Pakistan: Day Two of the Long March

update (8 p.m. GMT): The Zardari Government has met in emergency session. The President has been joined by Prime Minister Gillani, Senate Chairman Farooq Naek, Interior Minister Rehman Malik, Information Minister Sherry Rehman, and Water and Power Minister Raja Pervez Ashraf. Spokesmen are promising "important decisions" within 24 hours.

Update (5 p.m. GMT): High-level talks appear to have begun in Pakistan. The reasons for movement are unclear.

One possibility is that a call from US envoy Richard Holbrooke to President Zardari, following a meeting between the US Ambassador to Pakistan, Anne Patterson, and Nawaz Sharif, has pushed the Government to a more conciliatory position. The US and UK have both denied putting any pressure on Zardari to make concessions to the marchers, though Foreign Secretary David Miliband's office have confirmed that he has spoken to Zardari by telephone.

Update (2.30 p.m. GMT): Former Supreme Court Bar Association President Aitzaz Ahsan has said that the Long March will be called off if Iftikhar Chaudhry is reinstated.

Update (1.45 p.m. GMT): Dawn sources claim that President Zardari may have accepted some of the compromises suggested by PM Gilani.

Update (12 p.m. GMT / 5 p.m. Pakistan): There are rumours that PM Yousaf Raza Gilani is pushing for a compromise, and that President Zardari may be willing to yield to some of the marchers' demands. However police have sealed the Punjab-Sindh border and closed highways to prevent the marchers reaching Multan.

Update (9 a.m. GMT): The Pakistani Government has invoked Section 144, the order authorising detention of demonstrators in the Northwest Frontier Provinces, detaining dozens of people.

There were no reports of further arrests overnight. The most significant incident was the blocking of a convoy from Quetta with Ali Ahmed Kurd, the President of the Supreme Court Bar Association. Kurd and the convoy have responded with a sit-in blocking the main highway from Baluchistan to Sindh Province.

United Nations: US Tortured, Britain Followed

Related Post: The BBC and the UN Report on Torture - Shhhh, Don’t Tell Anyone
Related Post: Text - UN Report on Counter-Terrorism, Human Rights, and Torture

The United Nations report released yesterday is clear and concise: Britain was complicit with a US-created system which violated basic human rights and condoned the torture of detainees.

The Special Rapporteur remains deeply troubled that the United States has created a comprehensive system of extraordinary renditions, prolonged and secret detention, and practices that violate the prohibition against torture and other forms of ill-treatment. This system required an international web of exchange of information and has created a corrupted body of information which was shared systematically with partners in the war on terror through intelligence cooperation, thereby corrupting the institutional culture of the legal and institutional systems of recipient States.

The report continues:

While this system was devised and put in place by the United States, it was only possible through collaboration from many other States. There exist consistent, credible reports suggesting that at least until May 2007 a number of States facilitated extraordinary renditions in various ways. States such as Bosnia and Herzegovina, Canada, Croatia, Georgia, Indonesia, Kenya, the former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia, Pakistan and the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland have provided intelligence or have conducted the initial seizure of an individual before he was transferred to (mostly unacknowledged) detention centres in Afghanistan, Egypt, Ethiopia, Jordan, Pakistan, Morocco, Saudi Arabia, Yemen, Syria, Thailand, Uzbekistan, or to one of the CIA covert detention centres, often referred to as “black sites”. In many cases, the receiving States reportedly engaged in torture and other forms of ill-treatment of these detainees.

Two specific cases are cited by the Special Rapporteur: "Evidence proves that Australian, British and United States intelligence personnel have themselves interviewed detainees who were held incommunicado by the Pakistani [intelligence service] ISI in so-called safe houses, where they were being tortured. Many countries (Bahrain, Canada, China, France, Germany, Italy, Jordan, Libya, Morocco, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Spain, Tajikistan, Tunisia, Turkey, United Kingdom, Uzbekistan) have sent interrogators to Guantanamo Bay as
well."

This is not "enhanced interrogation". Not "aggressive questioning". Not any other euphemism. Torture.

This isn't breaking news. Allegations of British participation in interrogation of tortured prisoners have been about for several years. Only last month, Human Rights Watch documented at least 10 cases at Guantanamo Bay where British residents were interrogated, after beatings and other techniques violating human rights, by UK intelligence services. Representatives of Binyam Mohamed, recently released from the US base in Cuba, have provided further details.

So why is this report special? Simply because it doesn't come from an organisation like Human Rights Watch or Amnesty International which are dismissed by Government authorities as politically biased. It comes from the UN, the international body to which the US and UK belong. (No doubt various media outlets, if this story gets traction, will offer the image of the United Nations as hostile to the American and British Governments, but the UN still has an international legal standing that has to be recognised.)

More importantly, this statement exposes the lie (and the liars) at the heart of the British Government. The UK was far from alone in propping up the US-sanctioned torture. It was the Blair Government, however, that stood side-by-side for years alongside the US proclaiming that they were protecting human rights in the War on Terror, indeed extending those rights by taking that war from Afghanistan to Iraq. It was Tony Blair who lay down the doctrine for moral intervention in 1999:

No longer is our existence as states under threat. Now our actions are guided by a more subtle blend of mutual self interest and moral purpose in defending the values we cherish. In the end values and interests merge. If we can establish and spread the values of liberty, the rule of law, human rights and an open society then that is in our national interests too. The spread of our values makes us safer.

Ten years later, it is Blair's successors who have upheld "the values of liberty, the rule, [and] human rights" through evasion, deceit, and denial. Nine days ago, Foreign Secretary David Miliband and Home Secretary Jacqui Smith declared:

We will continue to ensure that our co-operation with other countries and partners does not undermine the very principles and values that are the best long-term guarantee of our future security. Central to those values is an abhorrence of torture, and the determination that when allegations of torture are made they are properly investigated. That has been, and will remain, the government's approach.

Maybe it's best, given this economy with the truth, to return to the UN report:

[The Special Rapporteur is] worried by the increasing use of State secrecy provisions and public interest immunities for instance by Germany, Italy, Poland, Romania, the former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia, the United Kingdom or the United States to conceal illegal acts from oversight bodies or judicial authorities, or to protect itself from criticism, embarrassment and - most importantly - liability.

UPDATED War on Terror/Torture Breaking News: David Miliband Is a Liar

Update (3 March): The Guardian reports....

David Miliband, the foreign secretary, is to be questioned by senior MPs over what he and his officials knew about the ill-treatment and secret interrogation of Binyam Mohamed, the former UK resident recently released from Guantánamo Bay. The move was announced yesterday by the Commons foreign affairs committee, which said it also intends to investigate other key issues where recent evidence has thrown up uncomfortable questions for ministers to answer. They are allegations of British complicity in torture in Pakistan, in the US practice of rendering terror suspects to countries where they risked being tortured, and in the transfer of prisoners in Iraq and Afghanistan.

The foreign secretary will not be able to refuse to testify before the Commons foreign affairs committee, which was set up to monitor the activities of his department.

I thought of using the English euphemism "economical with the truth", but that doesn't capture the brazen statement of the Foreign Secretary yesterday regarding alleged British complicity with the torture of detainees.



Having refused to appear before a Parliamentary committee investigating the charges, Miliband and Home Secretary Jacqui Smith chose instead to write to The Observer of London. Here's a key extract from the letter:

In the case of Binyam Mohamed, you imply that the government has refused to disclose material related to his case because it would embarrass the government. Again, this is not true. As Mr Mohamed's legal representatives have themselves said, it is through this government's efforts that this material was provided to them for use in Mr Mohamed's defence. We have no objection to this material being disclosed publicly. But we believe that the decision to do so is for the US, because the material is from the US.

Which would merely be a case of passing the buck rather than lying shamelessly, were it not for this revelation by a former State Department official in The Observer two weeks earlier. He commented on the American letter which asked for the Mohamed evidence to be kept secret:

Far from being a threat, it was solicited [by the Foreign Office]. The Foreign Office asked for it in writing. They said: "Give us something in writing so that we can put it on the record." If you give us a letter explaining you are opposed to this, then we can provide that to the court.

Foreign Secretary, if you're going to lie while avoiding an inquiry into torture, could you at least give us enough respect not to do in the same newspaper which busted you in the first place?