Thoughts from London

Human rights, what human rights hallo?
It must surely have been the height of humiliation for the man who, in his mind's eye, sees a Islamic terrorist behind every mound of desert sand. In this western dominated media world it was more than ironic that the once confident and arrogant Bush had to virtually prostrate himself before Arab television.

But even then he did not have the grace to make it a real apology, an apology that conveyed the deepest sorrow to the Iraqi people who had suffered decades of dictatorship and deprivation. Even as the photographs of Iraqi prisoners humiliated, tortured, harassed and degraded at the hands of western coalition soldiers circulated round the globe, George Bush failed to convince most that he is the civilised western leader he claims to be.

While seemingly apologising to the Arab world for the outrageous behaviour of troops under his command, Bush engaged in salesmanship saying that only in a democracy such atrocities are uncovered and punished.

Here in Britain, Prime Minister Tony Blair often portrayed in the British media as Bush's pet poodle, has basically followed the Washington line-apologising in a fashion but not contrite enough to distance himself from his coalition partners who are at the centre of the current political storm.

As though being locked together in the horrendous Abu Ghraib scandal was not enough, the Blair government is caught up in a vice of his own. That too involves the treatment of Iraqi prisoners but this time by British soldiers. A couple of weeks ago the Daily Mirror published photographs purporting to show the horrible mistreatment of prisoners in the British-controlled region of Iraq.

The government cried foul. Its military advisers claimed the pictures were fakes. In parliament on Wednesday, Tony Blair claimed they were undoubtedly fakes and the next day the Armed Services Minister said they were not even taken in Iraq.

Coming hard on the heels of pictures in the US media these pictures added to Blair's political troubles. But the story of political ineptitude or cover up lay elsewhere.

Far more damage is likely to be caused by the serious charges contained in a report by the International Red Cross which last year drew attention to the inhuman treatment of prisoners in Iraq. If true, these surely violate the Geneva Convention on the treatment of prisoners and other international and regional conventions and treaties on human rights.

The Red Cross report also reached Britain's representative in Iraq in February. For some peculiar reason this report with its strictures on the mistreatment of Iraqi prisoners by British soldiers too, did not reach the Prime Minister's table till a few days ago (so he says), does not seem to have been read by the Defence Minister and possibly glanced at by the Armed Services Minister about two months after it was first handed over by the Red Cross.

So where has the report been all this time? Was the bureaucracy trying to hide the truth? Why didn't the politicians inquire after it? Defence Minister Geoff Hoon glibly explains it away saying that those in Iraq were working under such pressure, they perhaps failed to send it to London early enough.

Now if that does not raise a laugh nothing will. In the early stages of the war on Iraq, President Bush and Prime Minister Blair were shouting themselves hoarse when the Arab TV station al- Jazeera showed the bodies of American soldiers killed in battle. Oh, they were so very angry, pointing to this terrible act as a violation of the Geneva Convention- as though the Geneva Convention applied to the media.

But it does apply to soldiers and how they treat their captives. The Blair government earlier said that the Red Cross had previously issued an interim report and that the government not only acted on some of the allegations contained in the report but even investigated allegations made prior to the interim report.

Surely if the interim report had been acted upon then one does not have to be an Einstein to realise that the final report might require even closer scrutiny and action. Both here and in Washington there appears to be an attempt to make the buck stop at lower levels of officialdom or the military.

So when President Bush says proudly that in a democracy such terrible wrongdoings will out and the perpetrators will be punished, what he means is that some poor sap will get it in the neck while the Rumsfelds, the Cheneys, the Blairs and their chums in high office continue in their merry way.

All the harrowing tales to come out of Iraq as a result of the evangelism of Bush and Blair have unfortunately obscured equally, if not more, dehumanising treatment of detainees that is going on in Guantanamo Bay and on American soil itself. Bush and Blair, the great advocates of democracy and the rule of law, claim allegations are investigated, that those accused will face trial.

But how true is this. Allegations against soldiers are often investigated by their own kind, playing judge and jury and the public is in the dark. As for justice, how fair and impartial is it? I am not speaking merely of cases involving suspected terrorists but also those in high and influential positions.

In February the respected International Commission of Jurists (ICJ) wrote to the US Chief Justice highlighting the impropriety of Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia taking a three-day hunting trip with Vice-President Dick Cheney whose appeal refusing to disclose information on an Energy Task Force he led, was to be heard by the Supreme Court.

That the three-day trip took place three weeks after the Supreme Court decided to hear Cheney's appeal. Moreover Justice Scalia had met Dick Cheney at least once before in November when the Supreme Court was still considering whether to accept Cheney's appeal. They had a private dinner together with another person very much in the news today- Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld.

As readers know it is not only in the US that judges of the Supreme Court behave in such a disgraceful manner, undermining the very foundations of fair and impartial hearings as guaranteed by the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights. Two years ago the Bangalore Principles of Judicial Conduct adopted by the Round Table Meeting of Chief Justices, elaborated on the concept of impartiality.

It said that: "A judge shall ensure that his or her conduct, both in and out of court, maintains and enhances the confidence of the public, the legal profession and litigants in the impartiality of the judge and the judiciary." Those wise jurists who drafted those principles never envisaged judges dining with litigants or hearing cases in which they are a respondent. That would be to debase the judiciary and reduce justice to a mock trial.

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