Amnesty to Testify Before Congress Tomorrow

According to Shakespeare's Sister, John Conyers and House Judiciary Committee Democrats have invoked a little-used House rule and will hold hearings tomorrow featuring Chip Pitts, Chair of the Board, Amnesty International USA; Dr. James J. Zogby, President, Arab American Institute; Deborah Pearlstein, Director, U.S. Law and Security Program, Human Rights First; Carlina Tapia-Ruano, American Immigration Lawyers Association.

It will be the first time a representative from Amnesty has testified before Congress since the release of its 2005 Annual Report, where Amnesty noted

Despite the near-universal outrage generated by the photographs coming out of Abu Ghraib, and the evidence suggesting that such practices are being applied to other prisoners held by the USA in Afghanistan, Guantánamo and elsewhere, neither the US administration nor the US Congress has called for a full and independent investigation.

Instead, the US government has gone to great lengths to restrict the application of the Geneva Conventions and to "re-define" torture. It has sought to justify the use of coercive interrogation techniques, the practice of holding "ghost detainees" (people in unacknowledged incommunicado detention) and the "rendering" or handing over of prisoners to third countries known to practise torture. The detention facility at Guantánamo Bay has become the gulag of our times, entrenching the practice of arbitrary and indefinite detention in violation of international law. Trials by military commissions have made a mockery of justice and due process.

The USA, as the unrivalled political, military and economic hyper-power, sets the tone for governmental behaviour worldwide. When the most powerful country in the world thumbs its nose at the rule of law and human rights, it grants a licence to others to commit abuse with impunity and audacity. From Israel to Uzbekistan, Egypt to Nepal, governments have openly defied human rights and international humanitarian law in the name of national security and "counter-terrorism".