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Date Posted: 09:00:02 01/03/02 Thu
Author: William Orme, Los Angeles Times Staff Writer
Subject: U.N. fears abuses of terror mandate

U.N. fears abuses of terror mandate
Some regimes using agency's campaign to justify repression

By William Orme, Los Angeles Times Staff Writer

UNITED NATIONS -- Demands by the Security
Council that U.N. members act against global
terrorism are being used by some regimes to justify
repression of domestic dissent, U.N. officials and
independent human rights advocates say.

The anti-terrorism campaign has been used by
authoritarian governments to justify moves to clamp
down on moderate opponents, outlaw criticism of
rulers and expand the use of capital punishment.

Compliance with the Security Council requirements
"could lead to unwarranted infringement on civil
liberties," Bacre Waly Ndiaye, the chief human rights
officer at the U.N. Secretariat, told the council's new
counterterrorism committee. "There is evidence that
some countries are now introducing measures that
may erode core human rights safeguards."

In an unexpectedly swift response to the attacks on the World Trade Center
and the
Pentagon, the Security Council called on U.N. members on Sept. 28 to
provide
information within 90 days about their legal restrictions on fund-raising,
financial
transfers, arms acquisition and immigration.

But there is no agreement on what constitutes terrorist activity, U.N.
experts say,
and some governments are presenting what critics contend are police-state
measures as part of the U.N.-endorsed campaign.

"In some countries," Ndiaye told the counterterror committee at its Dec. 13
meeting, "nonviolent activities have been considered as terrorism, and
excessive
measures have been taken to suppress or restrict individual rights,
including the
presumption of innocence, the right to a fair trial, freedom from torture,
privacy
rights, freedom of expression and assembly, and the right to seek asylum."

Ndiaye carefully refrained from identifying those countries, but human
rights
advocates quickly came up with a long list, from Algeria to Zimbabwe. In an
interview at his office here last week, Ndiaye said he was concerned that
the
campaign could backfire and undermine U.N. efforts to promote democracy and
the rule of law in Eastern Europe, Southeast Asia and his native West
Africa.

"The challenge is how to make counterterrorism measures compatible with
human
rights," he said. "Unfortunately, under the guise of fighting terror, some
governments are pursuing other agendas. Our concern is that this may
provide
cover to many governments to get rid of their opponents."

Insulting Mugabe may be outlawed

On Dec. 20, the Cuban legislature, with President Fidel Castro presiding,
unanimously passed a law that state media said expanded the application of
capital
punishment for crimes defined as terrorism, including the use of the
Internet to
incite political violence.

A week earlier, the government of Zimbabwe published a proposed law that
would
make it a crime to "undermine the authority of or insult" President Robert
Mugabe,
who is again seeking reelection. Mugabe's aides defended the legislation as
necessary to combat terrorists, a category they said includes most of the
president's
opponents as well as critical journalists.

"We agree with President Bush that anyone who harbors, finances or defends
a
terrorist is himself a terrorist," a presidential spokesman said.

In Central Asia, the government of Uzbekistan has defended its jailing of
moderate
Islamist opponents as part of the world campaign against "evildoers," while
Kyrgyzstan has intensified internal travel controls on dissidents.

The trend to toughen statutes aimed primarily at domestic dissent worries
advocates
such as Michael Posner, executive director of the New York-based Lawyers
Committee for Human Rights.

"We are going to see repeated examples of governments using the new
security
environment as a pretext for silencing dissidents," he said. "This gives a
green light
to the Mugabes of the world to go after their opponents under the cover of
what
the U.S. and the U.K. are doing" to fight terror.

The chairman of the Security Council's counterterrorism committee, British
Ambassador Jeremy Greenstock, has agreed to Ndiaye's request that he add a
human rights specialist to the committee's advisors, who already include
specialists
on money laundering and intelligence gathering. But the council's priority
is to
combat terrorism.

"The counterterrorism committee is not going to be the tool to resolve
human rights
problems around the world," said a European official at the committee who
asked
not to be named.

The U.N.'s own human rights advocates are limited to an advisory role in
Security
Council proceedings, noted Ndiaye, the New York deputy of Mary Robinson,
the
Geneva-based U.N. high commissioner for human rights. She in turn reports
to
U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan.

Robinson, a former president of Ireland, is viewed with suspicion in
Washington,
Moscow and Beijing because of liberal stands that are widely admired by
human
rights activists. Russia and China have publicly interpreted the Security
Council's
counterterror push as an endorsement of their own armed campaigns against
Muslim rebels, which have drawn strong criticism at U.N. human rights
forums.

By the midnight deadline Thursday, more than 100 of the U.N.'s 189 member
states
had filed their replies to the council, and most of the rest pledged to
submit
responses when the U.N. resumes sessions early this month. The published
responses range from long catalogs of efforts to disrupt terrorist networks
to
cursory reiterations of official policy.

A two-page memo from Venezuela

The U.S. report, which American officials say was intended as a "template"
for
other countries, runs 23 pages. Venezuela, which has been accused of
sheltering
Colombian terrorists, sent a two-page memo pledging cooperation with the
council
and summarizing its long-standing international treaty commitments. The
hard-line
military regime in Myanmar, in an equally terse submission, depicted itself
as a
victim of global terrorism, citing last year's occupation of its embassy in
Bangkok,
Thailand, by dissidents it labeled "expatriate terrorists."

Within Myanmar itself, however, "there are no terrorists," the government
assured
the Security Council.

One of the first Middle Eastern submissions came from Syria, which is
poised to
join the council for a two-year term this month. The Syrian response makes
a virtue
of Syria's strict controls over both the economy and the political system,
contending that financial support for terrorists is effectively curtailed
by the
absence of any private banking system or independent charities. The Syrians
cite as
a further deterrent their "harsh penalties" for threats to the public
order, including
capital punishment for such offenses as the "disruption of means of
information,
communications or transport."

The United States still officially calls Syria a terrorist state because of
its backing of
Hezbollah guerrillas in southern Lebanon and because of Damascus' history
as a
haven for Islamic Jihad and other militant Palestinian factions. Syria
asserted in its
report that although it has ratified several regional and international
conventions
against terrorism, the "legitimate struggle against foreign occupation"
does not fall
under the definition of terrorism in these treaties. Syria, which does not
recognize
Israel, condones armed attacks by Palestinians within Israel's borders as
well as in
the West Bank and Gaza Strip.

Israeli and Palestinian diplomats said in interviews that the U.N.
counterterror push
has already blunted outside criticism of methods used on both sides to
combat
accused terrorists, including preventive detention and restrictions on
speech and
assembly. The Israeli submission to the Security Council cites laws on the
books
since Israel's founding that impose fines and jail time for "propaganda
speeches" on
behalf of terrorists or the possession of literature published by such
groups. For
decades, civil libertarians in Israel have urged that these statutes be
rescinded.

Foreign condemnation of Israel's "extrajudicial killings" of accused
terrorists has
been muted since September, said Yehuda Lancry, Israel's U.N.
representative.

Palestinian officials say that although they have come under intense
criticism for
arresting dissidents without charges or published evidence, the pressure on
the
Palestinian Authority to stop terror attacks has now relegated such
concerns to the
sidelines.

"The atmosphere everywhere has changed since Sept. 11," said Nasser Kidwa,
the
permanent Palestinian observer at the U.N. "The American people themselves
are
saying, 'Forget about due process, we want to stop terrorism,' and you are
hearing
things that would have been unmentionable here before, like military
tribunals."

The prospective American military tribunals, though perhaps the single most
significant change in U.S. counterterror policies since Sept. 11, are
notably not
highlighted in the report submitted by the U.S. government to the Security
Council
last month. Yet the tribunals' ultimate impact on regimes elsewhere might
be greater
than any other counterterror initiative by council members, human rights
activists
say.

In a joint letter to Bush early last month, eight leading American human
rights
groups said his order authorizing the tribunals -- which could impose the
death
penalty -- will be cited by foreign dictators "for decades to come" as a
justification
for summary executions.

"The credibility and effectiveness of the United States in opposing such
repressive
procedures will be seriously harmed by this precedent," the letter said.

The United States, in an embarrassment to the State Department, was voted
off the
Human Rights Commission in Geneva last year. The U.S. is expected to
reclaim a
seat on the commission when it reconvenes in March, but human rights groups
that
strongly supported U.S. membership say they are now concerned that
Washington
will be a less aggressive advocate for judicial reform and the protection
of dissent.

"The State Department's last annual human rights report was filled with
critical
references to due-process concerns in places like Colombia, Egypt and
Turkey,"
said the Lawyers Committee's Posner. "Whether they are going to be able to
say all
that again without subjecting themselves to ridicule is an open question."

U.N. human rights officials say they are also concerned that the
counterterror focus
could pose problems for U.N. efforts to encourage independent judiciaries
and free
election environments in violence-racked societies such as East Timor,
Sierra
Leone, the Yugoslav region of Kosovo and -- in the coming year --
Afghanistan.

"'The terrorists pose a threat to both security and human rights, and many
countries
may, and rightly, resort to exceptional measures," said Ndiaye, a burly,
soft-spoken
Senegalese lawyer and former Amnesty International official. "But even
after 9/11,
defendants still deserve a fair trial, and a government's opponents still
have the right
of speech and assembly. These should not be restricted. If you do, you are
undermining the very reason that you are fighting against them."

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