Young soldier Lynndie England became the poster girl of the Abu Ghraib scandal, holding a naked Iraqi prisoner on leash like a dog. The image and hundreds of other have helped poison the international community's image of the US, Human Rights Watch says.
During the past year, the world gasped as information about how United States soldiers systematically tortured, sexually abused and humiliated Iraqi prisoners trickled out of Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq. Then there were the stories of how men the US military considered possible Taliban and al-Qaida members were forced to endure imprisonment terms that are even illegal in the United States. Meanwhile, 70,000 people were slaughtered in the Darfur region of Africa's Sudan as Western governments debated whether or not the term genocide was appropriate to describe the slaughter. (Funny they didn't have as much trouble when it came to Srebrenica where only one-tenth that number died.) All in all, it was a terrible year for human rights and there's little to celebrate in Human Rights Watch's annual progress report released Thursday.
In an introductory essay, the report describes the occurrences in Darfur and Abu Ghraib as "fundamental threats to human rights." One involves "indifference in the face of the worst imaginable atrocities, and the other is emblematic of a powerful government flouting the most fundamental rules." Washington's "acceptance and deployment of torture and other cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment" has "undermined its much-needed credibility as a proponent of human rights and a leader of the campaign gainst terrorism."
The United States has rejected Human Rights Watch's findings. "The administration has been very clear, the president's been very clear, the documents released by the administration have been very clear," said State Department Spokesman Richard Boucher. "We do not condone torture or abuse of prisoners. The actions of the administration have been quite clear in prosecuting this and investigating it and bringing it to light."
But so far, the prosecutions have been of low-level soldiers, not high-ranking politicians who wrote the memoranda Human Rights Watch and other groups allege created the environment for the abuses. In an interview with SPIEGEL INTERNATIONAL, Human Rights Watch Associate Director Carroll Bogert takes the US to task for the Abu Ghraib scandal and says we should expect better of the world's most powerful nation.
SPIEGEL: In the opening essay of your report, you state that the torture and Abu Ghraib and the mass killings in Darfur, Sudan, were the greatest human rights problems of 2004. But in Sudan 70,000 people died. How can you compare the two?
Bogert: These were very different kinds of events. In Darfur we're talking about the deaths of over 70,000 people, 1.7 million people who have been displaced from their homes. This is a human rights crisis of considerable magnitude. In Abu Ghraib some people have died in US custody, quite a few people have been tortured - we don't know the exact numbers, of course. You could argue that people aren't suffering on the same scale in Iraq and Afghanistan and Guantanamo -- and when we say Abu Ghraib, we really mean the whole system of detention post 9/11 that the US has undertaken.
So the reason we felt in 2004 that they were both major threats to the world-wide system of protection is that Abu Ghraib represents very serious damage to a taboo against torture that's been centuries in the making. In 2004 it really was dealt a body blow. The photographs of what happened in Abu Ghraib I think certainly shocked the world and they shocked a lot of Americans, but what they haven't done yet is to provoke a thorough coming clean by the US government on exactly what happened and exactly who's responsible.
We think they're linked in the sense that they were really inspired, if you will, by unofficial statements or various statements of officials at much higher levels about the admissibility of taking off the gloves and doing whatever it takes as well as more specific legal memoranda by the department of justice that sought to redefine torture, which had a very specific international definition that was very widely accepted. The US tried to redefine it. The idea that it can only be called torture if the pain is equivalent to organ failure (a position the White House abandoned this week) is not consistent with international law. It's clear in various ways that statements by US officials as well as written memoranda by US officials gave the impression to people down below that certain practices would be accepted and that now those few people at the bottom are getting prosecuted and the people at the top are going free.
So we're calling for a special prosecutor to investigate this problem.
SPIEGEL: When you say special prosecutor, what do you mean? Would this be done by the US or the United Nations?
Bogert: It would be an American prosecutor who would be appointed by the attorney general, so we're not naďve to think that a political party controlling the White House and both houses of Congress is likely to appoint a special prosecutor to investigate wrong-doing by the executive branch. Obviously, I'm not suggesting this is going to happen tomorrow.
But I do think somebody needs to make this call and that somebody is Human Rights Watch.
SPIEGEL: So, basically, you're calling for a Kenneth Starr for Abu Ghraib?
Bogert: We're calling for an active and thorough special prosecution of Abu Ghraib. There is currently no Abu Ghraib commission nor is there any official Congressional investigation of Abu Ghraib. And I don't know who would be appointed to the post, but we want someone who can do the job. The attorney general would be responsible for appointing any special prosecutor -- and the attorney general, as we know, is Alberto Gonzales, who is himself responsible for some of the Justice Department memos about torture. So I don't mean to sound naďve when I say we hope Alberto Gonzales will prosecute himself. But we think that this is what ought to happen. The alleged crimes merit this kind of attention and it hasn't received that yet.
SPIEGEL: Why pursue this in the US rather than at the international level, where there may be support for investigating Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo?
Bogert: There might be a lot of worldwide support. Many people think this is a big problem, but what we want is for the US government to release documents and to bring forward witnesses who will tell what really happened and who is responsible. The chances that a UN prosecutor could compel that kind of evidence are about zero. If the UN assigned a whistleblower in the UN to uncover malfeasance in the US, it would just exacerbate already difficult relations between the US government and the UN. That really wouldn't work and it would increase hostilities between the UN and Capitol Hill. We wouldn't make that -- it's not unreasonable, but it would be obnoxious in the current political environment.
SPIEGEL: Have US policies implemented after the 9/11 terrorist attacks seriously damaged the Geneva Conventions?
Bogert: In both of these instances the question is what happens when a leader takes aim at the standards. The US was at the forefront of the Universal Declaration on Human Rights and it considers itself still to be a leader on human rights and has criticized many other governments around the world for committing torture. So what happens when the leader is guilty of the crime? The answer is that it has influence around the world. When the US violates this prohibition against torture, that means more than when a smaller, less-known country violates the prohibition against torture everyday on a scale that's greater than Abu Ghraib.
SPIEGEL: But isn't there a danger that, through your overwhelming focus on the US in the report that you are stealing attention from far more serious human rights violations in the world?
Bogert:Well, the book is 527 pages long and most are devoted to countries other than the United States. We're not saying the US is the world's worst human rights abuser, that's obviously not true. But we are saying the US has special responsibilities and special influence in how human rights are affected and they need to use that influence widely.
SPIEGEL: You criticized governments -- including the United States -- for recently putting the emphasis on the peace deal between North and South Sudan rather than the humanitarian crisis in Darfur.
Bogert: They've taken Darfur very seriously and when we criticize the international community for inaction on Darfur, we don't mean to suggest that we're not thrilled that the North-South war is finally finished. That's a major step forward.
But it's also true that if you look at the Security Council resolutions throughout the year -- the September resolution on Darfur is quite strong, it talks about sanctions against the Sudanese government. It sets up an inquiry commission that will report back to the Council on the Jan. 25 about what's happening in Darfur. Then, when you look in November, when the Security Council was meeting in Nairobi, there's a significant pulling back. There's no talk about sanctions anymore, and it's clear that they had Naivasha (the city north of Nairobi where peace negotiations had been going on) on their minds, and they didn't want to trip that. And I understand that, but I think that has come at the expense of sufficiently strong action on Darfur.
And also the peace agreement, welcome though it is, does not say anything about justice for the atrocities that were performed during the course of the war, and so it's sending exactly the wrong message to the government of Sudan at the exactly wrong time. Saying, you know, whatever's going to happen in this war in Darfur, at the end you're just going to drink champagne and have a peace agreement. The message has to be, you are going to go to jail for what you did in Darfur. On January 25th, when the Commission of Inquiry reports back to the Security Council, we hope that Security Council members will take the report very seriously and will refer this case to the International Criminal Court.
SPIEGEL: Do you seriously believe the US would be willing to allow a Sudan case to be referred to the ICC?
Bogert: They can veto a referral of this case to the International Criminal Court, and this will be politically a very tricky question for the Bush administration. Having taken Sudan so seriously, and having made it such a center piece of their policy, they're now going to have to choose. They hate the ICC, so are they going to veto a referral, or threaten to veto it, which would effectively kill it? Because really, their two objectives come in conflict here -- doing the right thing in Sudan and strangling the ICC.
SPIEGEL: And if it gets there, will a decision be taken seriously if the US isn't a member? I mean, the US doesn't even acknowledge the court.
Bogert: They've already been forced to acknowledge it in many ways. They fought the statute when the statute was signed in Rome in 1998, they have fought every ratification, they have negotiated bilateral agreements with countries -- requiring them to defy the ICC and offer exemptions to US soldiers -- they've tried to insert an anti-ICC provision into all peacekeeping provisions. And they've been defeated through the UN on that, and they haven't left the UN because of it. Negotiations are happening right now for how strong are Britain and France going to push on this, which way are China and Russia going to go, there are a lot of factors in play, and we don't know what's going to happen. If the US understands that the rest of the world feels strongly that ICC is a good institution, then they should not stand in the way of it. We're hoping that moderates -- and some are getting appointed in the State Department -- will recognize that this is not in issue over which the US should fall on its sword. Then we may see some progress and we may see this case go to the ICC. I hope we do.
Interview conducted by Scott Lamb and Daryl Lindsey.
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