Human rights activists are reacting with hopeful skepticism to the Obama administration’s new formal statement against torture made in advance of U.S. officials’ appearance before the United Nations Thursday but they are still pressing for more details.
A U.S. delegation is in Geneva this week to clarify its compliance with a key international anti-torture treaty, the first time the Obama administration has been forced to formally detail its position against torture.
More than 30 House Democrats, and several former military generals and human rights activists have urged the administration to use the U.N. presentation to officially reject a Bush-era interpretation of the treaty banning torture as not applying to CIA and military prisons overseas, as well as other foreign facilities.
Despite Obama’s previous positions denouncing torture, critics have voiced concern that administration lawyers will prevent a wholesale rejection of the Bush-era interpretation that led to harsh interrogation techniques they consider torture at overseas prisons in the months and years after the Sept. 11 attacks.
On Wednesday the U.N. Committee Against Torture asked the U.S. delegation whether the Obama administration considers itself bound by the treaty beyond the territory of the United States.
In response, the National Security Council issued a statement promising that the delegation on Thursday would affirm that Article 16 of the treaty — which requires countries to work to eradicate cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment or punishment — in some instances applies abroad, and that the entire treaty applies in times of war.
“… The U.S. delegation will underscore that all U.S. personnel are legally prohibited under international and domestic law from engaging in torture or cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment or punishment at all times, and in all places,” NSC spokeswoman Bernadette Meehan said in a statement Thursday.
Meehan tried to reassure critics that the administration’s attorneys would not carve out legal loopholes to the treaty, arguing that “there are no gaps, either in the legal prohibitions against these acts by U.S. personnel, or in the United States’ commitment to the values enshrined in the Convention.
“The United States pledges to continue working with our partners in the international community toward the achievement of the convention’s ultimate objective: a world without torture,” she said.
Human Rights First’s Sharon McBride, who is in Geneva to monitor the U.N. review, called the NSC statement “an important first step” in ensuring that the torture prohibition and official cruelty is “not just a policy, it’s a legal obligation — one that the United States carries with it when it acts beyond the water’s edge.
“By affirming that it is bound by the treaty beyond our own borders and during time of war, the United States not only makes clear to its own personnel that the ban applies wherever they act, it also enables the United States to more effectively challenge our allies and adversaries to better respect human rights.”
But she said the U.S. needs to be as expansive as possible in laying out its interpretation of a key part of the treaty’s language — what territory the United States “controls as a governmental authority.”
The NSC statement affirmed that the treaty applies to the Guantanamo Bay prison and on U.S. ships carrying terrorism suspects back to the country for further questioning and trial.
Those specifics are important, McBride said, but she said the U.S. needs to provide further clarification.
“Any interpretation that would not have covered the secret CIA prisons and other foreign places of detention where we know U.S. officials engaged in torture would not be credible,” she said.
To truly demonstrate a blanket prohibition against torture, she said, the Obama administration should release the long-awaited Senate Intelligence Committee report on torture.
“While it’s important that the United States be unambiguous about its anti-torture position here in Geneva, this is a conversation that should be happening at home as well where and when the American people can fully participate,” McBride said. “The best way to make sure that happens is for the White House to cooperate with the Senate intelligence committee in declassifying the committee’s long-delayed report on the CIA torture program.”
