AMY GOODMAN: Washington’s so-called war on terror has made the world more dangerous by curbing human rights, undermining international law and shielding governments from scrutiny, this According to Amnesty International. Releasing its annual report into global human rights abuses in 2002, the London-based group made one of its fiercest attacks yet on the policies pursued by the United States and Britain in response to the attacks of 9/11. If the “war on terror” was supposed to make the world safer, it has failed, says Amnesty, and has given governments an excuse to abuse human rights in the name of state security.

We turn now to Josh Rubenstein of Amnesty International.

Welcome to Democracy Now!

JOSHUA RUBENSTEIN: Good morning.

AMY GOODMAN: Well, can you lay out the conclusions of your report?

JOSHUA RUBENSTEIN: Well, I think the theme we are emphasizing this year is that the “war on terrorism” has made it seem that human rights can be dispensable. In Pakistan, in Uzbekistan, in the war in Chechnya between the Russians and the Chechens, concern over human rights abuses has abated. The U.S. is turning a blind eye to issues of torture, to disappearances, the extrajudicial executions that are taking place in these countries, because they become useful to the United States in this so-called war on terrorism. And that is making human rights seem dispensable, and that’s one of our principal concerns.

Now, the latest annual report has entries on 151 different countries. And many of the reports we comment on, like torture in Albania or slavery in Mauritania, have no connection to the “war on terrorism.” They’re the kind of, if you’ll pardon the expression, garden variety repression and abuses that we find all over the world. But we had to emphasize how this “war on terrorism” is reducing respect for human rights in many different ways. For example, the United States is now pressuring countries that signed on to the International Criminal Court to agree that U.S. soldiers would not be prosecuted if something were to happen in their country. And this is encouraging lack of respect for international institutions that the United States itself helped to develop. And the international community relies on these institutions to speak up for human rights, to hold people accountable. So these are our very prominent concerns this year as we report on human rights in 2002.

AMY GOODMAN: Can you talk about Guantánamo Bay and what this has meant for human rights and a model of how to deal with prisoners?

JOSHUA RUBENSTEIN: Well, again, it may well be the case that the Taliban and al-Qaeda soldiers that we captured in Afghanistan back in the fall of 2001, that the U.S. needed to interrogate them, that maybe they were guilty of crimes. But you treat people as individuals. And if they can’t see a lawyer, if they’re not charged with a specific crime, then how do you know what they’re really responsible for?

And if the U.S. is going to back away from its obligations under the Geneva Conventions, that puts our own soldiers at risk when they are in the field of battle, because inevitably they would be captured, as happened in Iraq. And we would insist that the Geneva Conventions apply to our soldiers. So, this is also a very worrisome development that the U.S. is reluctant to invoke the provisions of the Geneva Conventions when it applies to these prisoners in Guantánamo.

AMY GOODMAN: What about the prisoners in Afghanistan?

JOSHUA RUBENSTEIN: Well, you know, it happens that last year there was a terrible incident where scores of prisoners died when they were confined in these metal containers. And the U.S. has never adequately investigated what happened there. Also, in December, The Washington Post reported that two prisoners in U.S. hands died under torture. Now, again, should the U.S. be using torture? We’ve always said that we stand for human rights and democracy. That excludes the use of torture. And yet, we find very serious allegations that U.S. forces have used torture and that we continue to tolerate torture, maybe even encourage torture, by our allies in the name of this “war on terrorism.”

AMY GOODMAN: Can you talk more about the U.S. military commissions?

JOSHUA RUBENSTEIN: Back in the fall of 2001, there was initial — they floated the idea of using military tribunals for people who were suspected of being connected to the attacks on 9/11. And they specifically talked about it with regard to Mr. Reid and Mr. Moussaoui, who were two people it seems were connected to those attacks. In the end, they decided to bring those people to trial in federal district court. Amnesty International and other human rights organizations very much believe in, have faith in our federal institutions, that the federal courts have the power, have the stamina to handle these kinds of difficult cases. And in the end, the administration backed down and agreed to prosecute those individuals in federal district court. I think that was a triumph for the human rights movement, because the White House was reluctant to go to our institutions, to trust our institutions. And I thought it was ironic that it was the human rights organizations that said, “No, the federal district court system can handle these cases.”

AMY GOODMAN: Well, Josh Rubenstein, I want to thank you very much for being with us, from Amnesty International, just released its report, which also takes on supermax prisons in the United States, the death penalty and police brutality. That report at Amnesty.org, and all sorts of links at our website at www.democracynow.org.