Protecting Torture: The Red Cross’ Deadly Silence
9 March, 2006 | This item was filled under [ Human Rights ]
The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) confidentiality policy gives detaining powers legitimacy in Abu Ghraib, Guantanamo Bay’s Camp X-Ray, and many Israeli detention centers. The policy, in effect, allows ICRC to politely ask torturers to stop torturing, while promising not to tell the rest of the world. While ICRC is maintaining “good working relations with authorities,” prisoners continue to be tortured.
Left Turn:The Red Cross’ Deadly Silence
Posted by Haitham Sabbah
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3 Comments on “Protecting Torture: The Red Cross’ Deadly Silence”
After the 2nd World War the world saw the horrors of the concentration camps and heard of the worst acts of barbarity. The world was shocked…normal people could not contemplate a situation where torture or inhuman or degrading treatment could be justified.
Liberty, the UK based Human Rights organisation believes that by involving ourselves torture – even if we are not actually torturing people ourselves – we make a mockery of our status as a civilised country and we lose any ability to press other countries to halt this practice.
Article 3, European Convention on Human Rights says “No one shall be subjected to torture or to inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment.”
It is the job of every voter to put pressure on their Government to take a moral stance against complicity with torture, through parliament, the press and courts. Please do what you can to support the campaign and defend the most fundamental element of the post-holocaust human rights legacy.