'Doublespeak undermines war on terrorism'

Doublespeak by nations like the United States and Britain has undermined their own war on terrorism and increased human rights violations from Colombia to North Korea, Amnesty International said yesterday.

Accusations that the United States - with the complicity of some European nations - while banning torture at home had been flying prisoners around the world for interrogation by countries with no such qualms had dented their moral authority, it said.

"Duplicity and doublespeak have become the hallmark of the war on terror," the human rights watchdog's secretary general Irene Khan told a news conference to publish its annual report.

"There is evidence of widespread torture in US detention centres," she said. "The US outsources torture to countries like Morocco, Jordan and Syria."

Rejecting the report, White House spokesman Tony Snow said the US has been "straightforward in our attempts, not only to secure and guarantee human rights at Guantanamo (prison) and elsewhere but also to fight a war that was based on trying to ensure democracy, human rights and the path towards freedom in Iraq and also to roll back a dictator who killed hundreds of thousands of his own people."

State Department spokesman Sean McCormack denied there was torture at Guantanamo, the jail at the US naval base in Cuba where prisoners from Iraq and Afghanistan are held, and accused Amnesty of doing "zip, zero, nothing" to help convict the former Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein, "one of the great human rights abusers of recent times".

Mr Khan said that at least seven European countries had sanctioned or turned a blind eye to the use of their airspace for so-called extraordinary rendition flights carrying prisoners for interrogation outside the US.

"Powerful governments are playing a dangerous game with human rights," Mr Khan said. "The scorecard of prolonged conflicts and mounting human rights abuses is there for all to see."

"Nothing can justify torture or ill-treatment.... You cannot extinguish a fire with petrol."

Despite international protests, the Guantanamo jail remained full of prisoners who had not been charged or tried, and many European governments had tried to wriggle out of their legal human rights obligations, Amnesty said.

At the same time, powerful forces had paralysed the UN just when it could have acted decisively in regions like Sudan's crisis-torn Darfur, Amnesty said.

"As a result, the world has paid a heavy price in terms of erosion of fundamental principles and in the enormous damage done to the lives and livelihoods of ordinary people," Mr Khan said.

The report noted rising sectarian violence in Iraq as well as killings and repression in Colombia, Chechnya, Afghanistan, Iran, Uzbekistan and North Korea as governments felt they had impunity to act because of the double standards they saw.

"There is no doubt the war on terror has given a new lease of life to old-fashioned repression," Mr Khan said. "These governments today do with much greater confidence what they used to do more quietly in the past."

It was not just the invaders of Iraq who bore responsibility for the spiralling violence around the world, Amnesty said. UN Security Council members Russia and China had consistently flouted human rights in pursuit of their own agendas.