EDITORIAL : THE HINDU, INDIA

 

End to a misguided saga at the UN

Good sense has finally registered a victory at the United Nations. The countries of the Organisation of Islamic Conference (OIC) have given up a 12-year long drive to have the U.N. accept the idea of “defamation of religions” and incorporate it in international human rights law. From 1999, the U.N. General Assembly, the U.N. Commission on Human Rights, and its successor body since 2006, the U.N. Human Rights Council, annually passed OIC-sponsored resolutions that sought to protect religions, particularly Islam, from “defamation.” Muslim countries saw these resolutions as necessary to defend the religion from the post-9/11 Islamophobia in the West. Incidents such as the Danish cartoons strengthened the campaign, and the OIC pushed to bring the issue on a par with racism. But human rights law protects individual freedoms rather than groups of people. The idea that a religion can be defamed places it in conflict with the freedom of expression, thought, and opinion, blurring the lines between criticism of, and critical thinking about, religion on the one hand, and incitement to hatred. The resolution also raised concerns about opening the doors to an “international blasphemy law” and providing a justification for the suppression of religious minorities, non-believers, and political dissidents. Every year, the resolution was hard-fought and divisive. Support for it dropped in the last two years as the OIC pushed for adoption of an internationally binding standard on this issue, with more countries voting against or abstaining (India in the latter group) than supporting. The recent assassinations in Pakistan of two brave opponents of the country's blasphemy law — Punjab Governor Salman Taseer and Federal Minister Shahbaz Bhatti — appear to have finally sunk the effort. On March 24, the HRC unanimously adopted a resolution on “Combating Intolerance and Violence against Persons Based on Religion or Belief” that contained no reference to “defamation.”

The Koran-burning episode in Florida reminded the world that concern among Muslims that their religion is being targeted is not baseless. A fierce backlash in Afghanistan has claimed the lives of 24 people, including seven U.N. employees. Worldwide, there are innumerable instances of prejudice and bias against Muslims. But as Asma Jahangir, the eminent Pakistani human rights lawyer, pointed out to a U.N. committee deliberating the defamation resolution back in 2009, education and dialogue among religions would be more effective than legislation at promoting tolerance. Moreover, existing human rights laws provide a strong framework through which countries, and the international community, can fight discrimination without endangering other freedoms. 

Obama's betrayal

The announcement by U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder that Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the self-professed mastermind behind 9/11, will be tried by a military commission at Guantánamo Bay, and not by a U.S. federal court, is a serious betrayal of a human rights and political promise Barack Obama made as he began his presidential term. The promise was to shut down the notorious detention and torture centre within a year. Now President Obama has decided not to veto a Republican-inserted budget clause that bars the use of Department of Defense funds to transfer Guantánamo detainees to the U.S. His excuse might be the pragmatic need to back away from a showdown with the Congress, which would mean confronting an intensely partisan Republican majority in the House of Representatives. Another influential opponent of terrorism trials on U.S. territory is New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg. He originally favoured trying Mr. Mohammed in New York but then changed his mind, saying the security arrangements alone would cost over $400 million. The opponents of trying the jihadist in the U.S. have exploited widespread public apprehension that such trials would again make the country a target for terrorists.

Trial by a military commission at Guantánamo Bay is a travesty, by any rule of law and human rights standard. The commissions can admit some evidence obtained under coercion; they apply criminal law retroactively; they have applied rules of evidence inconsistently; and they cannot try U.S. citizens. As the international NGO Human Rights Watch points out, these tribunals are “highly vulnerable to appellate challenge” and could be ruled unconstitutional by the U.S. Supreme Court. As for the costs and risks entailed by a proper trial in the U.S., these are exaggerated. After all, in 2010 Guantánamo detainee Ahmed Khalfan Ghailani was tried without incident in New York for plotting al-Qaida attacks on U.S. embassies in Africa; he was sentenced to life imprisonment without parole. Some of the hostility to federal trials may stem from the fact that Ghailani was convicted on only one of the 286 charges against him. But the commissions themselves have succeeded in convicting only six of more than 770 defendants. U.S. civilian courts, by contrast, have convicted hundreds of people on terrorism charges since 9/11. The advocates of military commissions at Guantánamo just don't seem to get it: these trials offend every canon of human rights, national sovereignty, and the rule of law, and the convictions are asking to be overturned on appeal.