European Governments Should Resettle Guantanamo Detainees

HUMAN RIGHTS WATCH
European Governments Should Resettle Guantanamo Detainees

(Berlin, November 10, 2008) – European governments should provide humanitarian protection to those Guantanamo detainees who will not be charged with a crime but cannot be returned to their countries of origin for fear of torture or other serious human rights violations, five leading human rights organizations said today. European governments should agree to accept them into their countries and ensure they are provided with adequate support.
Amnesty International, the Center for Constitutional Rights, Human Rights Watch, Reprieve, and the International Federation for Human Rights (FIDH) urged governments to work with the new US administration to take this important step in order to facilitate the closure of the detention facility at Guantanamo. The human rights groups made their call after a two-day closed strategic workshop in Berlin, convened by the organizations with other international actors active on the issue of humanitarian protection.

“We must find a solution to the 50 men imprisoned at Guantanamo simply because they have nowhere to go,” said Emi MacLean, staff attorney at the Center for Constitutional Rights. “The US government has twice previously tried to send our client, Abdul Ra’ouf Al Qassim, to Libya even though it is undisputed that he would likely be tortured, or disappeared into Libyan jails, if returned. His survival depends on the simple humanitarian gesture of another country opening their doors to him.”

It is the primary responsibility of the United States to find solutions for all those held at Guantanamo, since it brought them to the detention facility and is holding them there unlawfully. If the United States is not planning to charge and try them in ordinary US courts, and cannot release them to their own countries safely, it should immediately offer them an opportunity to be released into the United States.

It is also clear, however, that governments in Europe and elsewhere can and should play a vital role in providing such individuals with humanitarian protection in the form of a safe place to get on with their lives after years of suffering. The involvement of European governments will be instrumental in reaching a solution to this problem – a solution that is critical to the international aim of closing Guantanamo.

“Everyone appears to rightly agree that Guantanamo must be closed, and President-elect Obama has said that he will close it,” said Daniel Gorevan, Counter Terror with Justice campaign manager at Amnesty International. “Clearly, other governments can help make this happen by offering protection to individuals who cannot be released to their own countries. This would have a double effect: helping to end the ordeal of an individual unlawfully held in violation of his human rights, and helping end the international human rights scandal that is Guantanamo.”

Around 50 of the detainees currently held in Guantanamo cannot lawfully be sent back to their countries of origin because they would face a real risk of human rights violations such as torture or other ill-treatment. They come from countries including China, Libya, Russia, Tunisia, and Uzbekistan.

“This is a key opportunity for both sides of the Atlantic to move beyond the misguided acts of the ‘war on terror’: rendition, secret detention, and torture,” said Cori Crider, staff attorney at Reprieve. “President-elect Obama says he will close Guantanamo – the question is when and how. One of Reprieve’s clients was sent back to Tunisia, drugged, hit, and threatened with the rape of his wife and daughter. Another is fighting, even now, to stay in Guantanamo because Tunisia threatened him with ‘water torture in the barrel.’ The US still asserts total authority to send him back. Europe can send a powerful message by reaching out to Obama and providing a safe alternative for these few people.”

“President-elect Obama has committed to closing Guantanamo, but he is going to need Europe’s help,” said Joanne Mariner, Terrorism and Counterterrorism Program director at Human Rights Watch. “European governments could provide much-needed assistance by agreeing to take in some of the detainees who cannot be sent back home.”

“FIDH and CCR mobilised 77 members of the European Parliament who issued a joint call to EU member States to offer relocation for Guantanamo detainees,” said Souhayr Belhassen, president of FIDH. “As an important strategic partner of the US, the EU should help the Administration relocate these men.”

Statements of Support from International Actors

“The efforts must be renewed now with European governments and the U.S. government working to close Guantanamo and offer protection to those unable to be returned safely to their own countries. The efforts of human rights NGOs are coming at the best moment, in order to use the next months in the most positive way.”
– Anne-Marie Lizin, Special Representative on Guantanamo for the Parliamentary Assembly of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE), and Vice-President of the Parliamentary Assembly of the OSCE.

“I urge European governments to open their doors to a small number of men who fear persecution or torture if transferred to their home countries. Such assistance is both the right thing to do, and of critical importance in our attempts to push for the immediate closure of Guantanamo Bay.”
– Thomas Hammerberg, Human Rights Commissioner of the Council of Europe

“We are at a critical juncture. It is now possible to anticipate the closing of Guantanamo, the end to the US practice of executive detention, and the re-affirmation of fundamental human rights principles, including the prohibition of torture in all circumstances. But European engagement and support will be essential to get there. One step that European governments should take is to accept into their borders the small number of men at Guantanamo who cannot be repatriated safely. Guantanamo cannot be closed until these men have a country which will accept them, and where their lives and liberty are not in jeopardy.”
– Manfred Nowak, UN Special Rapporteur on Torture and other cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment


Related Material

More information on Guantanamo
Thematic पेज
http://hrw.org/doc/?t=usa_gitmo

Confessions of a former Guantanamo प्रोसेचुटर
http://hrw.org/english/docs/2008/10/23/usint20052.htm
Commentary, October 23, 2008

Ask Secretary Rice to support UN peacekeeping troops in the Democratic Republic of Congo

More than 250,000 civilians displaced by recent fighting:
Ask Secretary Rice to support UN peacekeeping troops in the Democratic Republic of Congo
Help guarantee hope for civilians in the DRC.
Take Action Now!


UN peacekeepers remain the last hope for hundreds of thousands of affected civilians in the Democratic Republic of Congo, mainly women and children. The current force is thinly stretched and cannot effectively enforce its mandate of stopping attacks against civilians and protecting humanitarian operations.

"The United States is deeply concerned by the spiraling crisis in the Congo. (...) We urge the Congolese Government, rebel leadership and the neighboring governments to take all possible measures to prevent human rights abuses by troops under their command. We condemn all attacks on innocent civilians and urge all parties to the conflict to ensure that such attacks cease. The cycle of violence and impunity must be stopped."

Powerful statement. The U.S. State Department issued it more than 10 years ago, in August 1998. It did not prevent what became known as “Africa’s first world war” (1998-2003), which was centered in the eastern Democratic Republic of Congo and involved several neighboring countries.

Today, the humanitarian and human rights crisis in eastern DRC will again spiral out of control – if we do not act now.

At least 250,000 civilians have been displaced by the recent fighting, bringing the total number of internally displaced persons (IDPs) from this and previous rounds of conflict to well over one million. Many IDPs remain out of the reach of aid workers, and some humanitarian operations have been suspended because of the fragile security situation. There is a high risk that the situation will escalate into a regional conflict.

Amnesty International works continuously on addressing the underlying causes of conflict, trying to end impunity for perpetrators of the most egregious human rights violations. But, our priority now is to protect civilians through reinforcing the capacity of the UN’s peacekeeping mission (Mission des Nationa Unies en République Démocratique du Congo, MONUC).

A few hours ago, the UN Under-Secretary-General for Peacekeeping Operations, Alain Le Roy, briefed the Security Council and stressed the difficulties facing the UN peacekeepers. Now, members of the Security Council must act to strengthen the peacekeepers’ capacity.

We must act to guarantee that hope for civilians becomes a reality, not a sound bite. Ask Secretary Condoleezza Rice for her support to strengthen UN peacekeepers in the Democratic Republic of Congo.

Sincerely,

Larry Cox
Executive Director
Amnesty International USA
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Counter-Recruiter Seeks to Block Students’ Data From the Military

Barbara G. Harris, 72, looked her troops in the eye. Staring out at mohawks on one side of the room, salt-white bobs on the other, she said in her delicately firm way: “Hold your ground. You have every right to stand there, and if anyone tells you differently, tell them your rights.”

A retired teacher and longtime peace advocate, Ms. Harris was tutoring 20 new enlistees in the art of “counter-recruitment,” her personal crusade to block recruiters for the United States military from contacting New York City high school students.

She had assembled the group in her war room, a space near Union Square lent by a sympathetic organization, where plants and antiwar signs line the walls, in preparation for a blitz Thursday evening at parent-teacher conferences, where Ms. Harris and the others plan to stand on sidewalks outside school buildings armed with opt-out forms and their best sales pitches.

“You don’t have a whole lot of time — that’s the point,” Ms. Harris told the volunteers, who ranged in age from college students to the Granny Peace Brigade, a New York group of older women started in 2005 to protest the Iraq war. “Don’t be frustrated by that. They do stop.”

Ms. Harris’s efforts this week come as the Department of Education is facing renewed criticism from the New York Civil Liberties Union on the issue of military recruitment, after changing its policy in September to allow recruiters to get data about high school students from a central office. In the past, recruiters had to go from school to school to get names, addresses and phone numbers for students.

Federal law requires that schools provide the military the same access as colleges and other prospective employers. Parents are allowed to block access to a child’s information by signing an opt-out form.

Douglas Smith, a spokesman for the United States Army recruiting command, said that he was unaware of Ms. Harris but that the military did not object to counter-recruitment efforts. “We would hope that we would have an open discourse and not have one group try to stifle the ability of the other group to speak,” he said.

Ms. Harris, who lives in Midtown, started counter-recruiting three years ago, troubled by what she saw as an increasingly aggressive attempt to recruit low-income and minority students into the armed forces (she calls it a “poverty draft”). She has made it her mission to inform students, parents and teachers of alternatives to joining the military. She was among 18 members of the Granny Peace Brigade arrested and charged with disorderly conduct at the Times Square recruitment center in 2005; they were later acquitted of all charges.

Her latest campaign caps a half-century of protests. In the 1950s, while her friends ducked under desks and talked of fallout shelters, Ms. Harris took to the streets, rallying against the proliferation of nuclear weapons.

As the Vietnam War roiled, she focused on peace and women’s rights. She got a job teaching special-needs children at a public school in Pleasantville, N.Y., followed by a 21-year stint as a corporate trainer at AT&T. In the 1990s, Ms. Harris returned to the classroom, teaching English as a second language at the New School until her retirement in 2002. She has two children and two grandchildren.

Friends describe her as a protester who rarely raises her voice and makes it a point not to talk over others.

“She is an absolute wonder,” said Nancy Kricorian, coordinator for the city’s chapter of Code Pink, a women’s antiwar group Ms. Harris belongs to. “She can talk to the most rabid person, somebody who totally disagrees with what we’re doing, in an even and convincing way.”

Bev Rice, a member of the Granny Peace Brigade who planned to help with Thursday’s counter-recruitment effort, said: “Nothing appears to upset her. She’s just the type of person you want to do something for.”

Ms. Harris, who canvasses on parent-teacher nights in fall and spring, and talks with community groups about high school recruiting in between, estimated that 9 out of 10 parents she speaks with do not know about the opt-out form, despite the city’s requirement that principals distribute information about it.

“You give them the information, you see them change their minds,” she said. “They know their kids are vulnerable. They say: ‘They’re calling my baby and I don’t want them to speak to my child. What should I do?’ ”

Over the years, Ms. Harris watched as military recruiters became, in her eyes, unduly forceful in the hallways of New York high schools. Recruiters formed friendships with students, she said, and gave them the impression that being a soldier can cure all their struggles.

Ms. Harris said she does not mind if students join the military, as long as they are informed of the risks and other opportunities, and meet with recruiters off school grounds. But she said that as she spoke with students in poor neighborhoods like East Harlem, she discovered that many of them were unaware that they could get financial aid for college on their own and saw the military as their only option.

“For many of these young kids, especially boys, it’s a macho thing — you’re strong, you’re one of the team, you get this respect if you join,” she said. “If a young person wants to enlist, at least he or she knows what it’s about, what the truth about recruiting is. They can decide if that’s the best choice for them.”



By JAVIER C. HERNANDEZ
October 23, 2008
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/10/23/nyregion/23military.html?emc=tnt&tntemail1=y

PETITION TO CONTINUE IMPORTANT PROGRAM

Insite Support Letter

If you have not already done so, please take the time to consider signing onto the petition supporting Insite:

http://www.gopetition.com/online/20476.html.

For a short video clip on the supervised injection site & the how Harper and his government are out of step on this issue:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zDj6QsAMf0U

Thought processes made visible

Fluorescent Proteins In The Brain Light Up During Individual Action Potentials Making It Possible To Track Nerve Cell Communication

05 Oct 2008

Thought processes made visible:

An international team of scientists headed by Mazahir Hasan of the Max Planck Institute for Medical Research in Heidelberg has succeeded in optically detecting individual action potentials in the brains of living animals. The scientists introduced fluorescent indicator proteins into the brain cells of mice via viral gene vectors: the illumination of the fluorescent proteins indicates both when and which neurons are communicating with each other. This new method enables the observation of brain activity over a period of many months and provides new ways of identifying, for example, the early onset of dysfunction in neurological disorders such as Alzheimer's and Parkinson's. The fluorescent proteins could also provide scientists with information about the ways in which normal aging processes affect nerve cell communication. (Nature Methods, September 2008)

A nerve cell is a major hub for the exchange of valuable information. The nose, eyes, ears, and other sense organs perceive our environment through various antennae known as receptors. The numerous stimuli are then passed on to the neurons. All of this information is collected, processed, and finally transferred to specific brain centers at these hubs - the human brain consists of almost 100 billion nerve cells. The nerve cell uses a special means of transport for this purpose: the action potential which codes the information, thus enabling communication between the nerve cells.

Calcium as the starting gun

An action potential of this kind is an electrical excitation and arises when our nerve cells receive the information via a stimulus: the voltage across the cell membrane of the neuron changes and various ion channels open and close in a very specialized manner. Shortly before the nerve cell forwards the information via the stimulus, calcium ions pour into the nerve cell, acting as the starting gun for the flow of data from one neuron to the next.

In the past, action potential was measured and rendered visible using microelectrodes. However, this method only enabled the monitoring of a limited number of cells engaged in the process of communication. Moreover, scientists were unable to record neuronal communication in a clearly identifiable way over a longer period or in freely moving animals using this method.

Yellow and blue fluorescent proteins

This situation could be set to change. As part of an intensive international cooperation project, Mazahir Hasan has made nerve cells, which release a single action potential, optically visible in mice. This means that the communication of entire groups of neurons can be observed over an extended period of time. Mazahir Hasan also attracted attention in 2004 when he demonstrated for the first time that fluorescent proteins are suitable for making activity in the brains of mice visible (Hasan et al., 2004 PLoS Biology 2:e163).

For this new recent development, Hasan used a sensor protein called D3cpv, which was generated by Amy Palmer at the Roger Tsien Laboratory of the University of California in San Diego, as a complex of numerous interconnected protein subunits. Two of these subunits react to the binding of calcium ions to the complex: the yellow-fluorescent protein (YFP) lights up and the illuminating power of cyan-fluorescent protein (CFP) declines - a coincidence that would later prove crucial to the success of the study.

The Max Planck scientists introduced the corresponding genetic material - that is the construction manual for this protein complex - into the genetic material of viruses. Hasan and his team then used these viruses as a genetic "ferry" for introducing the genetic material into the brains of mice. The protein complex was actually produced in the nerve cells of the "infected" mice and functions there as an calcium indicator: if the calcium level within a cell increases - which is the case with every action potential - the D3cpv changes form when it binds to calcium. As a result, the two fluorescent proteins, CFP and YFP, move closer to each other and the transmission of energy between the CFP and YFP changes.

"To observe this change, we use a two-photon microscope developed by Winfried Denk", explains Hasan. Each individual action potential that arises due to a stimulus makes itself directly perceivable in the brain through yellow illumination and the simultaneous reduction in the emission of blue light. The two-photon microscope pinpoints the coincidence between the two fluorescent signals very accurately and clearly reveals which nerve cells are communicating and exchanging information with each other and when.

Damian Wallace and Jason Kerr from the Max Planck Institute for Biological Cybernetics in Tübingen were able to confirm this finding: targeted electrical recordings of neuronal activity after the triggering of stimulus showed that the colour change actually coincides with the firing of the action potentials. Hasan's method sheds light on which nerve cells will talk to each other and in which time period. However, it is only applicable if the neurons fire action potentials with a frequency of less than one hertz.

Insight into complex thought processes

The researchers were thus able to demonstrate for the first time that genetic calcium indicators provide optical proof of the perceptions of the sensory system in higher organisms. "With this method we can understand, in greater detail, how the human brain regulates complex thought processes and, for example, how it transforms the numerous sensory impressions into long-term memories", says Hasan. Developments resulting from the aging of the nerve cells can also be understood better as a result - "as we now have a way of observing the neurons over longer periods of time," concludes Hasan. Moreover, the sensor proteins could prove very useful in helping researchers to reach a better understanding at the cellular level of neurological diseases including Alzheimer's, Parkinson's, and Huntington's chorea.

----------------------------
Article adapted by Medical News Today from original press release.
----------------------------

Original work:

Damian J Wallace, Stephan Meyer zum Alten Borgloh, Simone Astori, Ying Yang, Melanie Bausen, Sebastian Kügler, Amy E Palmer, Roger Y Tsien, Rolf Sprengel, Jason N D Kerr, Winfried Denk & Mazahir T Hasan
Single-spike detection in vitro and in vivo with a genetic Ca2+ sensor
Nature Methods, Vol.5 No. 9, September 2008, 797

Mazahir T Hasan, Rainer W Friedrich, Thomas Euler, Matthew E Larkum, Günter Giese, Matthias Both, Jens Duebel, Jack Waters, Hermann Bujard, Oliver Griesbeck, Roger Y Tsien, Takeharu Nagai, Atsushi Miyawaki, Winfried Denk
Functional fluorescent Ca2+ indicator proteins in transgenic mice under TET control
PLOS Biology, Vol.2 No.6, June 2004, e163

Source: Mazahir T. Hasan
Max-Planck-Gesellschaft
Article URL: http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/124129.php

Main News Category: Neurology / Neuroscience

Also Appears In: Alzheimer's / Dementia, Parkinson's Disease, Biology / Biochemistry,