Sunday, May 28, 2006

Amnesty International Annual Report: Refugee rights and hypocrisy

If you want to reflect about the state of the world, a good resource to read is the annual report of Amnesty International. In particulary, I found interesting two part of this report: the first one is regarding the italian results on the the immigration policy. We, as italian, should accordly reflect on what we can change in the future, and about what we can propose as European Union.

The second part, is regarding the hypocrisy of some countries, that use to "export" democracy and people like if they have power to do that all over the world.
Below you can find some parts of this report...but if you want to read more and make new questions on the various issues, you can exploit the entire report on the Amnesty International website.
"Refugee rights were threatened by implementation of a new immigration law, the failure to legislate specifically to protect those seeking asylum, and reports of plans by Italy to build detention centres for migrants in Libya. The expulsion of more than 1,425 migrants to Libya throughout the year took place in defiance of international refugee law. Officials and civilian personnel convicted of physical assault and racial abuse at a detention centre for migrants received suspended prison sentences. The trials proceeded of police officers charged with assault and other offences in 2001 at the time of mass demonstrations in Naples and during the G8 Summit in Genoa. Italy failed to take action to address the impunity enjoyed by law enforcement officials, including by setting up an independent police complaints and accountability body, making torture a specific crime under the penal code, or requiring police officers to display prominently some form of identification".

"HYPOCRISY In 2005, the US Administration acknowledged the use of "renditions". Rendition is the practice of transporting persons forcibly and without due process from one country to another where they risk being interrogated under torture or ill-treatment. Renditions are illegal under international treaties to which all European governments are party.2005... year in which evidence was made public of involvement of European governments in US-led renditions.1000... approximate number of secret flights directly linked to the CIA that used European airspace between 2001 and 2005, some of which may have carried prisoners.100s... estimated number of persons who may have been subject to renditions around the world.6... number of European countries implicated in the rendition of 14 individuals to countries where they were tortured. 1... number of European countries that has issued arrest warrants for CIA agents suspected of kidnapping prisoners for rendition".

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