April 12, 2003 keralamonitor.com

Iraq: immediate measures needed to restore law and order

As widespread looting and disorder continue in many parts of Iraq, including Baghdad, Amnesty International is reminding the Coalition forces as occupying powers of their specific responsibilities under international human rights and humanitarian law.

"As forces of an occupying power they should urgently take measures to enforce law and order in the areas under their control, specifically by preventing acts of pillage, destruction, and violence to persons," the organization said.

The US and UK authorities were respectively warned in advance of the conflict, including by Amnesty International, that there was a grave risk that the fall of the Iraqi regime might precipitate such disorder and grave human rights violations, including reprisal killings.

"The Coalition forces must live up to their responsibilities and do all in their power to protect the right of all the people in Iraq." In addition, the health situation in Iraq is very critical with many hospitals, especially in Baghdad, unable to deal with the very high number of casualties. Access to health care and medicines is becoming very difficult as stocks are running low. There are acute shortages of badly needed drugs such as pain-killers, antibiotics and anaesthetics.

"The Coalition forces also have the obligation to ensure the provisions of food and medical supplies to the inhabitants in the areas under their control. They are also required to maintain the medical and hospital establishments and services, public health and hygiene," Amnesty International added.

Background

Art.43, Hague Regulations spells out the specific responsibilities of occupying powers under international humanitarian law. These include the duty to restore and maintain public order and safety. Article 55 of the Fourth Geneva Convention states that "to the fullest extent of the means available to it, the Occupying power has the duty to ensuring the food and medical supplies of the population; it should, in particular, bring in the necessary foodstuffs, medical stores and other articles if the resources of the occupied territory are inadequate."

Iraq : Briefing by Amnesty International to the Security Council

In an oral briefing to the members of the UN Security Council, Amnesty International today raised its concerns about the current situation in Iraq and made a number of proposals to ensure the immediate and long-term protection of human rights of the Iraqi people.

"The immediate challenge for the Security Council is to ensure the respect of the laws of war, including accountability for violations," Amnesty International said. "The broader task is to secure order and ensure that occupying powers respect their obligations to all the people of Iraq." The recommendations submitted to the Security Council include calling for:

* a moratorium on the use of cluster bombs;
* an end to the use of unlawful tactics by Iraqi forces;
* an investigation into abuses of international humanitarian law.

The organization stressed the need for the UN to play a leading role in addressing the question of impunity for past and current violations of human rights and humanitarian laws. The Security Council should:

* recommend the establishment of a UN commission of experts that would consult with Iraqi society and make proposals to end impunity;
* support the deployment of an effective human rights monitoring presence throughout the country.

"The most difficult challenge lies ahead: ensuring that in the post-conflict period human rights stand at the centre of the reconstruction effort," Amnesty International added.

"Addressing impunity for past violations, building a fair and effective justice system, ensuring respect for the rights of minorities and women, and insisting that the Iraqi people themselves drive the process forward, will be of central importance," Amnesty International concluded.

Iraq: Protect Government Archives from Looting

 

(New York, April 10, 2003) -- U.S. and allied forces should prevent
Iraqi government offices from being ransacked because government
documents will undoubtedly be key evidence in future war crimes trials,
Human Rights Watch urged in a letter to U.S. Secretary of State Colin L.
Powell and U.S. Secretary of Defense Donald H. Rumsfeld today.

Families who have been expelled from their homes, particularly from the
areas around Kirkuk in northern Iraq, will also need to rely on
government records to establish their property claims, ethnic identities
and place of origin.

Failing to protect Iraqi security archives could contribute to
retaliatory violence and vengeance killings, since the archives could
identify tens of thousands of security agents and collaborators by name,
Human Rights Watch said.

Looting has been reported in many Iraqi cities as the government
collapses, and U.S. and coalition forces have done little to stop it. In
Basra, British officials have publicly stated that they allowed the
looting of Ba’ath party buildings, which house important archives, as a
means of showing the population that the party had lost control of the
city.

“These government documents are critical evidence of twenty-five years
of atrocities,” said Kenneth Roth, executive director of Human Rights
Watch. “Countless families in Iraq will need access to these archives to
establish what happened to their missing relatives.”

Human Rights Watch estimates that some 250,000 to 290,000 Iraqis have
“disappeared” during the rule of the Ba’ath Party—taken away from their
homes by the Iraqi security forces, and never heard from again. The
archives of the Iraqi security services could finally allow the families
of those “disappeared” to find out what has happened to their long-lost
relatives.

Following the 1991 uprisings, Kurdish officials secured an estimated 18
tons of Iraqi state documents, which were transferred to the United
States and analyzed by Human Rights Watch. These captured documents
clearly established Iraqi government responsibility for the genocidal
Anfal campaign against the Kurds, and helped Human Rights Watch identify
the responsible Iraqi officials. The documents also provided important
evidence of other repressive actions by the Iraqi government, including
its campaign against the southern Marsh Arab population.

Future insecurity could be prevented if documents are preserved. For
many displaced Iraqis, official government records are all they have to
establish their identities, place of birth, ethnicity, or ownership of
property. Human Rights Watch has reported on the confiscation of
nationality correction forms, expulsion orders, and ration cards before
Iraqis were forcibly displaced from their homes
http://www.hrw.org/reports/2003/iraq0303/, making the copies available
in official government repositories even more important. Current
occupants of property abandoned by displaced people have an interest in
seeing these documents destroyed. More generally, if these records are
not preserved, displaced people will not be able to make property
claims, or even to establish their identities or those of their
children.

In the former Yugoslavia, many property documents were willfully
destroyed in the process of “ethnic cleansing,” and displaced people
have had great difficulty in returning to their former homes as a
result.

(New York, April 7, 2003) -- Iraqis responsible for past crimes should
be prosecuted before an international tribunal, not the U.S.-sponsored,
Iraqi-led judicial process outlined at the Pentagon today, Human Rights
Watch said.

A tribunal composed of Iraqi jurists selected by the United States would
not have the capacity to adjudicate the staggering scope of crimes by
the Iraqi government, including genocide, crimes against humanity, and
war crimes.

Iraq’s Revolutionary Courts, State Security Courts, and Special
Provisional Courts have been instruments of repression rather than
impartial judicial institutions, Human Rights Watch said. The Iraqi
state has also interfered with other civil and criminal courts.

Meanwhile, scholars, lawyers, and jurists in the Iraqi exile community
should not be expected to shoulder the burden of handling a high volume
of politically charged prosecutions, Human Rights Watch said.

“After decades of Ba’ath Party rule, the Iraqi judiciary has been deeply
compromised,” said Richard Dicker, director of the International Justice
Program at Human Rights Watch. “The Iraqis should certainly be involved
in this process, but the country’s justice system just doesn’t have the
capacity to handle a series of highly complicated trials. The local
solution proposed by the U.S. government would be a mistake.”

Dicker said the United States should support a tribunal composed of
international jurists, or a “mixed” tribunal composed of local and
international legal experts.

Human Rights Watch estimates that in the 1988 Anfal campaign, more than
100,000 Kurds, mostly men and boys, were trucked to remote sites and
executed. Since the late 1970s, as many as 290,000 people were
“disappeared” in Iraq. Between 1977 and 1987, some 4,500-5,000 Kurdish
villages were systematically destroyed and their inhabitants forced to
live in “resettlement camps.”

Iraq’s ethnic and religious composition may also complicate the
establishment of local tribunals. For example, a judicial panel composed
of victims of the Ba’ath regime, such as Kurds or Shi’ites, could not be
considered impartial.

Reforming the current courts and training judges for an Iraqi-led
tribunal would take considerable time, Dicker said.

“The U.S. government can’t solve this problem by offering some technical
assistance to the Iraqi judicial system,” said Dicker. “That system
needs to be rebuilt from the ground up.”

To read more on the war in Iraq, please see:
http://www.hrw.org/campaigns/iraq/