It’s best not to comment on international affairs at 5am when you’re cross-eyed. That said, having reflected on recent events, and given a comment left in a previous entry about the press conference given by the 15 Britons recently released by Iran, I wanted to present the entire issue in a new light.

According to the released Britons they were blindfolded, held in solitary confinement, made to confess to being in Iranian waters while be threatened with extensive jail terms, and, of course, having to undergo an event that would be traumatic for anyone, no matter who they were.

This treatment, no matter what has been done over the last six years by the United States, British, and others in The War On Terror (or in Iraq, where hundreds of thousands have perished), is unjustifiable. To some extent it can be viewed as the less of monumental evils that have taken place since 2001, but there is still no excuse for it. As a human rights advocate I must concede that point.

I first want to say that I give credit to the Britons for, as one of them put it, not causing an international incident by firing on the Iranians when they were first captured. That, in itself, showed tremendous bravery and forethought, and all of us should be thankful that cooler heads prevailed. But what the thirteen days of their captivity, and the debate surrounding it, have shown us is, I am afraid, something which many are unwilling to really and openly examine – the global reduction in human rights standards that has only been amplified by The War On Terror.

In an entry dated April 4th I wrote the following…

“Unlike our supposedly ‘civilized’ approach to dealing with those we detain - the British sailors and marines held by the Iranians were not shackled and forced to wear hoods, were not flown to undisclosed locations to be interrogated and tortured, and they will not rot in prison camps for years awaiting show trials. No video footage of Iranian military personnel will be uncovered showing the sailors and marines piled in human pyramids with their captors gleefully giving the thumbs up whilst resting against their naked, humiliated bodies.�

A reader commented soon after the press conference held by the released Britons that…

“Obviously the Iranians wouldn’t release any evidence of detrimental treatment as they’re fighting a propaganda war, but it’d be safe to assume that whent he cameras were off the actions that took place wouldn’t fall under the category of ‘civilized’ either.

According to this CBC story, and contrary to Matt’s quote above, the sailors content that they WERE blindfolded, they WERE interrogated and they WERE held in undisclosed locations (albeit, still in Iran). I think it’s naive and premature to suggest that a country such as Iran that operates largely on a primitive and barbaric legal system would have treated these prisoners much better than we should’ve expected.�

While the correction regarding the Britons being blindfolded and interrogated must be recognized as a fair counter argument, I wanted to place all of this in a broader context. By doing so, and please let me be clear about this, I am in now way condoning the actions of the Iranians. But the broader reality of prisoner detention and the legal black holes dug by nations that supposedly do not operate largely on primitive and barbaric legal systems should be brought into focus, and this incident is certainly a catalyst for such self examination.

I don’t want to enter into a discussion about the legalities of where the British were when they were apprehended by the Iranians (on that subject I would point you to the assessment of former British Minister Craig Murray), nor will I claim that the entire episode was not a propaganda coup for the Iranians, or that they didn’t purposely capitalize on it – they most certainly did, which was the primary point of my April 4 entry. Of course, the second that the 15 Britons were back in the UK, the spin doctors on both sides of the fence were hard at work trying to get what they could out of what had happened. To use the words of the commenter quoted, it would be naïve and premature to think that there isn’t damage control being asserted by the Blair government, just as the Iranians have certainly gone to great lengths to over amplify their position.

But the question ultimately has to be asked – at what point to we view this incident in a larger context with regards to human rights and the abuses that have taken place, and continue to, the world over?

At present there are literally hundreds of foreign detainees being held incommunicado at Guantanamo by the United States. Human rights groups, such as Amnesty International, have been denied access to them, as has the international Red Cross. The UNHRC itself has condemned the existence of the facilities there to no effect. Meanwhile, individuals such as President Bush and ex-Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld have claimed that conditions at the facility are humane and adhere to the Geneva Conventions.

So what has befallen those that have been detained there?

Besides being in legal limbo, or made to adhere to a legal process that is, for lack of a better term, a complete sham, they have endured, from what has been recounted by those released from the facility, such as the Tipton Three, abuses that far exceed those permitted by the Geneva Conventions.

Everything from water boarding to placing detainees in dark rooms with strobe lights for hours on end while music is blasted at high volume. Extreme physical abuse at the hands of interrogators and guards. Being confined in small, metal box-like rooms for months for failing to ‘cooperate’ with interrogators. Being denied the ability to stand or speak for excessive amounts of time. Having the Qur’an debased in front of them, in some instances urinated on. And that, in all honesty, is probably just the tip of the iceberg. While still in Kabul, detainees bound for Guantanamo were treated even worse, in some cases resulting in deaths. Upon the capture of alleged Taliban fighters, some were placed in an enclosed metal container truck which soon after ran out of oxygen. The solution to providing those inside the container oxygen was for Northern Alliance troops to simply shoot holes in the side of the container, killing dozens inside. These same people were allied with the United States during its invasion of Afghanistan in 2001.

I wish Guantanamo were the extreme example, but unfortunately it probably isn’t. The CIA has been operating rotating Black Sites throughout the world where ‘high priority’ detainees have been taken. Such individuals simply fall off the face of the earth and there is no way to even begin to determine how they have been treated or where they have been move to and from. It is known that Black Sites have existed in Africa, Eastern Europe, the Middle East, and Central Asia, though one can only speculate as to how many others there might be. Again, all access to such detainees has been denied, and it has only been recently that admissions of such sites have been forthcoming after pressure brought to bear by the European Parliament.

Lastly, there is the matter of Extraordinary Rendition, a process in which The United States and its allies, Canada included, ‘render’ suspects to nations known for their torture practices or to Black sites where prisoners can be interrogated off the books, so to speak. For those of you familiar with the case of Canadian Maher Arar, you know all too well the outcome of such operations.

“Manfred Nowak, a special reporter on torture, has catalogued in a 15-page U.N. report presented to the 191-member General Assembly that the United States, the United Kingdom, Canada, France, Sweden and Kyrgyzstan are violating international human rights conventions by deporting terrorist suspects to countries such as Egypt, Syria, Algeria and Uzbekistan, where they may have been tortured.�

If we are to look at the legalities of the detention of the 15 British sailors and marines and claim it unjust, then how are we to view the kidnapping of Osama Moustafa Hassan Nasr who, on February 17th of 2003, was snatch off of a Milan street, flown to Ramstein Air Base in Germany, and then rendered to Egypt where he spent four years in detention and was tortured before being released by an Egyptian court that claimed his detention had been ’unfounded’?

It might startle you to know that in February an Italian Judge indicted 26 Americans and 5 Italians over Nasr’s abduction, though all of the Americans have since left the country.

Be it the human rights abuses feeble justified by the War On Terror, those at the hands of the Khartoum backed Janjiweed militias in Darfur, the treatment of Chinese dissidents, or the detention of 15 Britons for 13 days by the Iranian government – there is a greater issue here that is constantly overlooked by far too many…

…at what point do human rights transcend the requirements of what a nation perceives is in its best interests? For no nation can claim itself just that would sacrifice the basic human rights of others for their own ends, no matter what those ends may be.

When I first saw images of the detainees at Guantanamo and the horrifying images from Ab Ghraib I naively thought to myself ’this is it, people simply will not stand for this’. But as time passed I came to realize that we will tolerate the debasement of humanity so long as we refuse to come to terms with the fact that there is no moral high ground when it comes to the declination of human rights. Because human rights are a universal proposition, and being such requires us to be universally humane.