Announced at HRP Event: UN to Investigate Civilian Deaths from Drone Strikes

Posted by Cara Solomon

At a packed event co-sponsored by HRP and the Harvard National Security and Law Association, Ben Emmerson, the UN Special Rapporteur on Human Rights and Counter-terrorism, announced a UN investigation yesterday into civilian deaths from drone attacks, as well as other forms of targeted killings conducted during counter-terrorism operations.

In his remarks, which you can read here, Emmerson took aim at the Obama administration for neither confirming nor denying the existence of the U.S. drone program- while publicly trying to justify the legality of drone strikes.

“In reality the administration is holding its finger in the dam of public accountability,” he said, according to the prepared remarks. “There are now a large number of law suits, in different parts of the world, including in the UK, Pakistan and in the US itself, through which pressure for investigation and accountability is building.”

He pointed to figures from the London-based Bureau of Investigative Journalism that suggest at least 474 civilians have been killed in Pakistan alone, and that 176 children are reported among the deaths. (For more on civilian deaths from drones, here is a joint report recently released from Stanford University and New York University, “Living Under Drones.”)

Emmerson also delved into the U.S. presidential elections, particularly around the issue of waterboarding, which Obama believes is torture. Mitt Romney has said he does not believe it is torture.

“Let us be clear on this,” Emmerson said. “Secret detention is unlawful as a matter of international law.  Water-boarding is always torture.  Torture is an international crime of universal jurisdiction. The torturer, like the pirate before him, is regarded in international law as the enemy of all mankind.  There is, therefore, a duty on States to investigate and to prosecute acts of torture.”

Mindy Roseman, Academic Director for HRP, said she was struck by the substance of his speech. The event has already made international news.

“Emmerson’s announcement is bold and courageous, and at the very least should renew interest in holding the US government accountable for military actions, such as drone strikes, ostensibly undertaken to stop terrorism,” she said.

For those with particularly sharp eyes, here is a classroom video of the event. And here is a selection of media coverage of Emmerson’s speech:

The Guardian

The Washington Post

The Harvard Crimson

Common Dreams

Today: Human Rights, Counterterrorism, and the U.S. Elections

Event Notice

October 25, 2012

“Enemies of All Mankind”

A Talk by Ben Emmerson

UN Special Rapporteur on the promotion and implementation of human rights and fundamental freedoms while countering terrorism

12- 1 pm

Hauser 104

Lunch Provided

Ben Emmerson QC will describe the principal challenges currently facing his UN mandate, including recent developments on the accountability of public officials for involvement in the US policies of targeted killing, torture, secret detention and rendition.  He will also address the positions taken on some of these key issues by the candidates to the US Presidential Election, and give an overview of the human rights issues currently heading the UN’s counter-terrorism agenda.

Emmerson has more than 25 years of experience in domestic and international human rights law, international humanitarian law and international criminal law. He has litigated extensively in domestic courts, the European Court of Human Rights, the International Court of Justice, and the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia, including on domestic and international terrorism cases.

If We Could Ask the Candidates One Question, It Would Be…

Posted by Amelia Evans, LLM ’11

It’s impossible to turn on the radio, walk into a coffee shop, or even sit down at the dinner table without hearing talk of the latest U.S. presidential debate topics.  But amidst the analysis of bird-counts and who has the largest binder full of ladies, certain issues are clearly being silenced in the election—and in U.S. political discourse altogether.

On the day of the final presidential debate, I asked staff at HRP and HIRC: if you had the chance, what question would you put to the candidates tonight?  Here’s what some of them said.

Tyler Giannini:  “When will Guantánamo be closed?”

Meera Shah: “Governor Romney, you’ve stated that you would make U.S. military and foreign aid to Egypt conditional on its respect for human rights. Do you intend to hold other recipients of U.S. aid, such as Israel, which gets $3.1 billion annually in U.S. aid, accountable to the same standards?  President Obama, how will you promote respect for human rights in countries receiving U.S. aid?”

Cara Solomon: “What is the one issue you care deeply about but do not mention on the campaign trail—and why?”

Phil Torrey: “One of the greatest powers a President has is nominating judges to serve in the federal judiciary.  Currently, there is an alarming number of vacant federal judge positions, which severely hampers individuals’ access to justice.  What is your strategy for addressing this problem, and based on what criteria would you nominate federal judges for confirmation?”

Yennifer Pedraza:  “As a recent college graduate, I’m concerned about my future.  The presidential campaigns have focused much of their attention on small businesses.  Yet, in a world where a bachelors degree is necessary to get even a basic job, my loans and interest rates are overwhelmingly high, so a small business is far from my mind and beyond my scope of opportunity.  What are you going to do to help current students and graduates who are paying off loans with interest rates ranging from seven to ten percent?  How will you help these individuals get to a place where they can envision a future without debt, as home owners, with the ability to financially support a family?”

Mindy Roseman: “What is your position on the Helms amendment, which prohibits U.S. foreign assistance to go to any organizations that work to legalize or provide services related to abortion?”

Fernando Delgado:  “Though the United States is a diverse nation, it has a political system dominated by only two parties.  Many citizens express frustration with this dearth of viable electoral choices.  What steps, if any, would you take to encourage a move away from two-party system in the United States?  For instance, would you support the modest electoral reform of instituting a two-round voting system with a multi-party first round and second round run-off between the top two candidates?  In several multi-party democracies around the world, a two- round electoral system encourages citizens to vote for candidates who actually best represent their views by eliminating the fear that a vote for an independent or small party candidate would be irrelevant to the outcome of the election or ‘wasted.’  Citizens could save their ‘strategic’ voting between the two front-runners for the second round run-off.”

Bonnie Rubrecht: “For nearly two decades, the Violence Against Women Act has protected undocumented immigrant women from abuse by American citizens.  Now its reauthorization is stalled in Congress.  If this act is allowed to expire, what protections will be provided to the women who are currently covered under it?”

And me?  I would ask something raised by one of our clinical students, Sean Hamidi, last week: “I am hearing a lot about ‘the very wealthy’ and even more about ‘the middle-class,’ but I am hearing absolutely nothing about ‘the people living in poverty.’  Why?”

Amelia Evans, LLM ’11, was the 2011-2012 Global Human Rights Fellow.  She is currently preparing to launch a new organization, the Institute for Multi-Stakeholder Initiative Integrity.

Today, Wednesday, Oct. 10: Alex Whiting on the International Criminal Court

Event Notice

Wednesday, October 12, 2012

“Is the International Criminal Court Succeeding?”

12- 1 pm

Wasserstein 2009

Please join us for a talk with Alex Whiting, Assistant Clinical Professor at HLS and Prosecution Coordinator with the International Criminal Court (ICC), The Hague, The Netherlands. Previously, Whiting was Trial Attorney and Senior Trial Attorney in the Office of the Prosecutor at the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia (ICTY), The Hague, The Netherlands.

Performance Art (and Other Pictures from HRP Orientation)

Posted by Cara Solomon

Here’s a Friday afternoon treat for you: an iconic image from the law school experience.

When Fernando spotted this display at our recent HRP Orientation, he rightly described it as a piece of performance art—except, of course, that it wasn’t.

Below are some other images from the event. Apologies in advance for the poor picture quality, and a belated thanks to all who came, learned, and ate. We were so happy to have you there.

Tyler talks to a full house at HRP Orientation.Thanks for coming!

Fernando speaks with students about his work on prison reform in Brazil.

Mindy and Deborah speak with a student about (I’m guessing here) their fall seminar on Gender and Human Rights.

Ana Lise Feliciano Hansen and James Tager, co-presidents of HLS Advocates for Human Rights, speak with a student about the group’s work. My bet is that James is saying something odd here. Hence, the laugh.

Meera speaks with a student about her projects in the Middle East.

Today, Sept. 24: Panel on Arbitrary Detention and Its Prevention

Event Notice

“Arbitrary Detention and Its Prevention: Comparative Perspectives”

5-7 pm

Hauser 104

What makes detention arbitrary?  How should arbitrary detention be prevented or remedied?  Panelists will compare and contrast answers from the European and Inter-American human rights systems, the law of war, and U.S. domestic law.

Featured speakers: Professor Fionnuala Ni Aolain, of the University of Minnesota School of Law; Clinical Instructor Fernando Delgado, of Harvard Law School; Professor Gabriela Blum, of Harvard Law School; and Professor Carol Steiker, of Harvard Law School. Professor Gerald L. Neuman, Director of the Human Rights Program at HLS, will moderate the discussion.

Irish Parliament Receives Further Overwhelming Evidence of State Involvement in Magdalene Laundries Abuse

Posted by Maeve O’Rourke, 2010 HRP Global Human Rights Fellow and Advisory Board Member for Justice for Magdalenes

Today, we at the Justice for Magdalenes (JFM) advocacy group presented every member of the Irish houses of Parliament with a 146-page submission entitled “State Involvement with the Magdalene Laundries.”  It contains overwhelming proof, if further proof were needed, that the Irish State was directly complicit in and knowingly turned a blind eye to the horrific abuse of women and girls in the Magdalene Laundries, which operated from 1922 until 1996.

Survivors of the Laundries have been waiting decades for an apology and the redress they deserve.  After significant national and international pressure, the State finally took a small step forward last summer, setting up a Committee “to establish the facts of State involvement with the Magdalen Laundries, to clarify any State interaction, and to produce a narrative detailing such interaction.”  But the government has been hiding behind the Committee since then.

Every time JFM and others have pressed the Minister for Justice on the ongoing lack of an apology and restorative justice for the women, the Minister has held fast to the line that the government “will not pre-empt” the findings of the Committee.  To make matters worse, the Minister announced last week that the Committee had revised its “mid-2012” deadline and that its final report may not be published until the end of this year.

This is the same Minister for Justice who, while in opposition in 2009, called for immediate redress measures because of the “absolutely irrefutable evidence” that the state was “directly complicit” in the Magdalene Laundries abuse.

We have been providing the government with proof of its complicity for years. Our final submission to the Committee in August was supported by over 4,500 pages of documentary evidence—including 795 pages of testimony from Magdalene survivors and other witnesses to the State’s involvement in the Laundries’ system of slavery, servitude, and forced labor.

But we are not the only advocates to speak out on this issue.  The UN Committee against Torture recommended 15 months ago that survivors obtain redress within one year.  Nearly two years ago, the Irish Human Rights Commission found clear evidence of state responsibility for the Magdalene abuse and recommended an immediate investigation and compensation mechanism.

Still, the State says it needs more time.

Adnan Latif Died on Saturday

Posted by Deborah Popowski

Adnan Latif died on Saturday. He died in Guantánamo.  The Pentagon says he was 32 years old. David Remes, one of his lawyers, says that his documents show that he was 35 or 36 years old.  Given the U.S. government’s dismal track record in getting its facts straight on the people they have rendered, tortured and detained for years without charge, I’ll go with David’s assessment.

Adnan Latif, who died on Saturday in Guantánamo after being held there since 2002, without charge or trial.

Either way, Adnan and I were close in age.

Of all the things I could write about, this is what I keep coming back to.  I’m trying to figure out what it is about this particular piece of horror news that is making me cry.  This is a question worth asking when reading horror news is a big part of what you do for a living, and the things that once made you cry – the things that you imagined would make everyone cry – stop doing so as regularly, probably because crying all the time, every day, would be too hard.

Last night, I taught my first class of the semester, and today, the mad, exhilarating rush of project work begins, but all I can think about is how long a decade is.  I’ve been thinking about how when Adnan was 25, or maybe 24, my government bought Adnan from the Pakistanis for $5000, and flew him, shackled and drugged, to Guantánamo. And how it was around the same time that this same government flew me to Niger to serve in the Peace Corps, where I explained to Muslims that, never mind what they heard on the radio, my country was not at war with Islam.

The series of images flickers by, our decades in review in split-screen, the realization that for the last ten years, while I made my way through nine homes and a dozen countries; while I explored two other careers before applying to, attending, graduating from and coming back to teach law school; while I was meeting, befriending, falling in love with and marrying my husband—Adnan was sitting, pacing, writing, and fighting in a cell, ill and far from his loved ones.

His lawyer David, who spent the better part of the last few years fighting alongside Adnan for justice, released this statement about him:

“Slightly built and gentle, he was a father and husband. He was a talented poet and was devoutly religious. He never posed a threat to the United States, and he never should have been brought to Guantanamo. The military has not stated a cause of death. However Adnan died, it was Guantanamo that killed him. His death is a reminder of the human cost of the government’s Guantanamo detention policy and underscores the urgency of releasing detainees the government does not intend to prosecute.”

Adam Cohen of The Atlantic summarizes here, with devastating efficiency, the perversity of the system that brought him to this death.

Reckoning With Torture: A Free Public Reading on August 21

Event Notice

“Reckoning with Torture”

8 pm

Central Square Theater

450 Massachusetts Avenue

Cambridge, MA

This free public event will feature a dramatic reading of official documents, including testimonies of torture from the “War on Terror.” These declassified documents are among more than 130,000 obtained by the ACLU and partners, who litigated for years to make them public. Following the readings, Clinical Instructor Deborah Popowski, of the Human Rights Program at Harvard Law School, will moderate a conversation with the audience and the actors involved.

This performance is part of the ACLU’s larger “Reckoning with Torture” project, based on the premise that engaging with the documentary record is a key step towards coming to terms with the human rights abuses committed by the U.S. government. Director Doug Liman (The Bourne Identity) will produce a film from the footage of readings by professional actors, former military officials, and ordinary people. To learn how you can contribute your own reading and submit the footage, click here.

Suppressing Protest: Human Rights Violations in the U.S. Response to Occupy Wall Street

Posted by Deborah Popowski

The first report in our multi-clinic Protest and Assembly Rights Project series calls on New York City authorities to stop the pattern of abusive policing of Occupy Wall Street protests.  Lead authored by our partners at NYU and Fordham, the report released today documents in painstaking detail how the New York police and other city officials violated the rights of Occupy protesters.

It also provides background on the national movement and outlines the international legal framework that protects the human rights of assembly and expression, which the United States is legally bound to respect, protect, promote and fulfill. Reports focusing on other cities–including one on Boston authored by our own Clinic–are expected to be released later this year, so stay tuned.

Within hours of its release, this first report has already generated good media coverage, with articles in The New York Times, Alternet, The Atlantic and Gothamist. Below you’ll find the press release from our partners.

Legal Experts File Complaints about Widespread Rights Violations in Policing of ‘Occupy’ Movement

Call on NYC, U.S. Justice Department, UN to Protect Protestors’ Rights

(New York, NY, July 25, 2012) – The City of New York must take immediate action to correct the clear pattern of abusive policing of Occupy Wall Street protests, said legal experts in a complaint filed today with New York City authorities, the U.S. Department of Justice, and the United Nations. The complaint is based on a report providing in-depth documentation and legal analysis of widespread human rights violations in New York City’s treatment of Occupy protests over the past ten months.

“Recently, officers repeatedly yanked the broken collarbone of a protester as he begged them to stop hurting him. And just two weeks ago, a phalanx of officers removed a grandmother from a park for the ‘crime’ of knitting in a folding chair, arrested a man trying to help her leave, and then arrested another man filming
the incident,” said Professor Sarah Knuckey, one of the report’s principal authors, who also witnessed these incidents. “These are just two of hundreds of examples we document in our report, demonstrating a pattern
of abusive and unaccountable protest policing by the NYPD.”

This report is the first in a series by the Protest and Assembly Rights Project, a national consortium of law school clinics addressing the United States response to Occupy Wall Street. In their 132-page report—Suppressing Protest: Human Rights Violations in the U.S. Response to Occupy Wall Street—the experts catalog 130 specific alleged incidents of excessive police force, and hundreds of
additional violations, including unjustified arrests, abuse of journalists, unlawful closure of sidewalks and parks to protesters, and pervasive surveillance of peaceful activists. Yet, to date, only one police officer is known to have been disciplined for misconduct in the context of Occupy Wall Street policing.

“The excessive and unpredictable policing of Occupy Wall Street is one more example of the dire need for widespread reform of NYPD practices. These violations are occurring against a backdrop of police infiltration of activist groups, massive stop-and-frisk activity in communities of color, and the surveillance of Muslims,” said Emi MacLean, a human rights lawyer and primary author of the report. “This report is a call to action.”

The report calls for urgent state action, including:

• The creation of an independent Inspector General for the NYPD;
• A full and impartial review of the city’s response to OWS;
• Investigations and prosecutions of responsible officers; and
• The creation of new NYPD protest policing guidelines to protect against rights violations.

If New York authorities fail to respond, the report calls for federal intervention.
“The U.S. response to the Occupy movement – which itself emerged as part of a wave of global social justice protests—is being closely watched by other governments,” said Professor Katherine Glenn, one of the report’s principal authors. “In the face of this international attention, this report shows that New York City’s response actually violates international law and, as such, sets a bad example to the rest of the world. The city now has an opportunity to set this right through reforms that reflect just and accountable policing practices.”

This report is the first in a series by the Protest and Assembly Rights Project. This report focuses on New York City, and was authored by the Global Justice Clinic (NYU School of Law) and the Walter Leitner International Human Rights Clinic (Fordham Law School). Subsequent reports will address the responses in Boston, Charlotte, Oakland, and San Francisco. Participating law clinics are at NYU, Fordham, Harvard, Stanford, Rutgers-Newark, Charlotte, and Loyola-New Orleans.

The report is available at:
http://www.chrgj.org/projects/suppressingprotest.pdf

Contact: Professor Sarah Knuckey (NYU) +1.212.992.8873; Emi MacLean, Human Rights Lawyer, +1.212.998.6714