UK: Empty promises can't protect people from torture

[struggle4progress]

Joint letter to Tony Blair from Human Rights Watch and Liberty
Rt. Hon Tony Blair MP,
10 Downing Street,
London.
SW1A 2AA

23 June 2005



Printer Friendly Version

Related Material

Call for Action against the Use of Diplomatic Assurances in Transfers to Risk of Torture and Ill-Treatment
Memorandum, May 12, 2005

Global Torture Ban Under Threat
Press Release, May 12, 2005

'Diplomatic Assurances' Allowing Torture
Press Release, April 15, 2005

Still at Risk: Diplomatic Assurances No Safeguard Against Torture
Report, April 15, 2005

“Empty Promises:” Diplomatic Assurances No Safeguard against Torture
Report, April 15, 2004

Free Email Newsletter

Contribute to Human Rights Watch


Dear Prime Minister,

Human Rights Watch and Liberty are deeply concerned about the British government’s stated intention to seek diplomatic assurances against torture in order to deport terrorism suspects to their home countries or to third countries where they would be at risk of torture and other ill-treatment. Human Rights Watch and Liberty consider returns on the basis of such assurances as incompatible with the international prohibition on the return of persons to countries where they face a risk of torture (nonrefoulement). We urge you to reconsider this fatally flawed initiative and immediately to halt any negotiations with countries of return regarding securing such assurances.

Torture is prohibited absolutely under article 3 of the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR), incorporated into U.K. law by the Human Rights Act 1998. The ban includes cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment or punishment. There are no exceptions allowed, even during times of war or public emergency.

The torture ban incorporates a prohibition on the transfer of individuals to countries where they face a risk of torture and other ill-treatment. We were encouraged to see the commitment of your government to that principle in response to a February 25, 2005, query from the House of Commons Foreign Affairs Committee about the British Government’s policy on “extraordinary renditions.” In response, the Foreign and Commonwealth Office (FCO) stated that U.K. government policy “is not to deport or extradite any person to another state where there are substantial grounds to believe that the person will be subject to torture.”1 <snip>

As their name implies, diplomatic assurances are subject to the limits of diplomacy They entail trusting a state where torture and ill-treatment are serious human rights problems to honour unenforceable promises regarding a particular individual. Unlike the case of assurances against the death penalty, a practice that may be open and legal in a given country, torture is at once universally condemned, nearly always clandestine, and typically denied by states that practice it. There is no incentive for either the sending or receiving state to acknowledge if torture or ill-treatment ensues, as both would be in breach of fundamental precepts of international law. It confounds reason to claim that governments that regularly breach their binding legal obligation against torture and deny the practice will in a specific case keep their word because of a nonbinding assurance. These arguments are fully developed in the Human Rights Watch report, Still at Risk: Diplomatic Assurances no Safeguard against Torture (April 2005). <snip>

http://hrw.org/english/docs/2005/06/23/uk11219.htm