When and where did the “Arab Spring” begin? Most observers of the tyrant-toppling uprisings would probably agree they kicked off after the Tunisian street vendor Mohammed Bouazizi set himself on fire in December last year. Not for the first time, Noam Chomsky has highlighted an omission from the conventional discourse. The wave of protests really started a month earlier in Western Sahara, Chomsky has argued.
On 7 November, Moroccan forces occupying that territory destroyed tents set up by the indigenous Sahrawi people near the town of Laayoune, leading to a series of confrontations. Testimonies gathered by Amnesty International indicate that the tactics used in the operation were extremely aggressive, with elderly women beaten with batons. Amnesty says the tents were erected to highlight the Sahrawis’ “perceived marginalisation and a lack of jobs and adequate housing”. The word “perceived” is unnecessary, I believe. The marginalisation of the Sahrawis is a proven fact; we seldom see anything about Western Sahara – a former Spanish colony invaded by Morocco in 1975 - in our newspapers or on our TV screens.
Rather than imposing sanctions against Morocco over its acts of brutality in November, the European Union has effectively tightened its embrace of the Rabat authorities. Although a four-year fisheries agreement between the EU and Morocco expired in February this year, both sides have decided to extend it for a further twelve months.
As EU representatives are constantly harping on about how much they cherish democratic values, the least we should be able to expect is that they would have published the information at their disposal about the agreement’s effects. Yet an evaluation of the agreement conducted at the European Commission’s request remains confidential.
Luckily, I have managed to have a peek at this report – drawn up by the French consultancy firm Océanic Developpement and dated December 2010. It concludes that the agreement with Morocco brings “the least favourable returns to the European taxpayers that we can find” in any of the fisheries agreements the EU has signed with countries beyond its borders.
Under the terms of the accord, the EU gives Morocco 36 million euros per annum. For every euro invested by the Union, the turnover generated is only 83 cents, the consultants calculate. In the 2007-2009 period, EU vessels availing of the agreement caught an average of 44,000 tonnes per year. With demand for fish in the Union reaching about 13 million tonnes per year, the agreement was making only a tiny contribution towards satisfying the requirements of Europe’s markets, Oceanic added.
More disturbingly, the consultants found that the agreement is having adverse ecological consequences. Trawlers are capturing demersal species – living near the bottom of the sea – that are already overexploited, while the capture of sharks in European nets runs contrary to the Union’s own policies on conserving endangered species. European vessels have targeted sharks in the same way as the industrial boats in the Moroccan fleet. Three large Portuguese vessels have been responsible for 70% of all sharks captured (more than 450 tonnes), according to the evaluation.
It’s not surprising that powerful figures in the EU bureaucracy want this evaluation kept secret. By extending the agreement, the Union has ignored advice that it spent good money to obtain.
This is part of a wider pattern. The agreement enabled European vessels to fish in the waters surrounding Western Sahara, on the condition that their activities brought tangible benefits to the Sahrawis. In an opinion made public during 2010, lawyers advising the European Parliament found there was no evidence that the Sahrawis had been aided in any way due to the accord’s implementation. Unless an “amicable settlement” could be found, European boats should be forbidden from entering a 200 nautical mile zone off Western Sahara, the lawyers recommended.
When I interviewed Maria Damanaki, the EU fisheries commissioner, in the autumn last year, she expressed sympathy with that legal opinion. Damanaki said she was “not persuaded” that the agreement was in the Sahrawis’ interests. Despite the clarity of her views, the European Commission still went ahead and clinched a deal with Morocco to prolong the agreement. Damanaki was clearly overruled by others in the EU executive. Can it be a coincidence that the Commission is headed by José Manuel Barroso of Portugal and that several Portuguese vessels are doing nicely from the arrangements?
Mindful of a looming presidential election, Nicolas Sarkozy has lately been promoting himself as an unflagging defender of North Africa’s downtrodden. Yet Francesco Bastagli, a former United Nations envoy to Western Sahara, has hinted there might be more than a whiff of hypocrisy emanating from the French president. “France is so unquestioning in its support of Morocco as to block even a reference to Sahrawi human rights in Security Council resolutions,” Bastagli wrote in a 2010 piece for The New Republic.
A report published in April this year by the New York City Bar Association says that if Morocco is receiving money from the EU for fishing off Western Sahara, without giving any to the Sahrawis, then it is violating international law. The same report highlighted how Irish and British companies are involved in exploration for oil and gas off Western Sahara. If they move from exploration to extraction, then their activities would be “unlawful”, the bar association concluded.
The resources of Western Sahara do not belong to Europe. So why are a few European fishing and energy firms allowed to steal them?
·First published by New Europe (www.neurope.eu), 29 May – 3 June 2011
Showing posts with label Amnesty International. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Amnesty International. Show all posts
Monday, May 30, 2011
Friday, November 26, 2010
Volvo enables torture of Palestinians
Volvo prides itself on being a byword for sturdiness, safety and reliability. After a careful examination of the vehicle-maker's investment in Israel, perhaps it should also become synonymous with enabling torture.
The Swedish company has a direct shareholding of 26.5 percent in the Israeli company Merkavim, manufacturer of the Mars Prisoner Bus. This bus has been specifically designed for use by the Israeli Prison Authority to transport Palestinians apprehended in the occupied West Bank and Gaza to facilities within Israel's internationally-recognized borders. The remainder of Merkavim is owned by Mayer's Cars and Trucks, which doubles up as the exclusive representative of Volvo in Israel.
Evidence amassed by human rights monitors indicates that torture is widespread within Israeli detention centers. Although the country's high court ruled in 1999 that some interrogation methods should be outlawed, Israel continues to approve torture in cases where it is deemed "necessary," Amnesty International has found. An important loophole in the court's ruling indicated that torture is permissible in cases where Israeli security forces face an imminent threat. Israel's attorney general has been all-too-willing to invoke that loophole in order to approve the use of torture, despite how Israel has ratified the United Nations Convention Against Torture.
Each year Israel locks up an average of 700 Palestinian children, often for offenses no more serious than throwing stones. The organization Defence for Children International-Palestine Section (DCI-PS) says that ill-treatment is common while detainees are being transported to prison. "All are subjected to verbal threats and insults," Rifat Kassis, director of DCI-PS's office in the West Bank city of Ramallah, said. "Some are beaten up, kicked, made to sit in an uncomfortable way. We have children who are handcuffed and blindfolded as well. All of these are methods of restraining children in a painful way."
During September, three children were reportedly given electric shocks by Israeli interrogators in the Jewish-only settlement of Ariel in the West Bank. One of the children was only 14 years of age. A recent investigation by DCI-PS and other anti-torture groups found that out of a sample of 100 children arrested by Israeli forces last year, 69 percent were beaten and kicked and 12 percent threatened with rape or another form of sexual assault.
Kassis also said that by bringing detainees from the occupied West Bank into Israel, the Merkavim buses are facilitating violations of international humanitarian law. Under the Fourth Geneva Convention of 1949, persons convicted for offenses in an occupied territory may only be jailed within that territory.
A representative of Merkavim told me that the company does "not wish to speak to journalists." According to its website, the Mars Prisoner Bus is "the perfect solution for conveying prisoners under guard." Containing six separate compartments, the bus allows for "full surveillance during the sensitive, high-risk drive from one secured facility to another." Among its features are wide windows "fitted with armored glass to prevent breakouts" and "an advanced intercom system and closed-circuit TV."
Per-Martin Johansson, a spokesman for Volvo Buses, said that the Swedish corporation "can't control" what affiliated companies do. "Vehicles to transport prisoners can be found in every country all over the world," he added. "These buses are not special for Israel. They need them in every country to make sure prisoners are not escaping."
Johansson's statement contrasts with the high ethical standards to which Volvo is nominally committed. In 2003 Volvo's board of directors rubber-stamped a "code of conduct" for the company. It says that the company supports "internationally proclaimed human rights and ensures that it is not complicit in human rights abuses."
Despite that code, Volvo has faced numerous accusations that its products are being used as tools of Israeli oppression. In April this year Israeli forces were photographed operating Volvo bulldozers in the Palestinian village of al-Walaja. The forces were carrying out work related to the massive wall that Israel has continued to build on occupied land in the West Bank, despite a 2004 opinion issued by the International Court of Justice declaring the project illegal. The use of Volvo bulldozers in the destruction of Palestinian homes in East Jerusalem and in the wider West Bank has similarly been documented, with the work of Adri Nieuwhof, a contributor to The Electronic Intifada, proving valuable in highlighting how Volvo profits from the occupation.
Along with its prisoner bus, Merkavim also produces the Mars Defender Bus. The Israeli public transport company Egged runs a fleet of the latter vehicles in the services it provides to Israeli settlements in the West Bank. Like the prisoner bus, the Mars Defender contains a Volvo-made chassis.
Mauricio Lazala, a researcher with the Business and Human Rights Resource Centre in London, said that major companies like Volvo should study the impact of their corporate activities. "This is especially important in conflict areas," he added. "In conflict areas, abuses can have very ugly manifestations. Therefore, companies should be doubly careful."
At a session held in London this month, the Russell Tribunal on Palestine -- an investigative body inspired by the late British intellectual and anti-war campaigner Bertrand Russell -- concluded that a number of private corporations "play a very decisive role" in enabling Israel to commit crimes against humanity.
Although Volvo was not one of the companies identified by the tribunal, it is facilitating some of the offenses deemed "reprehensible" by this body. These included the provision of services to Israeli settlements and assistance to the construction of the "apartheid wall" in the West Bank. A statement issued by the tribunal noted that corporations complicit in Israeli violations of human rights have placed themselves "on the wrong side of international opinion, morality and law." As a result, they are "undermining the very integrity and credibility of international law and the institutions that underpin it," added the statement, which was endorsed by former South African government minister Ronnie Kasrils, veteran French diplomat Stephane Hassel, Irish Nobel Peace Prize winner Mairead Corrigan Maguire and ex-US Congresswoman Cynthia McKinney.
Frank Barat, the tribunal's coordinator, said that while it can be legally difficult to prosecute such companies, public campaigns can pressure them into changing their behavior. "What people can do is push their governments to divest from those companies," he said. "If a company is helping to build the wall [in the West Bank] it is helping an illegal act, so it should be sanctioned."
Volvo's attempts to justify its investments in Israel are disingenuous. The corporation cannot claim that the activities of a subsidiary have nothing to do with its headquarters in Gothenburg or that Merkavim's buses are no different from other prison buses found around the world. It is abundantly clear that these vehicles are tailored especially to meet the sadistic "needs" of the Israeli occupation; indeed, that is their selling point.
Supplying Israel’s prison services is not analogous to aiding the prison services of any other country. Israel deliberately uses mass imprisonment and torture to deny Palestinians the right to resist their occupation. Addameer, a prisoner’s support group, has documented how 650,000 Palestinians – one-fifth of the population living in the occupied territories – have been incarcerated since 1967.
Whatever Volvo may say, the truth is that it has become a subcontractor for the Israeli occupation. Drivers in Europe and America might feel secure as they slide into the well-upholstered seat of a car made by Volvo. In Palestine, the same company is facilitating the torture of children.
·First published by The Electronic Intifada (www.electronicintifada.net), 24 November 2010
The Swedish company has a direct shareholding of 26.5 percent in the Israeli company Merkavim, manufacturer of the Mars Prisoner Bus. This bus has been specifically designed for use by the Israeli Prison Authority to transport Palestinians apprehended in the occupied West Bank and Gaza to facilities within Israel's internationally-recognized borders. The remainder of Merkavim is owned by Mayer's Cars and Trucks, which doubles up as the exclusive representative of Volvo in Israel.
Evidence amassed by human rights monitors indicates that torture is widespread within Israeli detention centers. Although the country's high court ruled in 1999 that some interrogation methods should be outlawed, Israel continues to approve torture in cases where it is deemed "necessary," Amnesty International has found. An important loophole in the court's ruling indicated that torture is permissible in cases where Israeli security forces face an imminent threat. Israel's attorney general has been all-too-willing to invoke that loophole in order to approve the use of torture, despite how Israel has ratified the United Nations Convention Against Torture.
Each year Israel locks up an average of 700 Palestinian children, often for offenses no more serious than throwing stones. The organization Defence for Children International-Palestine Section (DCI-PS) says that ill-treatment is common while detainees are being transported to prison. "All are subjected to verbal threats and insults," Rifat Kassis, director of DCI-PS's office in the West Bank city of Ramallah, said. "Some are beaten up, kicked, made to sit in an uncomfortable way. We have children who are handcuffed and blindfolded as well. All of these are methods of restraining children in a painful way."
During September, three children were reportedly given electric shocks by Israeli interrogators in the Jewish-only settlement of Ariel in the West Bank. One of the children was only 14 years of age. A recent investigation by DCI-PS and other anti-torture groups found that out of a sample of 100 children arrested by Israeli forces last year, 69 percent were beaten and kicked and 12 percent threatened with rape or another form of sexual assault.
Kassis also said that by bringing detainees from the occupied West Bank into Israel, the Merkavim buses are facilitating violations of international humanitarian law. Under the Fourth Geneva Convention of 1949, persons convicted for offenses in an occupied territory may only be jailed within that territory.
A representative of Merkavim told me that the company does "not wish to speak to journalists." According to its website, the Mars Prisoner Bus is "the perfect solution for conveying prisoners under guard." Containing six separate compartments, the bus allows for "full surveillance during the sensitive, high-risk drive from one secured facility to another." Among its features are wide windows "fitted with armored glass to prevent breakouts" and "an advanced intercom system and closed-circuit TV."
Per-Martin Johansson, a spokesman for Volvo Buses, said that the Swedish corporation "can't control" what affiliated companies do. "Vehicles to transport prisoners can be found in every country all over the world," he added. "These buses are not special for Israel. They need them in every country to make sure prisoners are not escaping."
Johansson's statement contrasts with the high ethical standards to which Volvo is nominally committed. In 2003 Volvo's board of directors rubber-stamped a "code of conduct" for the company. It says that the company supports "internationally proclaimed human rights and ensures that it is not complicit in human rights abuses."
Despite that code, Volvo has faced numerous accusations that its products are being used as tools of Israeli oppression. In April this year Israeli forces were photographed operating Volvo bulldozers in the Palestinian village of al-Walaja. The forces were carrying out work related to the massive wall that Israel has continued to build on occupied land in the West Bank, despite a 2004 opinion issued by the International Court of Justice declaring the project illegal. The use of Volvo bulldozers in the destruction of Palestinian homes in East Jerusalem and in the wider West Bank has similarly been documented, with the work of Adri Nieuwhof, a contributor to The Electronic Intifada, proving valuable in highlighting how Volvo profits from the occupation.
Along with its prisoner bus, Merkavim also produces the Mars Defender Bus. The Israeli public transport company Egged runs a fleet of the latter vehicles in the services it provides to Israeli settlements in the West Bank. Like the prisoner bus, the Mars Defender contains a Volvo-made chassis.
Mauricio Lazala, a researcher with the Business and Human Rights Resource Centre in London, said that major companies like Volvo should study the impact of their corporate activities. "This is especially important in conflict areas," he added. "In conflict areas, abuses can have very ugly manifestations. Therefore, companies should be doubly careful."
At a session held in London this month, the Russell Tribunal on Palestine -- an investigative body inspired by the late British intellectual and anti-war campaigner Bertrand Russell -- concluded that a number of private corporations "play a very decisive role" in enabling Israel to commit crimes against humanity.
Although Volvo was not one of the companies identified by the tribunal, it is facilitating some of the offenses deemed "reprehensible" by this body. These included the provision of services to Israeli settlements and assistance to the construction of the "apartheid wall" in the West Bank. A statement issued by the tribunal noted that corporations complicit in Israeli violations of human rights have placed themselves "on the wrong side of international opinion, morality and law." As a result, they are "undermining the very integrity and credibility of international law and the institutions that underpin it," added the statement, which was endorsed by former South African government minister Ronnie Kasrils, veteran French diplomat Stephane Hassel, Irish Nobel Peace Prize winner Mairead Corrigan Maguire and ex-US Congresswoman Cynthia McKinney.
Frank Barat, the tribunal's coordinator, said that while it can be legally difficult to prosecute such companies, public campaigns can pressure them into changing their behavior. "What people can do is push their governments to divest from those companies," he said. "If a company is helping to build the wall [in the West Bank] it is helping an illegal act, so it should be sanctioned."
Volvo's attempts to justify its investments in Israel are disingenuous. The corporation cannot claim that the activities of a subsidiary have nothing to do with its headquarters in Gothenburg or that Merkavim's buses are no different from other prison buses found around the world. It is abundantly clear that these vehicles are tailored especially to meet the sadistic "needs" of the Israeli occupation; indeed, that is their selling point.
Supplying Israel’s prison services is not analogous to aiding the prison services of any other country. Israel deliberately uses mass imprisonment and torture to deny Palestinians the right to resist their occupation. Addameer, a prisoner’s support group, has documented how 650,000 Palestinians – one-fifth of the population living in the occupied territories – have been incarcerated since 1967.
Whatever Volvo may say, the truth is that it has become a subcontractor for the Israeli occupation. Drivers in Europe and America might feel secure as they slide into the well-upholstered seat of a car made by Volvo. In Palestine, the same company is facilitating the torture of children.
·First published by The Electronic Intifada (www.electronicintifada.net), 24 November 2010
Thursday, November 4, 2010
Pharma firms enable executions
European Union officials are reluctant to tighten up rules covering the trade in products designed for torture or the death penalty, despite suggestions that a British company has been exporting lethal injection drugs used in executions.
During the last week of October, Jeffrey Landrigan was executed by the U.S. state of Arizona. The state’s attorney general has revealed that the sodium thiopental used to kill Landrigan was imported specially from Britain because of a shortage of the substance domestically.
Opponents of the death penalty are seeking that an EU regulation on the trade in the tools of torture and capital punishment is strengthened so that pharmaceutical companies would be banned from selling sodium thiopental to executioners.
But the European Commission, the EU’s executive arm, has indicated that it is averse to revising the regulation – dating from 2005 – given that sodium thiopental also has medicinal applications.
Asked if the Brussels authorities would be investigating the use of a British-made substance in Arizona or examining how the regulation can be tightened, a Commission spokesman said that while his institution is opposed to the death penalty, it recognised that sodium thiopental is “widely used” as an anaesthetic in medicine.
“The EU has rules that prohibit the trade in goods used for capital punishment and torture and ill-treatment, as well as the supply of technical assistance related to such goods,” the spokesman said. “These rules, however, do not include sodium thiopental in the lists of prohibited and controlled goods. Sodium thiopental is on the list of essential drugs of the World Health Organisation.”
The 2005 regulation is accompanied by lists of goods that are either banned or subject to controls. While sodium thiopental is not explicitly mentioned on these lists, the regulation prohibits the trade in “automatic drug injection systems designed for the purpose of execution of human beings by the administration of a lethal chemical purpose.” Another possibility, according to human rights campaigners, is for sodium thiopental to be designated a controlled substance that may be exported to hospitals and clinics but not to authorities that carry out executions.
Richard Dieter, director of the Death Penalty Information Centre in Washington, argued that ways of bolstering the regulation should be examined. “I wouldn’t think that a company would want to be associated with having its drug used to kill people,” he said. “This is sort of like extraditing someone to face the death penalty.”
Reprieve, a human rights group based in London, announced Nov. 2 that it is suing the British government over the exports. The legal action follows an appeal made by Reprieve that an emergency order be issued to regulate sodium thiopental. Vince Cable, Britain’s business secretary, has rejected the call, claiming that if the U.S. did not import lethal injection drugs from Britain it would simply find them elsewhere. “An export restriction imposed by the United Kingdom is very unlikely to be effective in preventing any execution taking place in the United States, given that the drug is generally available and traded globally,” Cable wrote, in a letter to Reprieve’s lawyers.
Reprieve is acting on behalf of Ed Zagorski, who is scheduled to be executed in Tennessee in January next year. Tennessee is one of several states running low on lethal injection drugs; others include Kentucky, Oklahoma and Missouri.
“It is ironic that Ed Zagorski is on death row, accused – falsely, he insists -- of playing a role in a drug deal gone bad,” said Clive Stafford Smith from Reprieve. “If the British government continues to adhere to its policy of gutless inaction, he will die as a result of another drug deal gone bad, this time with a British company pocketing 18,000 dollars in blood money.”
Only one company in Britain makes sodium thiopental. That firm, Archimedes Pharma UK, has insisted it has no control over how the substance is used and denied knowingly providing the drug for use in the Arizona execution.
However, Arizona is known to have bought enough supplies of the drug from Britain for four executions. Despite acknowledging that the drug came from Britain, Arizona has refused to give further details of where and how it obtained the substances used to kill Landrigan. Arizona mounted – and won – a legal challenge in the US Supreme Court, after a lower court had ordered it to reveal the identity of the drug’s supplier.
Nycomed, another European company that produces sodium thiopental, said that it does not distribute the drug in the U.S.
In an appeal to the European Commission, Amnesty International has asked that “urgent assurances” be sought that future exports of sodium thiopental will not be used for executions.
David Nichols, a specialist on foreign policy in Amnesty’s Brussels office, said the Commission had the power to either strengthen the regulation or take action under its current provisions in order to control the supply of lethal injection drugs. “This is something that they could actually do tomorrow,” he added. “Given the fact that other states in the U.S. are also running out of the drug and looking for alternative supplies, it is important that they act now to stop further transfers."
·First published by Inter Press Service (www.ipsnews.net), 4 November 2010
During the last week of October, Jeffrey Landrigan was executed by the U.S. state of Arizona. The state’s attorney general has revealed that the sodium thiopental used to kill Landrigan was imported specially from Britain because of a shortage of the substance domestically.
Opponents of the death penalty are seeking that an EU regulation on the trade in the tools of torture and capital punishment is strengthened so that pharmaceutical companies would be banned from selling sodium thiopental to executioners.
But the European Commission, the EU’s executive arm, has indicated that it is averse to revising the regulation – dating from 2005 – given that sodium thiopental also has medicinal applications.
Asked if the Brussels authorities would be investigating the use of a British-made substance in Arizona or examining how the regulation can be tightened, a Commission spokesman said that while his institution is opposed to the death penalty, it recognised that sodium thiopental is “widely used” as an anaesthetic in medicine.
“The EU has rules that prohibit the trade in goods used for capital punishment and torture and ill-treatment, as well as the supply of technical assistance related to such goods,” the spokesman said. “These rules, however, do not include sodium thiopental in the lists of prohibited and controlled goods. Sodium thiopental is on the list of essential drugs of the World Health Organisation.”
The 2005 regulation is accompanied by lists of goods that are either banned or subject to controls. While sodium thiopental is not explicitly mentioned on these lists, the regulation prohibits the trade in “automatic drug injection systems designed for the purpose of execution of human beings by the administration of a lethal chemical purpose.” Another possibility, according to human rights campaigners, is for sodium thiopental to be designated a controlled substance that may be exported to hospitals and clinics but not to authorities that carry out executions.
Richard Dieter, director of the Death Penalty Information Centre in Washington, argued that ways of bolstering the regulation should be examined. “I wouldn’t think that a company would want to be associated with having its drug used to kill people,” he said. “This is sort of like extraditing someone to face the death penalty.”
Reprieve, a human rights group based in London, announced Nov. 2 that it is suing the British government over the exports. The legal action follows an appeal made by Reprieve that an emergency order be issued to regulate sodium thiopental. Vince Cable, Britain’s business secretary, has rejected the call, claiming that if the U.S. did not import lethal injection drugs from Britain it would simply find them elsewhere. “An export restriction imposed by the United Kingdom is very unlikely to be effective in preventing any execution taking place in the United States, given that the drug is generally available and traded globally,” Cable wrote, in a letter to Reprieve’s lawyers.
Reprieve is acting on behalf of Ed Zagorski, who is scheduled to be executed in Tennessee in January next year. Tennessee is one of several states running low on lethal injection drugs; others include Kentucky, Oklahoma and Missouri.
“It is ironic that Ed Zagorski is on death row, accused – falsely, he insists -- of playing a role in a drug deal gone bad,” said Clive Stafford Smith from Reprieve. “If the British government continues to adhere to its policy of gutless inaction, he will die as a result of another drug deal gone bad, this time with a British company pocketing 18,000 dollars in blood money.”
Only one company in Britain makes sodium thiopental. That firm, Archimedes Pharma UK, has insisted it has no control over how the substance is used and denied knowingly providing the drug for use in the Arizona execution.
However, Arizona is known to have bought enough supplies of the drug from Britain for four executions. Despite acknowledging that the drug came from Britain, Arizona has refused to give further details of where and how it obtained the substances used to kill Landrigan. Arizona mounted – and won – a legal challenge in the US Supreme Court, after a lower court had ordered it to reveal the identity of the drug’s supplier.
Nycomed, another European company that produces sodium thiopental, said that it does not distribute the drug in the U.S.
In an appeal to the European Commission, Amnesty International has asked that “urgent assurances” be sought that future exports of sodium thiopental will not be used for executions.
David Nichols, a specialist on foreign policy in Amnesty’s Brussels office, said the Commission had the power to either strengthen the regulation or take action under its current provisions in order to control the supply of lethal injection drugs. “This is something that they could actually do tomorrow,” he added. “Given the fact that other states in the U.S. are also running out of the drug and looking for alternative supplies, it is important that they act now to stop further transfers."
·First published by Inter Press Service (www.ipsnews.net), 4 November 2010
Wednesday, September 22, 2010
MEPs respond to Pakistan floods - by expelling Pakistanis
Less than two months after Pakistan was devastated by one of the worst disasters in recent history, the European Union’s law-makers have decided that Pakistanis living in the 27-country bloc without permission should be returned home.
In a Sep 21 vote, the European Parliament approved a “readmission agreement” with Pakistan under which the country will be required to take back any of its nationals deemed to be “illegal immigrants” by the EU’s member states.
Negotiated over an eight-year period, the accord will give the Pakistani authorities 60 days to respond to requests to accept back their nationals from the EU. If no response is forthcoming during that period, the Union will be allowed assume that Pakistan has no objection to receiving the migrants in question. If, however, Pakistan wishes to turn down a request, it will have to present a written “justification” of its reasons for doing so.
Amnesty International has argued that the timing of the agreement is inappropriate at a time when Pakistan is struggling to cope with severe flooding and while the human rights situation in the country remains hugely problematic.
Anneliese Baldaccini, an analyst on asylum and immigration policy in Amnesty’s Brussels office, noted too that conflict in the surrounding region has caused major upheaval in Pakistan. “There are more than 1 million internally displaced people in Pakistan and many hundreds of thousands of Afghan refugees in Pakistan,” she said. “Pakistan is dealing with a situation that is already quite difficult. If the readmission agreement leads to a considerable number of returns (of Pakistani nationals) from the EU, then this would raise concerns. If there is no prospect of reintegrating nationals into Pakistani society, then we don’t see the merit in sending people back.”
The United Nations’ 1951 Refugee Convention forbids expulsions of people to countries where their lives are likely to be put at risk. According to Amnesty’s latest annual report, dozens of detainees were tortured to death or killed in custody in Pakistan last year, the fate of hundreds of disappeared people in the country remains unknown and members of religious minorities are subject to rising levels of violence and intimidation. A separate Amnesty study published in June dubbed north-west Pakistan a “human rights free zone”. Almost four million people in the north-west are effectively living under the Taliban, without the rule of law and without any protection from the Pakistani government, the report concluded.
The accord with Pakistan is the latest in a series of readmission agreements negotiated between the EU and foreign countries over the past decade. Some eighteen such agreements have either been finalised or are under discussion. Previous signatories of the agreements include Hong Kong, Bosnia, Serbia, Ukraine and Russia, while negotiations are ongoing with China, Morocco, Algeria and Turkey.
Amnesty’s Baldaccini complained that there is a paucity of data available on the impact of these agreements. It is frequently unclear, she said, whether migrants have been sent back to their countries of origin under EU agreements or those signed on a bilateral basis between individual states from the Union and governments outside it.
Michele Cercone, spokesman on home affairs with the EU’s executive arm, the European Commission, said that it is vital that readmission agreements are negotiated by the entire Union. If individual EU governments continued to reach bilateral agreements “then we would have a very fragmented situation,” he added, where “there would be much less figures and much less evidence” about the number of people affected. The Commission has estimated that 13,000 Pakistanis were arrested in the EU during 2008 because their status was considered “irregular” or “illegal”.
The new accord was approved by 382 members of the European Parliament (MEPs), with 250 voting against.
French Green MEP Hélène Flautre said it is “seriously regrettable” that the accord had been approved. Pakistan already receives more refugees than any other country in the world, she said, even though it has not ratified key international law on the humane treatment of refugees. According to the UN data, authorities in Pakistan registered 1.7 million refugees in 2009.
Flautre lamented how the Parliament had failed in this case to exercise its recently acquired powers – granted under the EU’s Lisbon treaty – to reject readmission agreements. “This agreement with Pakistan adds to the growing list of EU readmission agreements which focus solely on deporting third country nationals from the EU, without concern as to whether the receiving country can guarantee the safety of or basic rights for those returned,” she said.
Dutch left-wing MEP Dennis de Jong described the agreement as “the wrong instrument at the wrong time”.
“Millions of people are fleeing the floods that have caused so much destruction,” he said. “At a time like this, the EU should be helping Pakistan, but instead it is seeking to send back asylum seekers whose applications have failed, ignoring the values we pride ourselves on in Europe.”
•First published by Inter Press Service (www.ipsnews.net), 22 September 2010
In a Sep 21 vote, the European Parliament approved a “readmission agreement” with Pakistan under which the country will be required to take back any of its nationals deemed to be “illegal immigrants” by the EU’s member states.
Negotiated over an eight-year period, the accord will give the Pakistani authorities 60 days to respond to requests to accept back their nationals from the EU. If no response is forthcoming during that period, the Union will be allowed assume that Pakistan has no objection to receiving the migrants in question. If, however, Pakistan wishes to turn down a request, it will have to present a written “justification” of its reasons for doing so.
Amnesty International has argued that the timing of the agreement is inappropriate at a time when Pakistan is struggling to cope with severe flooding and while the human rights situation in the country remains hugely problematic.
Anneliese Baldaccini, an analyst on asylum and immigration policy in Amnesty’s Brussels office, noted too that conflict in the surrounding region has caused major upheaval in Pakistan. “There are more than 1 million internally displaced people in Pakistan and many hundreds of thousands of Afghan refugees in Pakistan,” she said. “Pakistan is dealing with a situation that is already quite difficult. If the readmission agreement leads to a considerable number of returns (of Pakistani nationals) from the EU, then this would raise concerns. If there is no prospect of reintegrating nationals into Pakistani society, then we don’t see the merit in sending people back.”
The United Nations’ 1951 Refugee Convention forbids expulsions of people to countries where their lives are likely to be put at risk. According to Amnesty’s latest annual report, dozens of detainees were tortured to death or killed in custody in Pakistan last year, the fate of hundreds of disappeared people in the country remains unknown and members of religious minorities are subject to rising levels of violence and intimidation. A separate Amnesty study published in June dubbed north-west Pakistan a “human rights free zone”. Almost four million people in the north-west are effectively living under the Taliban, without the rule of law and without any protection from the Pakistani government, the report concluded.
The accord with Pakistan is the latest in a series of readmission agreements negotiated between the EU and foreign countries over the past decade. Some eighteen such agreements have either been finalised or are under discussion. Previous signatories of the agreements include Hong Kong, Bosnia, Serbia, Ukraine and Russia, while negotiations are ongoing with China, Morocco, Algeria and Turkey.
Amnesty’s Baldaccini complained that there is a paucity of data available on the impact of these agreements. It is frequently unclear, she said, whether migrants have been sent back to their countries of origin under EU agreements or those signed on a bilateral basis between individual states from the Union and governments outside it.
Michele Cercone, spokesman on home affairs with the EU’s executive arm, the European Commission, said that it is vital that readmission agreements are negotiated by the entire Union. If individual EU governments continued to reach bilateral agreements “then we would have a very fragmented situation,” he added, where “there would be much less figures and much less evidence” about the number of people affected. The Commission has estimated that 13,000 Pakistanis were arrested in the EU during 2008 because their status was considered “irregular” or “illegal”.
The new accord was approved by 382 members of the European Parliament (MEPs), with 250 voting against.
French Green MEP Hélène Flautre said it is “seriously regrettable” that the accord had been approved. Pakistan already receives more refugees than any other country in the world, she said, even though it has not ratified key international law on the humane treatment of refugees. According to the UN data, authorities in Pakistan registered 1.7 million refugees in 2009.
Flautre lamented how the Parliament had failed in this case to exercise its recently acquired powers – granted under the EU’s Lisbon treaty – to reject readmission agreements. “This agreement with Pakistan adds to the growing list of EU readmission agreements which focus solely on deporting third country nationals from the EU, without concern as to whether the receiving country can guarantee the safety of or basic rights for those returned,” she said.
Dutch left-wing MEP Dennis de Jong described the agreement as “the wrong instrument at the wrong time”.
“Millions of people are fleeing the floods that have caused so much destruction,” he said. “At a time like this, the EU should be helping Pakistan, but instead it is seeking to send back asylum seekers whose applications have failed, ignoring the values we pride ourselves on in Europe.”
•First published by Inter Press Service (www.ipsnews.net), 22 September 2010
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)