May 28, 2008 (New Delhi and London) Amnesty International today challenged world leaders to apologize for six decades of human rights failure and re-commit themselves to deliver concrete improvements.

“The human rights flashpoints in Darfur, Zimbabwe, Gaza, Iraq and Myanmar demand immediate action,” said Irene Khan, Secretary General of Amnesty International, launching AI Report 2008: State of the World’s Human Rights.

“Injustice, inequality and impunity are the hallmarks of our world today. Governments must act now to close the yawning gap between promise and performance.”

In India, the report was launched by eminent personalities Prof. Mushirul Hasan, Vice-Chancellor, Jamia Millia Islamia, Actor-Author and Activist Sadia Dehlvi, Senior Journalist, Vinod Varshney and Mukul Sharma, Director, Amnesty International India.

Amnesty International’s Report 2008, shows that sixty years after the Universal Declaration of Human Rights was adopted by the United Nations, people are still tortured or ill-treated in at least 81 countries, face unfair trials in at least 54 countries and are not allowed to speak freely in at least 77 countries.

Mukul Sharma commented that in 2007 “many types of human rights abuses were reported” in India, “including unlawful killings, forced evictions, excessive use of police force, violence against women and harassment of human rights defenders”. He added, “Institutional mechanisms failed to protect civil and political rights or ensure justice for victims. The failings extended to economic, social and cultural rights, particularly of already marginalized communities”.

The Report, titled, The State of The World’s Human Rights, makes some key observations on the state of Human Rights in India.

Economic, Social and Cultural Rights & Violence against adivasis and Marginalised Communities:

• Around 300 million people- around a quarter of the population- remained in poverty.
• In Nandigram in West Bengal, private militias owing allegiance to the ruling Communist Party of India (Marxist) and armed supporters of local organizations battled for territorial control. A range of human rights violations followed, including unlawful killings, forced evictions, excessive police force, denial of access and information to the media and human rights organisations.
• In Orissa, atleast 50 people were injured during year-long protests by farmers’ organisations against forced displacement because of a steel plant project. An official probe into the killings by police of 12 adivasi protesters in Kalinganagar in 2006 remained suspended.
• Excessive police forced was used against protesters, protesting against forced displacement caused by the Narmada dam project, at Badwani in Madhya Pradesh injuring atleast 10 people and detaining 92.
• Around 50,000 adivasis continues to be internally displaced from the Dantewada area, a majority of them living in special camps. No serious attempt was made to ensure their voluntary return.

Security and human rights:

Jammu and Kashmir, Chhattisgarh, Nagaland and Assam:

• State and non-state actors continued to enjoy impunity for torture, deaths in custody, abductions, unlawful killings and disappearances.
• Little progress was made in the peace initiatives over Kashmir and Nagaland.
• India signed the International Convention for the Protection of All Persons from Enforced Disappearances in February and has still not ratified the Convention against Torture and Convention for the Protection of the Rights of All Migrant Workers and Members of their Families.
• India also has not permitted the visits by UN Special Rapporteurs on torture and on extrajudicial executions and Working Groups on Arbitrary Detention and Enforced Disappearances.
• Well- known activist Dr. Binayak Sen was arrested and was charged under the Chhattisgarh Special Public Security Act 2005 and the amended provisions of the Unlawful activities (Prevention) Act, 1967.
• The Armed Forces Special Powers Act, 1958, was still not repealed despite widespread protests.

Death Penalty:

• Atleast 100 people were sentenced to death although no executions took place.
• In December, India voted against a UN General Assembly resolution for a moratorium on the death penalty.

Prof. Mushirul Hasan appreciated the credibility of the Amnesty International’s Annual Report on the state of human rights worldwide that draws the attention of the governments to its observations on illegal detentions, unfair trials and torture in counter terror mechanisms, as against the 1948 promise enshrined in Article 9, 10, 11, 13 and 18 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Seeking from the report’s findings, he said, “at the end of 2007 there were more than 600 people detained without charge, trial or judicial review of their detentions at the US airbase in Bagram, Afghanistan, and 25,000 held by the Multinational Force in Iraq; 54 countries were recorded as conducting unfair trials; 800 people have been held at Guantánamo Bay since January 2002, some 270 are still being held there in 2008 without charge or due legal process; Amnesty International has documented 45 countries are documented as detaining Prisoners of Conscience”.

Speaking at the occasion, Sadia Dehlvi said, “The latest Amnesty report on the state of world human rights makes a sobering reading that informs on the “dismal record” during the last one year. The report ominously states, “as the world’s most powerful state, sets the standard for government behaviour globally”. Concerned Indian citizens are alarmed by the tendency of the Indian government to replicate the American model of “fighting terror”, with scant regard to India’s own record of human rights that continues to worsen in states such as Manipur, Nagaland, Kashmir and Gujarat. Amnesty’s report provides a useful repository of evidence that needs to be addressed by the Indian state and civil society in the pursuit of a just and equitable social order”.

Linking the role of media with human rights, Vinod Varshney advocated for a new way of describing, reporting and interpreting events of human rights violation so that issues can still be raised in changing environment. He said, “India needs a new campaign for cultural and social change based on awareness of human rights. Every society hates injustice and repression and media can bring the realities to the public notice thus it can help break social insensitivity and callousness. Without this India cannot get freedom from corruption and denial of opportunities to deserving masses and cannot develop a truly happy and harmonious society.”

A delegation from Amnesty International India also presented the report to the National Human Rights Commission chairperson Justice S. Rajendra Babu. Amnesty International Annual Report will also be presented to Vice-President Shri M. Hamid Ansari on June 2, 2008. The delegation will visiting and presenting the report to other leaders and activists in the subsequent days.

In London, Ms Khan said, “2007 was characterised by the impotence of Western governments and the ambivalence or reluctance of emerging powers to tackle some of the world’s worst human rights crises, ranging from entrenched conflicts to growing inequalities which are leaving millions of people behind”.

Amnesty International cautioned that the biggest threat to the future of human rights is the absence of a shared vision and collective leadership.

“2008 presents an unprecedented opportunity for new leaders coming to power and countries emerging on the world stage to set a new direction and reject the myopic policies and practices that in recent years that have made the world a more dangerous and divided place,” said Ms Khan.

Amnesty International challenged governments to set a new paradigm for collective leadership based on the principles of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

“The most powerful must lead by example,” said Ms Khan.

• China must live up to the human rights promises it made around the Olympic Games and allow free speech and freedom of the press and end “re-education through labour”.
• The USA must close Guantánamo detention camp and secret detention centres, prosecute the detainees under fair trial standards or release them, and unequivocally reject the use of torture and ill-treatment.
• Russia must show greater tolerance for political dissent, and none for impunity on human rights abuses in Chechnya.
• The EU must investigate the complicity of its member states in “renditions” of terrorist suspects and set the same bar on human rights for its own members as it does for other countries.

Ms Khan warned: “World leaders are in a state of denial but their failure to act has a high cost. As Iraq and Afghanistan show, human rights problems are not isolated tragedies, but are like viruses that can infect and spread rapidly, endangering all of us.”

Governments today must show the same degree of vision, courage and commitment that led the United Nations to adopt the Universal Declaration of Human Rights sixty years ago.”

Some of the most striking images of 2007 were of monks in Myanmar, lawyers in Pakistan, and women activists in Iran.

“Restless and angry, people will not be silenced, and leaders ignore them at their own peril,” said Ms Khan.

NOTES TO EDITORS

1. Amnesty International’s Report 2008, the organization’s annual global assessment of human rights, published on the 60th anniversary year of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, covers 150 countries.
2. The report highlights the following trends:
   • Targeting of civilians by armed groups and government forces with impunity;
   • Pervasive violence against women;
   • Promotion of torture and ill-treatment as acceptable modes of intelligence gathering;
   • Suppression of dissent and attacks on journalists and activists;
   • Lack of protection for refugees, asylum-seekers and migrants;
   • Denial of economic and social rights; and
   • Evasion of corporate accountability for human rights abuses.
3. Amnesty International noted the progress made over the last six decades, in particular laws and institutions on human rights, growing support for an end to the death penalty, prosecution of some cases of war crimes and crimes against humanity by international tribunals and national courts.
4. The Universal Declaration of Human Rights was adopted by the United Nations on 10 Dec 1948.
5. Re-education through labour is a system of punitive detention imposed by the police for up to four years without charge, trial or judicial review in China.