Secret Prisons and Erosion of Human Rights
We learnt this week about the secret prisons run by the Iraqi army designed to isolate hundreds of Sunni prisoners from the action of courts. God forbid, with no evidence that would stand in trial, the prisoners would have been granted a habeas corpus request! Detainees were disappeared, their relatives unable to find their whereabouts. Tortured. Sodomized. Raped. Some detainees reportedly did not survive their cruel imprisonment. The United States, as an occupying power in Iraq, cannot plausible claim it has no responsibility on the setting and functioning of those secret prisons.
Secret prisons are just another expression of the dangerous slipping slope that sends down the drain basic humans rights, those rights entitled to every human being disregarding their sex, national origin, faith and achieved over the past centuries. Basic human rights such as the right not to be tortured, not to be arbitrary arrested or detained. Not to mention the rights granted by the Geneva Conventions.
Why does the military refuse to grant rights to detainees in the so-called “war on terror”? The answer, at least in part, might be found in the fact that protection of these basic rights is viewed by the US military as a form to wage asymmetric warfare. Indeed, under the term “lawfare”, law is considered “a weapon of war”, because it can provide military advantage to the enemy, as it has the potential to be used by the insurgency for undermining the legitimacy and the public support of the occupation. This view is not only preposterous, but has the potential of making human rights defenders, as military targets.
