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Human
rights crises: we need early action
By JONATHAN
POWER
September 4, 2001
This article is written to coincide
with the U.S. publication this week of my book,
"Like
Water on Stone, The Story of Amnesty
International".Penguin
and Northeastern University Press.
The entry of Nato forces into Macedonia rises yet one
more time the vexing issue of the value of military
intervention. No one, whatever their ideological position
should wish this mission ill, but one must watch with
bated breath to see if this deployment led by British
troops ends up becoming counterproductive. Doubters
perhaps recall the Catholics of Northern Ireland
welcoming the first deployment of British troops on the
streets of Belfast with cups of tea, only to turn against
them with a savage viciousness, once it became clear that
London was in no great hurry to change the political
order of the Protestant ascendancy and the IRA became
adept at provoking retaliation on the Catholic
populace.
Thirty years later the troops are still there and
peace remains an elusive goal. Right now, the underdogs
in Macedonia- the Albanian minority- are fulsome with
praise at the arrival of NATO troops. But we wait to see
if the tables will be turned if Nato responds to the
understandable pressure from the Macedonian government to
be rather more demanding in their weapons collection
program. Besides, there are enough militants on the
Albanian side who will not rest until there is a greater
Albania, and it is in their interest to provoke both the
Macedonian army and the Nato forces to the point that
they visibly become an army of repression and
intimidation.
Invariably with Western interventions we come back to
the unanswered question: if decisions to militarily
intervene are motivated by the quest for justice, why do
the Western countries allow situations to deteriorate to
such unspeakable injustice? It was a fair comment about
the British government in the 1960s, which had
effectively shunted Northern Ireland off the political
map of the United Kingdom for the best part of half a
century. It was the same over Kosovo when the Nato
bombing of Belgrade started three years ago. The Nato
governments were the same governments that were willing
to wheel and deal with Slobodan Milosevic's government
during the break-up of the original Yugoslavia and
ignored events in Kosovo until the violence had reached a
critical mass.
If situations are allowed to deteriorate too far we
should not naively expect that some latter-day military
intervention could put things rapidly right. By the time
the TV cameras arrive it is probably already too late.
Certainly this was the experience in Somalia. Eight years
after the splendidly covered UN military intervention- in
which the U.S. army, arriving on a well photographed
beach, acted as an autonomous agent- there is no
functioning government and no judiciary. The unsuccessful
attempts of the U.S. Rangers to arrest one of the
guerrilla leaders diverted them from the ostensible
purpose of their mission. They killed and arbitrarily
detained hundreds of Somali civilians, including
children.
The point of all these horrendous examples is to
underline the need for prevention. If we have our wits
about us and not just our reactive impulses, we will
observe that none of the human fights tragedies of recent
years were unpredictable and perhaps not unavoidable. A
year before the genocide in Rwanda, the UN special
Rapporteur on Extrajudical Executions warned of what was
to come. For years before the Indonesian security forces
ran amok in East Timor, Amnesty International had
repeatedly exposed the Indonesian government's gross
violations of human rights, and in the provinces of Aceh
and Irian Jaya too.
Prevention work may be less newsworthy and more
difficult to justify to the public than intervention in
times of crisis. It requires the sustained investment of
significant resources without the push from public
opinion that happens when the media is rich with images
of hardship, suffering and the wailing of the innocents.
What, for example, are Western governments doing today
about the new war that the bad man of West Africa, the
Liberian leader, Charles Taylor, is stirring up in
hitherto peaceful Cote d'Ivoire? Or what about what
Amnesty International calls the "culture of acquiescence"
in Lebanon where the authorities appear to go along with
the harsh treatment of women prisoners? Or what about the
Indian government's apparent indifference to the plight
of the "disappeared" and their grieving families in areas
of local conflict, in particular in Kashmir, Manipur and
Assam?
Being vigorous and attentive to human rights abuses
means that governments must be prepared to condemn
violations of human rights by their allies as well as
their foes. It demands a halt to the sale of arms to
human rights violators. It means, in this new age of
universal jurisdiction, that there be no impunity for
unscrupulous army and police commanders or the
politicians who tolerate, excuse or even encourage their
behaviour.
Why should human rights activists be forced to choose
because of the inertia of their governments between
intervention and inaction? These are two forms of
failure. Prevention is the answer. The problem is not
lack of early warning, but early action.
I can be reached by phone +44
7785 351172 and e-mail: JonatPower@aol.com
Copyright © 2001 By
JONATHAN POWER
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