WAR IN IRAQ HAD NEGATIVE CONSEQUENCES FOR HUMAN RIGHTS OF MILLIONS WORLDWIDE, CHARGES AMNESTY INTERNATIONAL

Organization Releases 2003 Survey of Human Rights in 151 Countries

(WASHINGTON, DC) -- While the overthrow of Saddam Hussein has brought greater freedom for the Iraqi people, the politics and distraction of the war in Iraq have had unintended, negative consequences for millions of people worldwide, Amnesty International charged today. The organization released its 311-page 2003 Annual Report on the status of human rights in 151 countries - the largest number of countries reported on by any human rights organization - at a Washington, DC, press conference.

"Regardless of how much greater liberty Iraqis may eventually realize, the Bush Administration's war in Iraq has contributed to diminishing human rights for millions of others worldwide," said Dr. William F. Schulz, Executive Director of Amnesty International USA (AIUSA). "While billions were spent to dethrone Saddam Hussein, dictators and rebels elsewhere wreaked havoc on millions of people across the globe with little attention and even less condemnation from the US government or the international community."

Forty-two years to the day that Amnesty International was founded with a call to action in the London Observer, AIUSA released a list of four countries and one international body where human rights were casualties of the war. The administration is hurting the fragile cease-fire in the Ivory Coast, a former French colony, by undercutting the French proposal for United Nations (UN) peacekeepers in the African nation as a penalty for France's opposition to the war in Iraq. The UN Human Rights Commission became ensnared in US-Iraq relations, failing to condemn Cuba's mass arrests of peaceful government critics who received patently unfair, rushed trials and harsh sentences; US military action in Iraq was used by several nations as an excuse for the commission's failure to take action. In the United States, civil liberties erosions in the name of national security included a discriminatory registration system with interrogations of males from predominantly Arab and Muslim nations and detention of asylum-seekers from Iraq fleeing Saddam Hussein's brutality. The organization also cited the Philippines and Ethiopia as nations receiving increased US assistance as a reward for their support of the war in Iraq despite serious human rights problems in those countries. [ See "Negative Consequences for Human Rights Worldwide" document. ]

"People who came to the sweet land of liberty seeking greater freedom had to swallow a bitter pill, as the US government used national security as the impetus to enact discriminatory and mean-spirited practices," said Schulz.

The organization also cited Chechnya, China, Colombia, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Israel/Occupied Territories/Palestinian Authority and Yemen as places whose worsening human rights situations are grave cause for concern.

The report presents data on key human rights indicators, including the death penalty, a category in which the US is a leading violator. China, Iran and the United States - a so-called "axis of executioners" - accounted for 81 percent of all known executions in 2002, with recorded executions in each country numbering 1,060, 113 and 71, respectively. Amnesty International research shows that over the last decade, an average of three countries annually have abolished the death penalty in law or practice. In 2002, Cyprus and the former Federal Republic of Yugoslavia (now Serbia and Montenegro) abolished the death penalty for all offenses, and Turkey abolished the death penalty except in times of war. By the end of the year, 112 countries - more than half the world - had abolished the death penalty in law or practice.

Meanwhile, only hours after the press conference, Virginia is scheduled to take the life of Percy Levar Walton, a diagnosed schizophrenic, a fact the judge was unaware of as he weighed mitigating circumstances to determine whether Walton would live or die.

"Human rights are not for a select few - those who live on land covering oil or in regions of strategic interest," Schulz said. "The United States possesses the capacity and know-how to ease the suffering of millions worldwide. Now it must demonstrate the will to do so."

The report will be available on the internet at http://www. amnestyusa.org/annualreport at 10 am Wednesday, May 28. For embargoed copies of the printed or CD-ROM version, please contact the press office at 202-544-0200 x 302.

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