Sunday, October 01, 2006

Time for the civilized countires of world to stand up

With the Senate passage of the Military Commissions Bill which strips habeas corpus rights from non-citizens US, it's clear to me that legal system of the US does not meet the legal standards of the civilized world. The Bush administration's quarrel is not even with the constitution but with the Magna Carta. Glen Greenwald's posts and tristero's posts on the subject do a far better of job describing how ominous Bush's evisceration of the Constitution is.

However, there's another angle beyond Democrats taking over Congress to dealing with these abuses of power. Foreign government should stop cooperating with the US in terms of extradition of any activity that may lead suspects being detained since being detained by the US now means no access to the courts, trial by secret and coerced evidence and torture. Just as Canada would not have sent Maher Arar to Syria to be torured, they should no longer cooperate with the US intelligence or law enforcement since the Bush administration will not follow international law or the Geneva conventions and tortures suspects themselves or renders them for torture. Same goes for the Europeans. I would hope these countries not only stand on principle and stop their cooperation with US law enforcement but publicly announce they are doing so.

1 comment:

opit said...

I agree completely with your assessment that this legislation completely abrogates any consideration of co-operation by international law enforcement because of utter and complete abrogation of civil rights and protections.
I am Canadian, BTW.