Why We Protest

by pessimist

[The following statement is adapted from the original. All statements included are from the original. The order of the statements was changed to improve readability. Only minor wording changes were made to facilitiate this effort - ed]

WHY WE HAVE TO MARCH AGAINST DUBYA" - Kate Allen, Uk Director Amnesty International

Countries don't protect freedom by attacking hard-won civil liberties, locking up thousands of people without charge or trial, and rushing through ever-more draconian laws. You don't win the hearts and minds of the doubters and the disaffected by riding roughshod over human rights. But you DO provide terrorists and extremists with the kind of propaganda they could only have dreamt of a few years ago.

THOUSANDS of people will take to the streets in Britain next week to voice their anger, frustration and political opposition to President George W Bush's policies. Most people in Britain seem to be revolted that nearly 700 people are held without charge or trial and without access to lawyers or family for almost two years. They question our own government's weakness in failing to properly stand up for the rights of the nine British men imprisoned in Guantanamo Bay. They wonder whether our government would have been more robust had these men been held by a country like Iran or Syria or almost any other country besides the US.

Crucially, Bush protests will also test our own government's commitment to freedom of speech and legitimate dissent in Britain. This month a court controversially ruled that police use of terrorism powers to arrest peaceful protestors at an arms fair in Docklands, East London was reasonable. Why are ordinary people with a point of view on the arms industry considered a threat to the nation?

America Ripping Up The Rulebook

The journey from the Twin Towers to Guantanamo Bay has been a disastrous one - from an international atrocity to an international disgrace. Where once the world might have looked to America for inspiration, Bush's America is now actively undermining the international system for human rights protection. The US is now by far the most active opponent of the new International Criminal Court, a court that the US should be celebrating as a historic attempt to deter and punish genocide, war crimes and crimes against humanity. The US has embarked on a campaign of bullying weaker countries into agreeing to war crimes exemptions for US personnel. It is an important goal in the war on terror and its sinister consequences are likely to haunt the world for years.

In other countries people in the hands of US forces are seemingly classified as "enemy combatants" simply if Donald Rumsfeld's Defense Department says they are. In Iraq as many as 10,000 people are being held, most without any legal process.

Take a look at Guantanamo Bay. Take the understandable outrage in this country and apply it to a Middle-Eastern country. What is the impact of the image of the orange boiler-suited detainees crouching in submission behind Camp Delta's chain-link fences? Camp Delta's "enemy combatants" have to endure indefinite detention without charge or trial and no access to legal counsel or any court. Hanging over them is the possibility of unfair trials, military tribunals with restricted rights of defence, no independent appeals and the threat of the death penalty. John Walker Lindh, the so-called "American Taliban", was given a defence attorney and brought before an independent civilian court. When the manacled men from Guantanamo Bay flash up on Al-Jazeera television, for example, we can easily guess that outrage reaches new levels.

Amnesty International is not allowed into Guantanamo Bay, and not even the Red Cross has had access to all prisoners there.

But it is not just Guantanamo Bay that is so worrying. Beyond the high media visibility of Guantanamo Bay there also appears to be a shadowy network of "war on terror" detention sites. There are rumours of other prisons - on island military bases or in embassy buildings. These are unconfirmed, but the US already admits to holding people at "undisclosed locations". At the US air base at Bagram in Afghanistan, for example, former inmates have spoken of a regime of forced stripping, hooding, blindfolding with blacked-out goggles, 24-hour lighting, sleep deprivation and prolonged restraint in painful positions.

Amnesty International is not allowed into Bagram, and not even the Red Cross has had access to all prisoners there.

Frighteningly, what we are seeing is the almost day-by-day erosion of the USA's commitment to human rights. Since September 11 the USA has used its over-arching "war on terror" as an alibi to create a parallel justice system to detain, interrogate, charge or try suspects under the "laws of war". In mainland USA people have already been held under military procedures as "enemy combatants'. This is a virtually unprecedented suspension of the fundamental rights of a US citizen in US custody - not to mention a violation of international law.

For example, Jose Padilla - the so-called Dirty Bomber - has been held for more than a year in solitary confinement at a naval prison in South Carolina. He is imprisoned without charge, trial or access to his lawyer or family. Padilla, a former Chicago gang member, was arrested after flying back into the US from the Middle East where he had, according to officials, been plotting to use a bomb packed with radioactive waste on the US.

And So We March

Next week the slogans of the protestors will be mixed. But one thing unites these voices: a belief that the United States has strayed way off course and forgotten its own traditions of supporting human rights and fundamental liberties. Amnesty International plans to make this point on the streets of London dressed in orange boiler suits.

Some will criticise these protestors, writing off their views as knee-jerk anti-Americanism. But the critics should think before condemning them. After almost three years of President Bush's "war on terror", many would argue that the world is now a more dangerous and divided place than it was immediately after 9/11.

Mr Bush's three-day trip to Britain is a high-level visit with all of the pomp and ceremony of any such occasion. Taking to the streets to protest during George Bush's visit will be pro-American and pro-human rights. It's what makes me proud to protest. However, the right to have your say is a proud British tradition and the government should see to it that policing during President Bush's visit is done with a light touch. There should be no "exclusion zones" and Mr Bush should not be protected from protests. Four years ago, protestors during the visit of Chinese President Jiang Zemin had flags and banners ripped from their hands. The Metropolitan Police behaved in a way more reminiscent of the Chinese secret police than the friendly British bobby. This time let's hear it for peaceful, good-humoured free expression.

Exercising your legitimate right to protest is a core British - and American - value.

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