Kofi Annan: Britain / U.S. compromising human rights

guardian.co.uk
Annan attacks erosion of rights in war on terror

US and Britain in UN secretary general's sights
Jonathan Steele
Friday March 11, 2005

Guardian
The UN secretary general, Kofi Annan, launched a fierce attack on Britain and the US yesterday for weakening human rights in the name of the war on terror.

"We cannot compromise on core values," he said in Madrid on the first anniversary of the train bombings that killed 191 people in the Spanish capital. "Human rights and the rule of law must always be respected."

Addressing a three-day conference which included about 20 heads of state and government as well as terrorism experts, lawyers and journalists, Mr Annan laid out five elements in what he called a "principled, comprehensive strategy" to fight terrorism.

He proposed a UN special envoy to monitor whether governments' counter-terrorism measures conformed to international human rights law.

"Compromising human rights cannot serve the struggle against terrorism," he said. "On the contrary, it facilitates the achievement of the terrorists' objectives by provoking tension, hatred, and mistrust of governments among precisely those parts of the population where he is most likely to find recruits."

Although he did not mention Britain's detention of suspects without trial, the use of torture, or the practices of sexual humiliation and other abuses uncovered at US-run prisons for foreigners, western governments' treatment of terrorist suspects was unmistakably one of Mr Annan's targets.

Human rights law already made ample provision for strong counter-terrorist action, "even in the most exceptional circumstances", he said.

Mr Annan appealed to the world's political, religious, and civic leaders to state unequivocally that "terrorism is unacceptable under any circumstances and in any culture".

Rounding on the argument that oppressed people had a right to resist occupation, he said this could not include the right to deliberately kill or maim civilians.

He said the root cause of terrorism was the belief by certain groups that such tactics were effective and had the support of people in whose name they were used. "Our job is to show they are wrong," he said.

Spain's Socialist party prime minister, José Luis Rodriguez Zapatero, speaking at the closing session, called for an international fund to give poorer countries financial help to fight terrorism. He also recommended that a second international fund be set up to compensate victims of attacks.

Since 2001 the UN has been under pressure to do a better job of coordinating and leading the fight against terrorism.

Instead of the 12 treaties that now cover the issue, the secretary general called for a single convention to outlaw terrorism in all its forms. Victims of terrorism should be compensated using the assets seized from terrorists, he said.

The secretary general set out what he called the five Ds: dissuading disaffected groups from terrorism; denying terrorists the means to carry out their attacks; deterring states from supporting terrorists; developing states' capacity to prevent terrorism; and defending human rights.

Calling for a universally accepted definition of terrorism, he endorsed the wording contained in the recent report from the UN High-level Panel on Threats, Challenges and Change, which he asked to develop broader thinking on the threats to security other than war. The panel defined terrorism as any action intended to cause death or serious bodily harm to civilians or non-combatants with the purpose of intimidating a population or compelling a government or an international organisation to do, or abstain from, any act.

Mr Annan drew an alarming picture of potential catastrophe in the fields of nuclear and biological terrorism. There would soon be "tens of thousands of laboratories around the world capable of producing designer bugs with awesome, lethal potential", he said. Health systems in poor countries equipped to deal with infectious disease barely existed.

Governments must do more to secure and eliminate hazardous material and set up effective export controls, Mr Annan said. Stronger measures were also needed to uncover and stop money laundering by terrorists. Travel and financial sanctions against groups such as al-Qaida were vital.

Nuclear terrorism was still often treated as science fiction, he said. "I wish it were. But unfortunately we live in a world of excess hazardous materials and abundant technological knowhow, in which some terrorists clearly state their intention to inflict catastrophic casualties."