LONDON, May 25, 2005 (IslamOnline.net & News Agencies) – Human rights are in retreat worldwide because of the US war on terror which encouraged governments around the world to roll back the rule of law, taking their cue from the global US anti-terror rhetoric, Amnesty International said Wednesday, May 25.

"The USA as the unrivalled political, military and economic hyper-power sets the tone for governmental behavior worldwide," Secretary General Irene Khan was quoted as saying by Reuters in the foreword to Amnesty International's 2005 annual report.

"When the most powerful country in the world thumbs its nose at the rule of law and human rights, it grants a license to others to commit abuse with impunity," she added.

In its wide-ranging more than 300-page review of 131 countries and five world regions, the London-based watchdog said the US selective disregard for international law and reported abuses of detainees had sent a "permissive signal to abusive governments around the world.

"The detention facility at Guantanamo Bay has become the gulag of our times, entrenching the practice of arbitrary and indefinite detention in violation of international law," Khan said, according to Reuters.

"The U.S. government has gone to great lengths to restrict the application of the Geneva Convention and to 're-define' torture," she said, citing the secret detention of suspects and the practice of handing some over to countries where torture was not outlawed.

Cover of the Amnesty report. (Reuters)

The international rights watchdog also accused the US-led forces of committing gross human rights violations in Iraq and failure to investigate abuses of prisoners in the occupied country, Agence France Presse (AFP) said.

The group said the US forces carried out unlawful killings and arbitrary detentions, torture and ill-treatment.

Thousands of Iraqi prisoners were detained in 2004 without charge on suspicion of anti-US activities and were "held in harsh conditions, including in unacknowledged centers" for months, the watchdog said.

It added that despite the scandal of the prisoners' abuses, such practices were going elsewhere as the Bush administration sought to "redefine torture".

Amnesty, however, said the United States was by no means the sole or even the worst offender as murder, mayhem and abuse of women and children spread to the four corners of the globe, according to Reuters.

"The human rights abuses in Iraq and Afghanistan were far from being the only negative repercussions of the response to the terrible events of Sept. 11, 2001.

"Since that day, the framework of international human rights standards has been attacked and undermined by both governments and armed groups," the group said.

The rights group also accused Israel of committing "war crimes" against the Palestinian people, saying that Israeli army last year killed more than 700 Palestinians, including 150 children.

It charged that stringent Israeli restrictions on Palestinians also caused widespread poverty and hindered access to health services and education, while the army continued to destroy hundreds of homes, AFP said.

Across the Middle East region, the group said, arbitrary arrests and detentions have become routine, resulting in widespread torture, political imprisonment and illegal executions.

In Egypt, thousands of suspected supporters of the banned, but largely tolerated, Muslim Brotherhood, including possible prisoners of conscience, remained in detention without charge or trial, it said.

In the United Arab Emirates, "political detainees arrested in the aftermath of the September 11, 2001, attacks in the US remained held without charge or trial ... and without access to lawyers or family."

The group also said scores of Iranian political prisoners were still serving sentences following "unfair" trials, and many more were arrested in 2004.

The Amnesty report also accused Russian and Chechen forces of committing serious human rights abuses in Chechnya with "virtual impunity".

"Serious human rights violations continued to be committed in the context of the conflict in the Chechen Republic, belying claims by the authorities that the situation was 'normalizing'," the group said.

"The security forces enjoyed virtual impunity for abuses."

The rights watchdog said the frequently reported abuses included killings, torture and people disappearing.

"Torture and ill-treatment in places of detention continued to be reported throughout the Russian Federation.

"Attacks, some of them fatal, on members of ethnic and national minorities and on foreign nationals were reported in many regions but convictions for racist attacks were rare."

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