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Human Rights Violations

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MILAN — An Italian judge says he has convicted 23 Americans of the 2003 kidnapping of an Egyptian cleric from a Milan street in a CIA extraordinary rendition, AP reports.

The American suspects — all but one identified by prosecutors as CIA agents — are being tried in absentia and are considered fugitives.
» Full Story

In Indonesia, a series of attacks on followers of the Ahmadiyah sect by fanatical Muslims — who consider the movement to be a cult of Islam — continues to draw criticism.

Alfred C. Stepan, director of the Center for the Study of Democracy, Toleration and Religion at Columbia University in New York, an expert in religion and democracy urging the government to exercise its authority when there are violations of human rights.
» Full Story

Indonesia’s staunchly Muslim Aceh province is set to enforce a strict form of Islamic criminal law, including stoning to death married adulterers, a lawmaker says.

Aceh, where separatists had been fighting the Indonesian government since 1976 until a peace deal in 2005, has so far only partially adopted sharia law, which requires modest Muslim dress codes, mandatory prayers five times a day, fasting and the giving of alms to the poor.

In our view, Islamic law is incompatible with modern civilization and should be rejected until Muslims rid Sharia of all laws that violate basic human rights.
» Full Story

A Protestant pastor who says he was tortured while being detained in the Philippines has warned of widespread killings and other attacks against church members in the Asian nation.

Berlin Guerrero of the United Church of Christ testified last week for the United Nations Committee against Torture, amid reports of executions and other abuses carried out by the Philippines’ military. Victims have been accused of supporting rebel groups opposing the government. “Church people have not been spared from torture,” Guerrero told the UN Committee
» Full Story

The Americans Civil Liberties Union deserves credit for suing for the memos’ release. And President Obama deserves credit for overruling his own C.I.A. director and ordering that the memos be made public. It is hard to think of another case in which documents stamped “Top Secret” were released with hardly any deletions.

But this cannot be the end of the scrutiny for these and other decisions by the Bush administration.

Until Americans and their leaders fully understand the rules the Bush administration concocted to justify such abuses — and who set the rules and who approved them — there is no hope of fixing a profoundly broken system of justice and ensuring that that these acts are never repeated.
» Full Story

The International Committee of the Red Cross concluded in a secret report that the Bush administration’s treatment of al-Qaeda captives “constituted torture,” a finding that strongly implied that CIA interrogation methods violated international law, according to newly published excerpts from the long-concealed 2007 document.

The report, an account alleging physical and psychological brutality inside CIA “black site” prisons, also states that some U.S. practices amounted to “cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment.” Such maltreatment of detainees is expressly prohibited by the Geneva Conventions.
» Full Story

A new survey suggests the very Americans who claim to follow the Bible most assiduously don’t consult it when forming their views about torture and government policy.

It shows not only are white evangelical Southerners more likely than the general populace to believe torture is sometimes or often justified, but also that they are far more likely—to tweak a phrase from Proverbs—to “lean on their own understanding” regarding the subject.
» Full Story

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Most Read about Human Rights Violations

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1. Religious Right got it terribly wrong in recommending Bush
2. U.S. Loses Torture Treaty Fight
3. An Evangelical Call on Torture and the U.S.
4. Religion, Culture Behind Texas Execution Tally
5. America: Woman Denied Right To Use Marijuana As Life-saving Medication
6. The unspeakable practice of female circumcision that's destroying young women's lives in Britain
7. Methodist ministers launch anti-Bush library petition
8. Resistance to death penalty growing
9. Executed in US may be awake as they suffocate
10. Poll: On torture, evangelicals not looking to Bible, doctrine

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