By JIMMY CARTER, NY Times
THE United States is abandoning
its role as the global champion of human rights.
 |
| Jimmy Carter |
Revelations
that top officials are targeting people to be assassinated abroad, including
American citizens, are only the most recent, disturbing proof of how far our
nation’s violation of human rights has extended. This development began after
the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, and has been sanctioned and escalated
by bipartisan executive and legislative actions, without dissent from the
general public. As a result, our country can no longer speak with moral
authority on these critical issues.
While the country has made
mistakes in the past, the widespread abuse of human rights over the last decade
has been a dramatic change from the past. With leadership from the United
States, the Universal
Declaration of Human Rights was adopted in 1948 as “the foundation of
freedom, justice and peace in the world.” This was a bold and clear commitment
that power would no longer serve as a cover to oppress or injure people, and it
established equal rights of all people to life, liberty, security of person,
equal protection of the law and freedom from torture, arbitrary detention or
forced exile.
The declaration has been invoked
by human rights activists and the international community to replace most of
the world’s dictatorships with democracies and to promote the rule of law in
domestic and global affairs. It is disturbing that, instead of strengthening
these principles, our government’s counterterrorism policies are now clearly
violating at least 10 of the declaration’s 30 articles, including the
prohibition against “cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment.”
Recent legislation has made legal
the president’s right to detain a person indefinitely on suspicion of
affiliation with terrorist organizations or “associated forces,” a broad, vague
power that can be abused without meaningful oversight from the courts or
Congress (the law is currently being blocked by a federal judge). This law
violates the right to freedom of expression and to be presumed innocent until
proved guilty, two other rights enshrined in the declaration.
In addition to American citizens’
being targeted for assassination or indefinite detention, recent laws have canceled
the restraints in the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act of 1978 to
allow unprecedented violations of our rights to privacy through warrantless
wiretapping and government mining of our electronic communications. Popular
state laws permit detaining individuals because of their appearance, where they
worship or with whom they associate.
Despite an arbitrary rule that
any man killed by drones is declared an enemy terrorist, the death of nearby
innocent women and children is accepted as inevitable. After more than 30
airstrikes on civilian homes this year in Afghanistan, President Hamid Karzai
has demanded that such attacks end, but the practice continues in areas of
Pakistan, Somalia and Yemen that are not in any war zone. We don’t know how
many hundreds of innocent civilians have been killed in these attacks, each one
approved by the highest authorities in Washington. This would have been
unthinkable in previous times.
These policies clearly affect
American foreign policy. Top intelligence and military officials, as well as
rights defenders in targeted areas, affirm that the great escalation in drone
attacks has turned aggrieved families toward terrorist organizations, aroused
civilian populations against us and permitted repressive governments to cite
such actions to justify their own despotic behavior.
Meanwhile, the detention facility
at Guantánamo
Bay, Cuba, now houses 169 prisoners. About half have been cleared for
release, yet have little prospect of ever obtaining their freedom. American
authorities have revealed that, in order to obtain confessions, some of the few
being tried (only in military courts) have been tortured by waterboarding more
than 100 times or intimidated with semiautomatic weapons, power drills or
threats to sexually assault their mothers. Astoundingly, these facts cannot be
used as a defense by the accused, because the government claims they occurred
under the cover of “national security.” Most of the other prisoners have no
prospect of ever being charged or tried either.
At a time when popular
revolutions are sweeping the globe, the United States should be strengthening,
not weakening, basic rules of law and principles of justice enumerated in the
Universal Declaration of Human Rights. But instead of making the world safer,
America’s violation of international human rights abets our enemies and alienates
our friends.
As concerned citizens, we must
persuade Washington to reverse course and regain moral leadership according to
international human rights norms that we had officially adopted as our own and
cherished throughout the years.
Jimmy Carter,
the 39th president, is the founder of the Carter Center and the recipient of
the 2002 Nobel Peace Prize.
Courtesy:
New York Times
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