RSS FeedThe Inhumanity of Refugee Detention Camps in the West
What makes this ruling is significant is that a high court is here recognising that the detention camps in which refugees are held in the West can themselves be inhumane to the point of that sending people to them would be illegal. This is of particular relevance for analyses of Australia’s detention camps, which arguably some of the worst worldwide; the abuses are such that they’re driving more and more of the refugees to suicide and hunger strikes (some by sewing their mouths shut).
Human rights court slams EU asylum policy as inhumane
In a landmark ruling the European Court for Human Rights has criticized the EU’s asylum policy. It said forcing refugees to apply for asylum in the country of their entry into the EU was inhumane.
The European Court for Human Rights on Friday ruled illegal the deportation of an asylum seeker from Belgium to Greece.
The Afghan national first entered the European Union in Greece but then traveled to Belgium to apply for asylum there. Under current EU regulations, asylum applications must be processed in the country of entry into the 27-nation bloc.
Yet the judges at Europe’s top human rights court said that the appalling conditions in Greek refugee camps were inhumane and humiliating – and most importantly that Belgium was aware of those conditions but still sent the Afghan back.
The court ruling could mean that the European Union will have to rethink its entire asylum policy.
“This is a historic moment for the protection of Human Rights,” Marei Pelzer of rights group ProAsyl told Deutsche Welle.
“The ruling will have fundamental consequences in so far as the EU can not simply pretend that the situation with regards to asylum seekers is the same in all EU member states. And it’s crucial that refugees should not be forced to stay in Greece just because Greece happens to be the country where most of them arrive.”
Almost 90 percent of all illegal border crossings into the EU take place via Greece. The country has repeatedly come under fire for appalling living conditions in its refugee camps.
Human rights groups have long been calling for a more coherent EU policy that would make all member countries responsible for asylum cases in the same way.
Appalling conditions in Greece
The circumstances and procedures that refugees are exposed to in Greece are the worst in Europe, according to a recent report on asylum seekers by rights group Amnesty International.
The European Commission has also already proposed a reform to the current regulation in an effort to take some of the pressure off countries such as Greece, Italy and Malta, which see the main influx of refugees from outside the EU.
Germany has so far rejected the Commission’s proposals for reform yet rights groups hope that the Strasbourg ruling will have Berlin rethink its position. But Reinhard Grindel, member of parliament for Chancellor Merkel’s Christian Democrats insists the solution to the problem in Greece has to be fixed by Athens rather than by watering down EU regulations.
“All EU member states guarantee the international human rights standards,” he told Deutsche Welle. “We do have one problem case, and that’s Greece. However, what this means is not that we have to change EU rules but rather that Athens has to get its house in order.”
“For Germany a change to the current EU regulations would be a catastrophe,” he warned. “It would mean a flood of asylum seekers coming to Germany. And that’s something that everyone who now calls for changes of EU rules has to realize.”
And yet, to a certain extent, Germany has already changed its position. Berlin earlier this week announced that for one year it would stop sending back any refugees to Greece, because of what Interior Minister Thomas de Maiziere described as “appalling conditions” for refugees there.
Britain, Iceland, Norway and Sweden have also stopped sending refugees back to Greece.
A Trial to End all Terrorism
I recently presented this paper, A Trial to End All Terrorism: How the United States Could Have Won the War on Terrorism Before it Even Began, with the Trial of Only One Man at the 3rd Annual Law Student Conference held at Windsor Law.
The torture scandal
Colvin a protected `whistleblower,’ Cannon says
The Canadian Press:
Foreign Affairs Minister Lawrence Cannon says diplomat Richard Colvin had a right to make his explosive allegations about Afghan prisoners.
He says Colvin exercised his prerogative as a whistleblower by saying Ottawa ignored his warnings that Canadian soldiers were turning Afghan detainees over to torture.
Part II: Soldiering on? The invisible injuries of war
Guest Post by Krystalline Kraus | Reproduced from www.rabble.ca with permsision
Next week, on November 11, veterans will get only two minutes of recognition — if people stop to reflect at all — while the rest of the year their sacrifice is forgotten.
If Canada’s mission in Afghanistan does end in 2011, 35,000 men and women will have served in that theatre — 133 have been killed thus far — and the Canadian Forces’ (CF) low estimate is that as many as 2,000 could be returning home with an Operational Stress Injury (OSI) such as PTSD.
These soldiers will return home with, among other things, an OSI or plagued by survivor’s guilt and the pressure to do good by their dead friends; first they bury them and then they bury their own feelings. As the saying goes: Survivors die twice.
Massacre at Fort Hood
The problems the U.S. military would prefer to hide violently surged to the public’s attention when Major Nidal Malik Hasan, a 39-year-old U.S. Army psychiatrist, allegedly opened fire yesterday afternoon at Fort Hood, Texas. He is accused of killing 13 people and wounding 30.
A New York Times article features an interview with Hasan’s cousin, who states that he expressed deep concern about being sent to Iraq or Afghanistan; the cousin also notes that Hasan’s job was to counsel returning soldiers suffering with PTSD which gave him an intimate window into the horrors of war. This made him fearful of deploying to either theatre. His cousin also claims he was having second thoughts about his military career a few years ago after other soldiers harassed him for being a Muslim.
Unique photos of Omar Khadr may be evidence of his innocence
Omar Khadr Omar Khadr ‘innocent’ in death of U.S. soldier
Michelle Shephard writes for the Toronto Star:
Guantanamo detainee Omar Khadr was buried face down under rubble, blinded by shrapnel and crippled, at the time the Pentagon alleges he threw a grenade that fatally wounded a U.S. soldier, according to classified photographs and defence documents obtained by the Star.
National security invoked to block testimony
Ottawa seeks to gag Afghan prisoner probe witnesses
Federal lawyers are trying to block government witnesses from testifying before a military watchdog investigating the treatment of Taliban prisoners in Afghanistan, The Canadian Press has learned.
Transparency sought in Afghan inquiry
Subpoenas issued to federal officials in Afghan prisoner inquiry
A legal fight is looming over the federal government’s refusal to release information about alleged war crimes committed by the Canadian military.
Murray Brewster writes for the Canadian Press:
In its attempt to derail the commission inquiry, the federal government has argued that the handling of prisoners is “not subject” to oversight by the military police complaints process, and that the National Defence Act only gives the agency the power to investigate complaints against military police.
Toronto bomb plotter sentenced
Toronto 18 member gets 14-year sentence
A Mississauga man who confessed to being part of a homegrown terror plot aimed at blowing up buildings in downtown Toronto was sentenced today to 14 years, with credit given for pre-trial custody he was ordered to serve an additional seven years behind bars.
Jameel Jaffer of ACLU is a Canadian!
Today’s Toronto Star profiled a Canadian lawyer who has taken on the Bush Administration through the ACLU, and was key in helping discover the torture memos.
Jameel Jaffer, only 39 years old, was born in London, Ontario, before graduating from Williams College, Cambridge University, and Harvard Law School and serving as a law clerk to Hon. Amalya L. Kearse, United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit, and the Rt. Hon. Beverley McLachlin, Chief Justice of Canada.
What makes Jaffer unique is that he was co-lead counsel for ACLU v. Department of Defense, which released thousands of documents about prisoner abuse in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Guantánamo Bay.
He was also lead counsel in Doe v. Ashcroft, which challenged National Security Letters (NSLs) under the PATRIOT Act, and counsel in MCA, et al. v. Ashcroft and Mueller, challenging the “chill” in donations to mosques as a result of the PATRIOT Act.
Jaffer might just be the Canadian who has done the most for civil rights in the U.S. during this crucial time, and should probably be better recognized and celebrated in his home country.
Here’s a clip from him via the ACLU:
Litigious
Ottawa to launch Supreme Court appeal of Khadr ruling
The federal government will go to the Supreme Court of Canada to appeal a court order to bring Omar Khadr home from a U.S. military prison, according to a CBC report.
What Doesn’t Work in Afghanistan
And what still won’t work.
