Britain gives approval to torture, claims Amnesty

[cal04]

Tony Blair has been accused of undermining decades of British campaigning for international human rights by using the war on terror to give a "green light" to torture. Amnesty International is to launch an unprecedented global campaign tomorrow against the British Government after ministers admitted they would use information gained by torture to prevent attacks on the United Kingdom.

Mike Gapes, the Labour MP and chairman of the Commons Foreign Affairs Committee, hit out at the Government after Ian Pearson, the Foreign Office minister responsible for human rights, said evidence obtained under torture could not be ignored if it might prevent an attack. He said: "The fact the Government now seems prepared to use evidence obtained under torture sends a worrying signal and may mean that while we say we condemn the use of torture, other countries might feel they have a green light to use torture to get evidence on terrorism."

Amnesty is to turn the tactics it used against torture by dictatorships in the Seventies and Eighties on the Government as it puts the campaign against British anti-terror laws at the forefront of the organisation's global fight for human rights. It will call on its two million members worldwide to join a letter-writing campaign targeting Mr Blair and build international pressure to oppose plans to deport suspects to countries that use torture.

Kate Allen, the director of Amnesty UK, said Britain's actions posed one of the greatest threats to human rights in the West. She condemned Britain for attempting to secure memorandums of understanding with other states to allow the deportation of terror suspects. The Government has signed memorandums with Jordan and Libya and is negotiating deals with Algeria and other countries to attempt to ensure that detainees are not mistreated if they are returned. But campaigners insist the deals are "not worth the paper they are written on" and undermine the global ban on torture. Meanwhile the House of Lords is also yet to rule on whether the UK can use evidence against terror suspects that may have been obtained under torture abroad.


http://news.independent.co.uk/uk/politics/article329425.ece

[54anickel]

1. What the hell is going on?!?! This is getting crazy...n/t

[PSPS]

2. There are still those (like Bartcop) who are into this torture thing

The way they rationalize their perversion goes like this: If you can get information from someone through torture that will save (fill in large number) lives, you have to go with the torture. To their little brains, this amounts to "proving" that not engaging in torture, or prohibiting it under any circumstance, means that you will lose (fill in large number) lives.

Frankly, I don't know how to deal with this mindset. It's like a belief system or something, wrapped in some kind of sex fetish.

[MisterP]

4. people are intimately tied to their prejudices--just look at the Katrina

and pit bull threads: any suggestion that the tales of subhuman zombie shooter-looters or vicious PCP dogs shredding a yardful of tots might not be 100% true and, oh holy cow, you might as well have tied 50 pregnant women to stakes, doused them in oil, and burned them to ashes, then flung the ashes in the face of Anne Frank.
Or something like that.

[Briar]

6. They watch too much tv

This is how torture is rationalised in cult shows like 24.

[librechik]

3. Here's how " good" American torture should work:

In the heat of REAL battle (not this oil thievery we're involved in)
a terrorist knows where a nuke is. A brave, law-abiding soldier/CIA agent is forced to slap him around to get him to talk. The world is saved.

Then the brave and law-abiding soldier/CIA agent turns himself in for prosecution for breaking the law against torture. A hearing which brings forth all the extenuating circumstances is held. The judge rules; maybe the agent gets a reprimand or a few months in prison and can never be a soldier/CIA agent again. He makes the sacrifice gladly. Maybe the president gives a pardon.

In any case, torture is never never legal or normal or routine, and while maybe it gets done anyway, that torturer risks prosecution and knows it. He breaks the law for his country and pays a stiff penalty including ostracism.

That's how you answer the standard question torture-supporting freepers always ask.

And by the way that scenario would NEVER really happen in real life. What really happens is ordinary citizens who have no special information are being routinely tortured to intimidate the population. THAT is what freepers support, and wish they could help, because they're violent, racist cretins who don't know how to solve problems by talking and wouldn't if they could.

[Endangered Specie]

5. What is there some competition in Britian:

"move far right to see how close you can get to the BNP" contest?