Focus on human rights situation

The man everyone calls Dr Hamid spent 10 years in jail for being accused of joining the Iraqi Communist Party before fleeing to Poland. Now, Hamid and his colleagues at the Iraqi Political Prisoner League collect documents to prove that former President Saddam Hussein’s secret police and other regime loyalists assassinated and tortured people who spoke out against them. He says he gave the names of prisoners killed in 1972 to the International Committee for the Red Cross and then suffered years of surveillance by various security agencies. The documents are expected to be used in a war crimes tribunal being set up by international and local experts. The tribunal has the blessing of Paul Bremer, the US administrator running Iraq, and is expected to get approval from Iraq’s temporary government this week. "I saw hell, but I was alive," Hamid told IRIN bitterly of his time in prison. "We have a compact disc that we will distribute to show the world how Saddam did his crimes. We have many documents and proofs." No one watches Hamid or what he does any more. In a country known for its brutality under the former regime, people’s feelings about International Human Rights Day are mixed this year, watchers say. There are the videos of Saddam’s security people cutting off people’s tongues, the mass graves of people who rose up against Saddam and were killed following the Iran-Iraq war, and torture chambers found by Coalition troops as they rolled into the country. New mass graves are still being found, including one near Kirkuk in the north that appears to hold only children, said Bushra al-Ubaydi, a researcher at the newly formed Ministry of Human Rights. Investigators are matching files found in the general security office of the intelligence department with evidence found at the site to be used in any future war crimes tribunal, she said. "We have the files of the people who suffered from the former regime," al-Ubaydi told IRIN. "People are bringing us letters about what happened." But human rights watchers also draw attention to prisoners being detained by Coalition forces for months without access to lawyers or to their families. "Security detainees", a new classification not covered by Geneva Convention rules, which apparently could not even be found on lists indicating who had been arrested and who had not, said Ali al-Ka'bi, the rights ministry's director-general. "We tried to see these prisoners and find out everything about them," al-Ka'bi told IRIN. "Coalition forces refused up to this moment. If we don’t know the circumstances of the general prisoners, how can we know about how the important prisoners are treated?" For example, Tariq Aziz, the former prime minister and member of the so-called "list of 55", is detained, but does not appear to be on a list held by the ministry. "If the condition of the detainees isn’t problematic, they should give us access," said one rights worker. The human rights ministry is also unhappy about the lack of communication between Iraqi government officials and US administrators. "The Coalition forces do not allow the ministry to do its job. I’m trying to do my best, but they’re not helping me get the information," said al-Ka'bi. "I’m angry. This will never satisfy the people in Iraq," he asserted. At the same time, general security seemed to be improving and the level of looting to have slowed down, Human Rights Watch said. The number of checkpoints seemed to have increased between northern Iraq and the rest of the country, an unclear indication of more rights or fewer rights, and procedures for handling arrested people seemed to be getting stricter, said a rights worker, who declined to be named. Under Iraqi law, a person should be charged within 24 hours of being arrested. The process was dragging on for five days or more, the rights worker said. "So the answer [to the question:] are human rights getting stronger, is a double-edged sword - yes and no," the rights worker said. "Security has improved, but the number of incidents against individuals, buildings and groups is on the increase." Under international law, an occupying power is obliged to protect the security and wellbeing of the people under occupation, the worker said. Coalition forces faced enormous challenges, but they must also take measures to protect rights, the worker said. In the southern city of Basra, Abbas Khalid told of how the palm of his left hand had been wounded during the Iraq-Iran war in the 1980s. He came back from the war, but could not work and, like many other people, ended up homeless, squatting in a part of the former naval academy building. He had a card issued to him by the humanitarian association called Working for Harmed People of the Former Regime, and was now waiting for compensation. Many people like Abbas are trying to register with human rights organisations in the hope of being compensated. "We have around 5,000 men registered only as injured during the 1980s from the war with Iran," Qays Abd al-Latif, the head of the association, told IRIN in Basra. In addition to that, Qays said he had 15,000 files from other Iraqis who had claims against the former regime. "But the problem is that we cannot do anything for them. We know that the Iraqi Governing Council issued a political statement regarding compensating the people who were hurt by the former regime, but so far we are trying to help them only with humanitarian needs," he explained. Qays said he had failed to get help from humanitarian agencies, and only had a few boxes of clothing he had obtained from the Red Crescent Society as part of a package that had been distributed a few months ago. As many as 50 humanitarian organisations and human rights groups were formed right after the war, but according to Bassam al-Tamimi, the head of the General Association of Human Rights in the South, only 15 of them are recognised by the governorate of Basra. "During the Saddam regime, there was not a single person that would dare to ask for his/her rights, and people, particularly in the south, were discriminated against," he said. "There was no single person from the south who could be head of an organisation or a centre even if he is very clever," he told IRIN. According to the Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA) in Basra, many NGOs have problems with funding, and they visit the CPA to identify themselves and talk about their projects. The CPA so far has helped a limited number of them by means of a health project in Samawah, and is meanwhile trying to reach a general agreement with them. Bassam said that because of the large number of human rights organisations, he had decided to transform his association's operations into charity projects. "As a lawyer, I'm still interested in human rights issues, and I filed around 22 cases against the British for violating human rights, but this all what I can do. On the other hand, there are around 7 million people killed by the former regime in the past 30 years, and maybe 4 million escaped from the country, in addition to the people who were displaced and lost their properties. How can we compensate the families of all those people?" he asked.