Human Rights Watch slams the USA and President Bush and critises the UK

10.34.37am GMT Fri 14th Jan 2005

New York based Human Rights Watch has, in its annual report said "America's human rights abuses have provided a rallying cry for terrorists and set a bad example to regimes seeking to justify their own poor rights records" and "The torture and degrading treatment of prisoners in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Guantánamo Bay have undermined the credibility of the US as a defender of human rights and opponent of terrorism"

The report says the administration has shown little interest in moderating its aggressive approach to its "global war on terror" and that "The US government is less and less able to push for justice abroad because it is unwilling to see justice done at home,"

The report also argues that the US has weakened its own moral authority at a time that authority is most needed, "in the midst of a seeming epidemic of suicide bombings, beheadings, and other attacks on civilians and noncombatants.When the United States disregards human rights, it undermines that human rights culture and thus sabotages one of the most important tools for dissuading potential terrorists. Instead, US abuses have provided a new rallying cry for terrorist recruiters, and the pictures from Abu Ghraib have become the recruiting posters for Terrorism, Inc."

The report also criticises the UK by pointing out that the British government refuses to rule out using information extracted from torture in court proceedings. Steve Crawshaw, the London director of Human Rights Watch, said yesterday. "It was dismaying that it needed a law lords' judgment to rule that detention without trial was not acceptable in a democracy," he told the Guardian. "It is even more dismaying that the British government seems reluctant to concede this."