Europe, Global, Global Geopolitics, Headlines, Human Rights

Q&A: ‘Europe Must Lead On Human Rights’

Interview with Amnesty International Secretary-General Irene Khan

BRUSSELS, Apr 16 2008 (IPS) - When Stojan Miodrac&#39s corpse was identified by his wife in 1991, his ears had been cut off and his eyes gouged out. He met his horrific end after being asked to produce his identity card when he went to a social security office in Croatia. His only transgression was that he bore an ethnic Serb name.

He was one of more than 100 civilians living in the small industrial town of Sisak who were murdered or forcibly disappeared during the war that engulfed the former Yugoslavia. Today – 17 years later – virtually none of those responsible for these crimes has been brought to justice.

As Croatia has applied for membership of the European Union, Amnesty International believes there is an onus on the Brussels institutions to ensure that there is accountability for crimes committed during the 1990s conflict, in which both ethnic Serbs and Croats were butchered. Amnesty&#39s Secretary-General Irene Khan raised the matter when she visited senior EU leaders Apr. 15.

She spoke about this and a range of other human rights issues with IPS Brussels correspondent David Cronin.

IPS: In the last few days you have called for an end to impunity for war crimes in Croatia. Shortly, you will be meeting Olli Rehn, the European commissioner handling negotiations, on the country&#39s bid for EU membership. What will you be asking him to do?

IK: What Amnesty is asking the European Union to do is to make sure that tackling impunity for war crimes remains a major issue in the accession negotiations.

We have seen some progress in Croatia in terms of cooperation with the (Hague-based international war crimes) tribunal. But there are key concerns about the lack of prosecutions and of investigations into war crimes, particularly where this concerns crimes against the Serbian minority. And there is also heavy politicisation of investigation and prosecution, mixed messages coming from high levels of the government, attacks on witnesses that have not been investigated.

What we are asking is that when the justice chapter is opened (in the negotiations), that it isn&#39t closed too rapidly without addressing these issues.

We met victims on both sides of the conflict in Croatia. We met the (ethnic Croat) mothers of Vukovar, for instance, and we went to Sisac, where there are Serbian victims. And on both sides the wounds are still very fresh. People want justice, they want reconciliation, but that is not going to happen unless there is an even-handed and impartial approach.

For the European Union this is a big challenge. It is the first time that they are dealing with war crimes and impunity in the context of an accession. So it is important that they handle it right because there may be others down the road in that region that they will need to deal with. They will need to deal with Kosovo, Serbia, Bosnia in the future, so it is very important that they handle Croatia correctly.

IPS: You will also be addressing asylum issues during your visit. Some organisations have voiced fears about the EU&#39s so-called returns directive, which is due to be debated by the European Parliament in the near future. Does Amnesty share the fears that it could make the detention of asylum-seekers routine?

IK: Our concerns about asylum in the European Union are long-standing. I will be discussing the returns directive with the European Parliament president (Hans-Gert Poeterring). The two aspects we are particularly concerned about are the detention issue and the re-entry ban (on deported asylum-seekers).

But we have a longer-term concern about the EU&#39s harmonisation process (for asylum and immigration laws). Over the years, this has been driving down standards towards a lowest common denominator, whereas the objective should be to harmonise around best practice. We hope that the European Union as it looks ahead at its asylum policies will try to set straight the mistakes of the past. The directive on (asylum) procedures, for example, Amnesty has described as a catalogue of bad practice.

Europe is a model for others. Europe cannot expect neighbouring countries and other parts of the world to be generous towards asylum-seekers and refugees, when it is not prepared to be itself.

IPS: Amnesty has urged EU governments to be more generous towards refugees from Iraq. What kind of generosity are you seeking?

IK: On Iraq, it&#39s actually a lottery. (Whether or not they are granted asylum) depends on where the plane lands. In Slovenia, it is 0 percent, whereas it is quite high in Sweden.

That is the kind of lottery on protection that we don&#39t want to see in the European Union. We&#39d like to see I would say a commonality of approach, but a commonality based on the protection needs of the people. On the one hand, we all know what the situation in Iraq is. We know how serious protection and security issues are. But on the other hand those seeking asylum are being denied it and being denied it on a very arbitrary basis depending on where they end up.

IPS: Amnesty has complained that European governments have failed to properly investigate the alleged European collusion with the CIA&#39s so-called extraordinary rendition programme. José Manuel Barroso, the president of the European Commission, was the prime minister in Portugal when CIA flights are believed to have passed through his country. Does he have a case to answer?

IK: We have been asking all the European Union governments that have been implicated in this issue of renditions to come clean. And we know recently (David) Miliband, the British foreign secretary, has admitted now that the Americans have retracted assurances they had earlier given about the use of Diego Garcia (a British dependency in the Indian Ocean). And that shows assurances on the basis of which the European governments claim that their territory was not being misused are not reliable. That puts on the European governments a responsibility to investigate and come clean.

But it also puts a responsibility on the European Union institutions to take a tougher stand on what has happened. On the one hand, the European Union projects itself as a union based on values of human rights and democracy. But on the other hand, one of the biggest human rights scandals in the European Union is being denied. And that has huge repercussions for Europe&#39s moral authority to champion human rights around the world.

IPS: What is your view about the European Union&#39s position – or arguably lack of a common position – on what has been happening in China and Tibet lately?

IK: I believe the EU will have its next human rights dialogue with China on May 15. This will be the last opportunity before the holding of the Olympic Games for the European Union to take a strong position. Dialogue takes place regularly but it is unclear what progress is being made through this process. From Amnesty&#39s perspective, we have been looking at China over the past year or so. And we have set some benchmarks against which we are measuring China&#39s performance. We&#39d like to see the European Union adopt some clear benchmarks and press China on them. That would also bring coherence to the European Union&#39s policy; there would be ways of measuring whether they are making progress or not.

The death penalty is an issue and I think China is still the top executioner in the world, although we have seen some improvements in China on the death penalty issue. But there are many other issues: Tibet, the use of excessive force in Tibet; the treatment of human rights activists in China; dissidents and others. All these have actually worsened in the run-up to the Games.

IPS: The European Union has a policy of including a human rights clause in the formal agreements it signs with countries in the wider world. But there has been a huge reluctance to invoke such a clause in the case of the cooperation agreement the EU has with Israel, despite the abuses carried out by Israeli forces in the Palestinian territories. Is there any point in having human rights clauses if they are not used?

IK: Putting the clauses in is the first step. But what we would like to see the European Union doing now is to move that forward. First, to find concrete ways of measuring whether those clauses are making any difference or not in the dialogue they have with different governments.

There is a tendency, of course, that once you have a human rights dialogue, to use it as a parking lot for human rights issues. It is important to make the point that human rights is not a stand-alone issue. It should be a cross-cutting issue, according to European values. Therefore, it should be a basis for all discussions with all governments.

IPS: Amnesty has tended to focus on civil and political rights, rather than economic and social rights. As you approach the 60th anniversary this coming December of the United Nations&#39 Universal Declaration on Human Rights, do you think that you should take a more comprehensive approach?

IK: For the last seven or eight years, Amnesty has been doing its own work to include economic and social rights along with (civil and political rights). We have looked at the issue of gender violence and its causes: discrimination, impunity and so on, which covered economic and social rights, as well as civil and political rights.

Victims and survivors don&#39t make a distinction between whether their right to health has been violated or right to a fair trial has been violated when they are beaten up and thrown into prison. From that perspective, Amnesty is taking a holistic view.

We feel that we cannot credibly address human rights problems if we fail to recognise the problems with which a lot of people are grappling: gender violence, poverty and discrimination. In Europe, we have been looking at the rights of Roma children, which includes the right to education. And those kinds of issues bring forth both economic and social rights and civil and political rights.