Human Rights

THE CASE OF SOLDIER BRADLEY MANNING: ANOTHER LESSON FROM AMERICA

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23 year old intelligence analyst Bradley Manning was arrested in May 2010 for allegedly handing hundreds of thousands of US diplomatic cables, Iraq and Afghanistan war logs and videos of helicopter attacks to the whistleblower website WikiLeaks. Manning is charged with disclosing classified information and the capital offense of “aiding the enemy,” for which the death penalty can be imposed. Military prosecutors are requesting life in prison. Manning’s attorney, David E. Coombs, has filed a motion to dismiss the case based on the government’s violation of his client’s rights under Article 13 of the Uniform Code of Military Justice. The case is currently scheduled to start trial in March 2013.

After his arrest, soldier Manning was held in a camp in Arifjan, Kuwait for three months and then moved to the Marine Corps base in Quantico, Virginia, where he was held in maximum security for approximately 8 months. The oppressive, borderline-torturous measures to which he was subjected during his imprisonment have been known for some time, but last week, as he testified about such treatment, we were able to hear some of the details.

According to the soldier’s account, for the first 4 months of his detention, he was in solitary confinement and only allowed to leave his cell for 20 minutes per day. He was made to stand for long periods of time, and forced to remove his underwear at night for fear that he would use his underpants to commit suicide. Since he was considered a possible risk of self-harm, he was under observation throughout the night, with a fluorescent light located right outside the cell blazing into his eyes. When he would try to cover his eyes with his suicide blanket, or turn on to his side away from the light, the guards would bang on his cell bars to wake him up so they could see his face.

A 14 month long formal UN investigation conducted by UN special rapporteur Juan Mendez, denounced those conditions as “cruel and inhuman.” In his report to the UN General Assembly he stated: “[i]mposing seriously punitive conditions of detention on someone who has not been found guilty of any crime is a violation of his right to physical and psychological integrity as well as of his presumption of innocence.”

President Obama’s state department spokesman, retired air force colonel PJ Crowley, resigned after publicly condemning Manning’s treatment. A prison psychologist testified this week that Manning’s conditions were more damaging than those found on death row, or at Guantánamo Bay.

Article 13 of the Uniform Code of Military Justice states that: “[n]o person, while being held for trial, may be subjected to punishment or penalty other than arrest or confinement upon the charges pending against him, nor shall the arrest or confinement imposed upon him be any more rigorous than the circumstances required to insure his presence, but he may be subjected to minor punishment during that period for infractions of discipline.”

Article 16 of the UN Convention Against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment, which the United States ratified in 1994, states in part: “[e]ach State Party shall undertake to prevent in any territory under its jurisdiction other acts of cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment […] when such acts are committed by or at the instigation of or with the consent or acquiescence of a public official or other person acting in an official capacity.”

Does the seriousness of the alleged crime committed by soldier Manning justify the treatment to which he was subjected during his detention?

How is the information about the conditions of soldier Manning’s detention as well as what transpired in Abu Ghraib affecting America’s image around the world?

Have United States officials acted in violation of International Law? What should be the United States government official position in this matter?

Governmental Intrusions, Twitter and the Right to Privacy

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Malcolm Harris, one of about 700 protesters who participated in the Occupy movement march along the Brooklyn Bridge last October, was subsequently arrested and charged with disorderly conduct. The prosecutor in the case subpoenaed hundreds of Twitter messages alleging that they would show that the police did not lead protesters off the bridge’s pedestrian path and then arrest them, an argument that Mr. Harris was expected to make at trial.

Although Twitter originally refused, eventually, the criminal court Judge demanded that Twitter release the data or hand over its confidential earnings statements from the last two quarters so he could determine how much of a fine to levy against the company. Twitter, which keeps such financial data secret, eventually produced the  data.

The judge’s ruling said that, “If you post a tweet, just like if you scream it out the window, there is no reasonable expectation of privacy. There is no proprietary interest in your tweets, which you have now gifted to the world. This is not the same as a private e-mail, a private direct message, a private chat, or any of the other readily available ways to have a private conversation via the internet that now exist. Those private dialogues would require a warrant based on probable cause in order to access the relevant information.”

In its appeal, Twitter wrote that Harris’ tweets are protected by the Fourth Amendment “because the government admits that it cannot publicly access them, thus establishing that the defendant maintains a reasonable expectation of privacy in his communications.” The Twitter accounts in question have been closed and are no longer publicly available.

Technology that allows for the invasion of privacy evolves significantly faster than privacy protecting laws, and as a result, the laws are almost always reactive to these new legal scenarios and often rushed to meet the urgency of the case at hand. In this particular case, the question is whether a message on Twitter that a person posts for his followers is the same as a message “gifted to the world” as the Judge stated in his ruling, for which there is no reasonable expectation of privacy.

To the extent that Twitter allows a user to block a follower, the user has an expectation of privacy regarding his messages. I am pretty sure that Mr. Harris would have blocked a government representative who wanted to become a follower of his tweets.

Under these circumstances, did his messages become public? Were his messages “gifted to the world,” or are his messages more like emails, that would require the government to obtain a warrant to have access to them?

Secularization or Religious Intolerance?

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In 2009 in Switzerland more than 57% of voters and 22 out of 26 provinces voted in favor of imposing a national ban on the construction of minarets, the prayer towers of mosques. In 2011, France introduced a law against covering one’s face in public. Muslim women in full-face veils, or niqab, were banned from any public activity including walking down the street, taking a bus, going to the shops or collecting their children from school.  That same year, another law that banned saying prayers in the street, a practice by French Muslims unable to find space in mosques, came into effect in Paris.

In a recent ruling, a Cologne’s (Germany) District Court criminalized the religious circumcision of minors, even with the consent of parents.  In Hof, a small German town near the Czeck border, four German citizens filed criminal complaints with the local prosecutor against a local Rabbi alleging the crime of performing ritual circumcisions. In New York, the City’s Board of Health voted earlier this month to require parents to sign a consent form before having their child undergo an Orthodox Jewish circumcision ritual.

Those favoring the regulation of circumcisions cite as their main reason the health risks to the children of certain circumcision rituals. The principal reason put forth for banning the construction of minarets was to eliminate conflict. Proponents of the law prohibiting the covering of the face saw the law as a way to prevent the oppression of women in Islamic communities.

Is there a trend of governments trying to eliminate religion and impose secularism as the new religion?

Are governments being insensitive to religious beliefs, or are governments only looking out for the wellbeing of their citizens?

Do these laws violate the right of individuals to practice their religion?

Burning the Koran, Globalization and its impact on Human Rights

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Rimsha Masih – a Pakistani Christian girl believed to be 11 to 14 years old was arrested early August and accused of having committed blasphemy by burning pages of the Koran, an offense punishable by death under Pakistan’s laws. Not long after her arrest it was published that the girl was known to have a mental disability.

Masih’s arrest in August on blasphemy charges prompted international concern. The case has highlighted tensions between Pakistan’s Muslim and Christian communities, and since Masih’s arrest, Pakistan’s controversial blasphemy laws have come under heavy criticism. Protests against the treatment of Masih took place around the world in matter of hours after her arrest. In an unprecedented move, Masih was granted bail on Friday, days after police detained a Muslim cleric on suspicion of planting evidence to frame her.

Globalization and the extraordinary speed of information has made possible that we hear about human rights violations around the world, and that we feel connection to people and events that were previously unknown to us. Perhaps the fact that Masih’s case was heavily publicized played a role in the Judge’s determination to release her on bail. Perhaps the fact that the eyes of the world are fixed on the Pakistani Judge and its government will benefit her case.

If so, is globalization generally beneficial to the enjoyment of human rights?

Before answering in the affirmative consider the argument sometimes made that globalization is turning the world into a global market dominated and steered by the most powerful economic and political agents to maintain power and advantage at the expense of the most disenfranchised.

What do you think?