban on protests -- the government carried out a crackdown that included the arrest of hundreds of mostly Shi’a Muslims in the restive eastern province.
Since March over 300 people who took part in peaceful protests in al-Qatif, al-Ahsa and Awwamiya have been detained.
Khaled al-Johani, 40, the only man to demonstrate on the March 11 “Day of Rage” in Riyadh, was swiftly arrested. He told journalists he was frustrated by media censorship in Saudi Arabia. Charged with supporting a protest and communicating with foreign media, he is believed to have been held in solitary confinement for two months, Amnesty said.
“Nine months later, he remains in detention and has not been tried. A number of people who have spoken up in support of protests or reform have been arrested. Sheikh Tawfiq Jaber Ibrahim al-‘Amr, a Shi'a cleric, was arrested for the second time this year in August for calling for reform at a mosque. He has been charged with “inciting public opinion,” AI said.
On November 22, 16 men, including nine prominent reformists, were sentenced to five to 30 years in prison on charges they formed a secret
organization, attempted to seize power, financed terrorism as well as incitement against the King and money laundering.
Amnesty says their trial, which began in May, was grossly unfair. “The defendants were blindfolded and handcuffed and their lawyer was not allowed to enter the court for the first three sessions,” AI said.
“Unless it were radically altered, the proposed draft anti-terror law would make the current situation even worse, as it would entrench and make
legal the very worst practices we have documented,” according to AI’s Luther.
The draft law allows for suspects to be held in incommunicado detention for up to 120 days, or for longer periods – potentially indefinitely – if authorized by a specialized court.
Under the draft law, terrorist crimes would include such actions as
“endangering…national unity”, “halting the basic law or some of its articles”, or “harming the reputation of the state or its position”.
Violations of the law would carry harsh punishments. The death penalty would be applied to cases of taking up arms against the state or for any “terrorist crimes” that result in death.
Amnesty charges that a number of other key provisions in the draft law run counter to Saudi Arabia’s international legal obligations, including those under the UN Convention against Torture.
Amnesty is calling on King Abdullah to “reconsider this law and ensure that his people’s legitimate right to freedom of expression is not curtailed in the name of fighting terrorism.”
Prof. Chip Pitts of Stanford and Oxford, former Chair of Amnesty International USA, commented on the proposed new law.
“Having just renewed the USA Patriot Act, the United States has sadly continued to set the stage for and model such counterproductive, harsh, and illegal approaches, and undermined its ability to credibly and effectively question them,” he said, adding:
“The myopic and reactionary approach taken in the new Saudi draft law, which would violate the country’s obligations under international human rights law, shows that the Kingdom is battening down the hatches and preparing for a long period of continued feudal rule that contradicts the very premises of expanding human rights that have swept the world in recent centuries.”
“Neglecting the lessons of the Arab Spring – that repression ultimately breeds instability and violence – the Saudi regime apparently prefers to look backwards to an error of medieval justice and absolute monarchical power which brooks no dissent. Such backwardness condemns the Saudi regime to greater isolation over time, and the Saudi people and businesses to constricted options for economic and social development, unless wiser heads prevail and move toward more progressive instead of regressive laws,” he said.
Prof. Lawrence Davidson, who teaches history at West Chester University, sees the proposed new law in its longer-term context.
He said, “Laws like this essentially blur the lines between the criminal and the authorities. It makes it much harder to tell who is who. Presently, there are two aspects to Saudi power: Force of questionable legitimacy and the ability to buy the loyalty of a portion of their population. In a couple of generations the latter may well go away and then former will probably prove insufficient. This law will not lessen the probability that last of the Saudi royal line dying in exile.”
The Arab Spring has been greeted in Saudi Arabia by “a new wave of repression” that saw authorities arresting and imprisoning peaceful protesters demanding political reforms. Now, the Saudi crackdown may be reinforced by a draft anti-terror law that would effectively criminalize dissent as a “terrorist crime.”
In a new 61-page report, “Saudi Arabia: Repression in the Name of Security,” Amnesty International (AI) said authorities have “used security concerns to justify the arrest of hundreds of people who have been imprisoned after unfair trials.” The draft anti-terror law would further strip away rights from those accused of such offenses, Amnesty said.
“Peaceful protesters and supporters of political reform in the country have been targeted for arrest in an attempt to stamp out the kinds of call for reform that have echoed across the region,” said Philip Luther of AI.
“While the arguments used to justify this wide-ranging crackdown may be different, the abusive practices being employed by the Saudi Arabian government are worryingly similar to those which they have long used against people accused of terrorist offenses,” he said.
AI said that the government “continues to detain thousands of people, many of them without charge or trial, on terrorism-related grounds. Torture and other ill-treatment in detention remain rife.”
In April 2011, an Interior Ministry spokesperson said that around 5,000 people connected to the “deviant group,” meaning al-Qa’ida, had been
questioned and referred for trials, Amnesty said.
Meanwhile, Saudi troops continue to serve in Bahrain on behalf of the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC), helping the rulers of the tiny oil-rich monarchy to put an end to many months of peaceful demonstrations seeking reform.
In a statement following AI’s release of the draft law, the Saudi government said it “absolutely has a responsibility to protect the public from violent attacks, but that has to be done within the boundaries of international law.” It said the new draft law is designed “to assist Saudi Security forces in tackling terrorist activity.”
But AI charges it would “allow the authorities to prosecute peaceful dissent as a terrorist crime.”
The organization says it has obtained copies of the Draft Penal Law for Terrorism Crimes and Financing of Terrorism. It says, “If passed it would pave the way for even the smallest acts of peaceful dissent to be branded terrorism and risk massive human rights violations.”
A Saudi Arabian government security committee reviewed the draft law in June but it is not known when or if it might be passed.
AI says that since February, when sporadic demonstrations began – in defiance of a permanent national ban on protests -- the government carried out a crackdown that included the arrest of hundreds of mostly Shi’a Muslims in the restive eastern province.
Since March over 300 people who took part in peaceful protests in al-Qatif, al-Ahsa and Awwamiya have been detained.
Khaled al-Johani, 40, the only man to demonstrate on the March 11 “Day of Rage” in Riyadh, was swiftly arrested. He told journalists he was frustrated by media censorship in Saudi Arabia. Charged with supporting a protest and communicating with foreign media, he is believed to have been held in solitary confinement for two months, Amnesty said.
“Nine months later, he remains in detention and has not been tried. A number of people who have spoken up in support of protests or reform have been arrested. Sheikh Tawfiq Jaber Ibrahim al-‘Amr, a Shi'a cleric, was arrested for the second time this year in August for calling for reform at a mosque. He has been charged with “inciting public opinion,” AI said.
On November 22, 16 men, including nine prominent reformists, were sentenced to five to 30 years in prison on charges they formed a secret
organization, attempted to seize power, financed terrorism as well as incitement against the King and money laundering.
Amnesty says their trial, which began in May, was grossly unfair. “The defendants were blindfolded and handcuffed and their lawyer was not allowed to enter the court for the first three sessions,” AI said.
“Unless it were radically altered, the proposed draft anti-terror law would make the current situation even worse, as it would entrench and make
legal the very worst practices we have documented,” according to AI’s Luther.
The draft law allows for suspects to be held in incommunicado detention for up to 120 days, or for longer periods – potentially indefinitely – if authorized by a specialized court.
Under the draft law, terrorist crimes would include such actions as
“endangering…national unity”, “halting the basic law or some of its articles”, or “harming the reputation of the state or its position”.
Violations of the law would carry harsh punishments. The death penalty would be applied to cases of taking up arms against the state or for any “terrorist crimes” that result in death.
Amnesty charges that a number of other key provisions in the draft law run counter to Saudi Arabia’s international legal obligations, including those under the UN Convention against Torture.
Amnesty is calling on King Abdullah to “reconsider this law and ensure that his people’s legitimate right to freedom of expression is not curtailed in the name of fighting terrorism.”
Prof. Chip Pitts of Stanford and Oxford, former Chair of Amnesty International USA, commented on the proposed new law.
“Having just renewed the USA Patriot Act, the United States has sadly continued to set the stage for and model such counterproductive, harsh, and illegal approaches, and undermined its ability to credibly and effectively question them,” he said, adding:
“The myopic and reactionary approach taken in the new Saudi draft law, which would violate the country’s obligations under international human rights law, shows that the Kingdom is battening down the hatches and preparing for a long period of continued feudal rule that contradicts the very premises of expanding human rights that have swept the world in recent centuries.”
“Neglecting the lessons of the Arab Spring – that repression ultimately breeds instability and violence – the Saudi regime apparently prefers to look backwards to an error of medieval justice and absolute monarchical power which brooks no dissent. Such backwardness condemns the Saudi regime to greater isolation over time, and the Saudi people and businesses to constricted options for economic and social development, unless wiser heads prevail and move toward more progressive instead of regressive laws,” he said.
Prof. Lawrence Davidson, who teaches history at West Chester University, sees the proposed new law in its longer-term context.
He said, “Laws like this essentially blur the lines between the criminal and the authorities. It makes it much harder to tell who is who. Presently, there are two aspects to Saudi power: Force of questionable legitimacy and the ability to buy the loyalty of a portion of their population. In a couple of generations the latter may well go away and then former will probably prove insufficient. This law will not lessen the probability that last of the Saudi royal line dying in exile.”
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