Tuesday, May 31, 2011
Manning's treatment “inhumane”
A group of 250 legal experts including a former professor of United States President Barack Obama has written a letter condemning the U.S.' treatment of Bradley Manning, the former U.S. Army intelligence analyst held responsible for leaking government documents to Wikileaks.
Mr. Manning, who was charged with giving the whistleblower website documents pertaining to the U.S. military engagements in Iraq and Afghanistan and also a controversial cache of State Department cables, has been in solitary confinement in Quantico, Virginia, for the last nine months.
Describing his conditions of confinement as “illegal and immoral,” Mr. Obama's former teacher at Harvard University, Laurence Tribe, joined numerous peers to argue that if Mr. Manning's harsh treatment was continued by the Pentagon, it may well amount to a violation of the criminal statute against torture, defined as, “the administration or application…of… procedures calculated to disrupt profoundly the senses or the personality.”
Mr. Manning's routine in the Quantico military facility confines him to his cell for 23 hours a day, the legal specialists wrote. They said during the remaining hour, he was only permitted to walk in circles in another room, with no contact with any person whatsoever.
Mr. Manning was also banned from dozing or relaxing during the day, subjected to constant monitoring, and during the past week he was said to have been “forced to sleep naked and stand naked for inspection in front of his cell, and for the indefinite future must remove his clothes and wear a “smock” under claims of risk to himself that he disputes”.
The letter said the Obama administration had supplied no evidence that Mr. Manning's treatment reflected any concern for his own safety or that of other inmates, and “Unless and until it does so, there is only one reasonable inference: this pattern of degrading treatment aims either to deter future whistleblowers, or to force Manning to implicate Wikileaks founder Julian Assange in a conspiracy, or both.”
Numerous other groups and prominent individuals have called on the Pentagon to end it, some controversially. Last month, the former U.S. State Department spokesman, P.J. Crowley, resigned after calling the Pentagon's actions “ridiculous and counterproductive and stupid”.
Mr. Crowley, highest-profile casualty over the Manning affair thus far, however went on to say in media interviews that he had “no regrets” about his comments and argued that the manner of Mr. Manning's detention had “undermined the investigation into his role as the alleged source for Wikileaks”.
Labels: P.J. Crowley, Private Bradley Manning, The Hindu-WikiLeaks
Monday, April 19, 2010
Stage set for Cancun
From The Hindu
The Major Economies Forum, a platform for ministerial discussions on energy and climate issues, wrapped up today after two days of meetings focussing on preparing for the summit on climate change in Cancun in November 2010. The Forum was chaired by National Security Advisor for International Economic Affairs Michael Froman and led on the United States side by Todd Stern, Special Envoy for climate and Deputy.
At a press interaction on Friday State Department spokesman P.J. Crowley said, “We are going to see if we cannot continue our dialogue among major developed and developing economies to make progress in meeting our objectives on climate change and the Clean Energy Challenge.” He added that there was clearly a gap between the views of the developing and developed world, and “We are going to see if we can, through the course of this discussion, narrow that down.”
Indian Minister of State for Environment and Forests Jairam Ramesh, who could not participate due to the volcanic ash cloud from Iceland disrupting travel plans, also touched upon the question of divergent views among climate change interlocutors.
In his statements to the Forum, which he shared with The Hindu, Mr. Ramesh stressed the importance of “reducing the huge ‘trust deficit’ that prevails in the climate change negotiating community.” To do so, Mr. Ramesh argued, it should be recognised that the two-track negotiating process is the only one that has legitimacy that even though the Copenhagen Accord was important. He further said that “visible triggers” were needed to ensure that “Cancun does not repeat Copenhagen.
One such trigger would be the start of the actual disbursement of the $10 billion promised by the developed countries for this year for vulnerable economies and another could be an agreement on the United Nations Collaborative Programme on Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation in Developing Countries, he said.
Mr. Ramesh also stressed India’s emphasis on the need for equity in arrangements for mitigating the effects of climate change, saying that such arrangements “must be firmly embedded in a demonstrably equitable access to atmospheric space with adequate finance and technology available to all developing countries.”
Finally he also questioned the “mantra” ‘internationally legally-binding agreement’ which, he said, some developed countries kept chanting: What does it mean in practice, he asked, and what consequences of non-fulfilment would follow?
The Major Economies Forum has so far held five meetings at the leaders’ representatives level and one leaders meeting in July 2009 at L’Aquila in Italy. The declaration following the leaders’ meeting agreed on various goals including undertaking nationally appropriate mitigation actions, adaptation to the adverse effects of climate change, a global partnership to drive transformational low-carbon, climate-friendly technologies, scaling up of financial resources for mitigation and adaptation and a continuing schedule meetings to coordinate the fight against climate change
The 17 major-economy members of the Forum are: Australia, Brazil, Canada, China, the European Union, France, Germany, India, Indonesia, Italy, Japan, Korea, Mexico, Russia, South Africa, the United Kingdom, and the U.S.
Labels: Cancun, climate change, economies forum, Jairam Ramesh, P.J. Crowley
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