Saturday, January 20, 2007
Human rights violations in Egypt
Human rights activists have revealed inhumane punishments inside Egyptian prisons. Such crimes include physical torture and rape (digusting details in LATimes). The victims are often guilty of petty offenses, such as defying police authority.
The government has imprisoned at least two police officers for such crimes.
Nonetheless, the United States has paid little attention to the crimes. Human Rights Watch is campaigning for more oversight of police and prison activities from the Egyptian Government.
The United States could send an envoy to Egypt as an effort to both contain police corruption and demonstrate a commitment to protecting human rights; this demonstration is important since the world has been critically aware of US prison treatment for suspected terrorists.
For more information, visit LATimes:
http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/world/la-fg-egypt20jan20,1,1296114.story?coll=la-headlines-world&ctrack=1&cset=true
The government has imprisoned at least two police officers for such crimes.
Nonetheless, the United States has paid little attention to the crimes. Human Rights Watch is campaigning for more oversight of police and prison activities from the Egyptian Government.
The United States could send an envoy to Egypt as an effort to both contain police corruption and demonstrate a commitment to protecting human rights; this demonstration is important since the world has been critically aware of US prison treatment for suspected terrorists.
For more information, visit LATimes:
http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/world/la-fg-egypt20jan20,1,1296114.story?coll=la-headlines-world&ctrack=1&cset=true
Comments:
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Hmmm...I wonder, do we have the moral authority to pressure the Egyptians on their treatment of prisoners? Especially in that part of the world? We don't even have the moral authority in discussions with the Europeans on prisoner treatment. I am certainly not one of these people that thinks the United States is a source of pure evil in the world, but we have a lot of work to do considering our own treatment of prisoners before we can go with a straight face to other states and demand they change their behavior.
We have long had a problem with our treatment of criminal punishment because of the death penalty, which puts us closer to the Middle Eastern governments than the Western governments, but we had a first-rate judicial system committed to adminstering Due Process with the Equal Protection of the laws guaranteed(with obvious problems, like the race issue in criminal prosecution). The point is, we are not even meeting our own baseline requirements for Due Process.
Everytime a court challenge comes up the administration tweaks the underlying government behavior and the courts drop the challenge for mootness. Enter the next challenge to the new unlawful government activity, the government tweaks it again, the challenge is dropped for mootness. Repeat ad nauseam. I think our courts can allow the challenge to prevail over the mootness doctrine if there is evidence of a substantial likelihood that the challenged behavior will recur and the injured party will have a similar "case or controversy" problem.
It may take an analogous extension of this approach, since the government is technically not committing the "same" wrong, but a slightly different wrong in the same spirit...it may just take a little judicial courage. As one of our greatest American justices Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr. said, "The life of the law has not been logic but experience." We need to overcome the procedural formalism that has allowed the administration to squirm out of judicial review.
I am not against us putting diplomatic pressure on governments that violate norms of human rights, civil rights, and humanitarian principles (a more evenhanded approach to the Israeli-Palestinian situation would be a fine place to start...we will not give Israelis helicopters until they start at least narrowly tailoring their murder of Palestinians, and we will not give financial aid to the Palestinians until the stop murdering Israelis). I am just not sure that we can go into the procedural and punitive injustices of other states until we have at least paid lip-service to some of the worst punitive and procedural injustices our government has committed in nearly 50 yrs.
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We have long had a problem with our treatment of criminal punishment because of the death penalty, which puts us closer to the Middle Eastern governments than the Western governments, but we had a first-rate judicial system committed to adminstering Due Process with the Equal Protection of the laws guaranteed(with obvious problems, like the race issue in criminal prosecution). The point is, we are not even meeting our own baseline requirements for Due Process.
Everytime a court challenge comes up the administration tweaks the underlying government behavior and the courts drop the challenge for mootness. Enter the next challenge to the new unlawful government activity, the government tweaks it again, the challenge is dropped for mootness. Repeat ad nauseam. I think our courts can allow the challenge to prevail over the mootness doctrine if there is evidence of a substantial likelihood that the challenged behavior will recur and the injured party will have a similar "case or controversy" problem.
It may take an analogous extension of this approach, since the government is technically not committing the "same" wrong, but a slightly different wrong in the same spirit...it may just take a little judicial courage. As one of our greatest American justices Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr. said, "The life of the law has not been logic but experience." We need to overcome the procedural formalism that has allowed the administration to squirm out of judicial review.
I am not against us putting diplomatic pressure on governments that violate norms of human rights, civil rights, and humanitarian principles (a more evenhanded approach to the Israeli-Palestinian situation would be a fine place to start...we will not give Israelis helicopters until they start at least narrowly tailoring their murder of Palestinians, and we will not give financial aid to the Palestinians until the stop murdering Israelis). I am just not sure that we can go into the procedural and punitive injustices of other states until we have at least paid lip-service to some of the worst punitive and procedural injustices our government has committed in nearly 50 yrs.
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