United Press International - Thursday, November 13, 2003
William M. Reilly, UPI United Nations Correspondent

The special representative of the secretary-general on human rights defenders, Hina Jilani, Thursday told the U.N. General Assembly's Social, Humanitarian and Culture Committee she agreed with the U.S. critics.

"Defenders across the world have raised concern that national security legislation (in various countries) ... is having a very negative impact upon human rights and may actually be counter-productive in addressing terrorism," she told the panel, adding that rights to protest were particularly affected.

Following the Sept. 11 attacks, the United States passed the Patriot Act, which gave the authorities unprecedented power to detain suspects without trial.

There have been reports of detention with suspects held incommunicado. There has also been an outcry by human rights organizations about ill-treatment, the monitoring of communications between lawyers and detainees, and secret evidence used against detainees.

Jilani seemed to be referring to these developments Thursday, and she went further.

"In many instances, these rights have been violated by using national security legislation arguing on state security, and in many instances, I have also noted that some of the actions that have been taken against human rights defenders serve no legitimate security purpose at all and sometimes don't even have any relevance to the objective of security," she later told reporters. "I have several cases in which lawyers, journalists, non-governmental organizations and political activists have been targeted particularly for speaking out against measures either now aggressively applied and previously existing or recently adopted to counter terrorism."

Security legislation and emergencies "are used as a smokescreen to allow dereliction from human rights obligations and persecution of defenders," Jilani told the panel. "These acts harm the genuine struggle to prevent and end terrorism."

Many states were taking measures in which "the scope of security legislation far exceeded the legitimate objective of strengthening security," she said.

She saw two motives behind the actions of certain states, which she declined to now name, but which she anticipated naming in a subsequent report to the Human Rights Commission.

"In some states, authorities appear to consider that defenders and the human rights standards they advocate are obstacles to the implementation of measures being adopted to counter terrorism," Jilani said. "Second, some states are abusing security and counter-terrorism concerns to illegitimately target defenders. The lower level of human rights guarantees applicable under typical security and counter-terrorist legislation are such that these instruments are particularly convenient for those governments willing to use the law to commit illegal actions against defenders."

The special representative said those states were violation of the 1948 declaration on human rights defenders. Articles 1 and 2 of the declaration say that "all human beings are born equal in dignity and rights" and are entitled to the rights and freedoms listed in the declaration. Articles 3 to 21 set out the civil and political rights of all people.

As an example, Jilani said, "I have taken up cases in which information on HIV/AIDS, reports of human rights abuses and statements critical of the human rights impact of government security policies have all been claimed by states as information whose publication is a threat to national security."

Some other charges cited were defamation of authorities, spreading false information liable to disturb public order, and tarnishing the reputation of the state.

"Defenders have themselves become the deliberate targets of human rights violations," she said. "They have been killed, 'disappeared,' tortured, targeted by death threats and intimidation, submitted to arbitrary arrest and detention and deported.

"In a great many instances defenders have been publicly accused by state authorities of being allied with groups engaged in violence," Jilani continued in her panel presentation. "Such tactics adopted to undermine credibility of defenders and their work have resulted in making defenders more vulnerable and in some cases serious harm has ensued to them."

In briefing reporters, the special representative said she was "particularly concerned" that the Human Rights Defenders Declaration was not being properly implemented.

"These concerns reflect a marginalization of human rights defenders and a de-legitimization of their role and their work. What we are witnessing is the exclusion of defenders from the monitoring of those human rights implicated in the context of security and counter-terrorism as well as their exclusion from monitoring such practices at times of emergency.

"In practice, this means that within states, human rights and democratic principles will be less well assured," she continued. "It also means that the international human rights mechanisms -- the treaty bodies, the special procedures, the Commission on Human Rights and the Office of the High Commissioner (of Human Rights) -- will be less well informed of human rights concerns."

She added that the U.N. Security Council, the General Assembly and the fledgling International Criminal Court in The Hague "can only suffer from a weakening of available human rights information and its implications for international peace and security. These trends pose a serious threat to the ability of defenders to continue their activities."

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