The Inside Assyria Discussion Forum

=> Re: on Freedom's Gulags...

Re: on Freedom's Gulags...
Posted by Tony (Guest) - Friday, November 4 2005, 19:15:02 (CET)
from 67.49.18.250 - cpe-67-49-18-250.socal.res.rr.com Commercial - Windows XP - Internet Explorer
Website:
Website title:

Critics and Proponents
The purported legal status of "unlawful combatants" in those nations currently holding detainees under that name, has been the subject of criticism by other nations and international human rights institutions; including Human Rights Watch and the International Committee of the Red Cross. In response to the US-led military campaign in Afghanistan, a legal advisor at the Legal Division of the ICRC, published a paper on the subject[26] (which reflects the views of the author alone and not necessarily those of the ICRC), in which it states:

Whereas the terms "combatant" "prisoner of war" and "civilian" are generally used and defined in the treaties of international humanitarian law, the terms "unlawful combatant", "unprivileged combatants/belligerents" do not appear in them. They have, however, been frequently used at least since the beginning of the last century in legal literature, military manuals and case law. The connotations given to these terms and their consequences for the applicable protection regime are not always very clear.
In the US the term unlawful combatant, critics maintain, has mainly been used to deny detainees basic civil rights, such as the right to a counsellor, a speedy trial and right of appeal. It has been argued that this gives governments a right to arbitrarily suspend the rule of law in a way that should not be accepted. The fact that many have been released without even being tried seems to suggest that among these suspects innocent civilians too are subject to arbitrary arrest. Furthermore, such a legal limbo would facilitate abuse of prisoners as was discussed earlier.

Proponents of unlawful combatant detentions have pointed to the vital necessities of winning wars, particularly when they involve concealed enemies. Wars justify a non-criminal approach which supports prevailing against violent enemies in military confrontations. Rather than being burdened by criminal processes and evidence gathering that is inappropriate amid "the rubble of war" but appropriate when the government would deprive a citizen or other presumed peaceful person of life, liberty or property, this view, supported by laws, cases and precedent cited in the Hamdi v. Rumsfeld decision would allow the Congress plus the Executive to recognize conflicts (wherein recognizable enemies were presumably deemed present in significant numbers) where individual criminal approaches and burdens were inadequate for the nation's safety. With a required habeas corpus judicial oversight as a check on excesses or mistakes, this non-criminal incarceration, which would incapacitate dangerous enemies for up to an entire war term, rather than punish them as criminals with certain sentences, should be permitted, consistent with fundamental and historic war powers, including the Geneva Convention. [27]

Some governments whose nationals have been detained with this status, notably Canada, the UK, and Sweden, have intervened to limit the degree to which the rights of their nationals have been suspended. In general this has been handled on a case-by-case basis as numbers are few.

Many governments and human rights organizations worry that the introduction of the unlawful combatant status sets a dangerous precedent for other regimes to follow. When the government of Liberia detained American activist Hassan Bility in 2002, Liberian authorities dismissed the complaints[28] of the United States, responding that he had been detained as an unlawful combatant.



---------------------
As the bloodshed continues in Iraq, people are being tortuned in our name.

The full topic:



Content-length: 3983
Content-type: application/x-www-form-urlencoded
---------------: ----- -------
Accept: image/gif, image/x-xbitmap, image/jpeg, image/pjpeg, application/x-shockwave-flash, application/vnd.ms-excel, applicatio...
Accept-language: en-us
Cache-control: no-cache
Connection: Keep-Alive
Cookie: *hidded*
Host: www.insideassyria.com
Referer: http://www.insideassyria.com/rkvsf4/rkvsf_core.php?Re_on_Freedom_s_Gulags-4Qos.8Gbv.REPLY
User-agent: Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 6.0; Windows NT 5.1; SV1)



Powered by RedKernel V.S. Forum 1.2.b9