In 2006, PHR's partner group, the Action Group for Health, human rights and HIV/AIDS (AGHA) Uganda, launched its health financing campaign, with the goal to improve the health and human rights of all Ugandans by advocating for increased and effective health sector financing.
The executive directors of eight leading human rights organizations sent a letter to UN Secretary General Ban-Ki Moon calling on him to make justice for victims and accountability for perpetrators of crimes in Darfur a top priority. Also, the human rights leaders called on Ban to urge members of the UN Security Council to do everything within their means to ensure that Ahmed Haroun and Ali Kushayb, two Sudanese officials facing arrest warrants from the International Criminal Court for war crimes, are captured and delivered to The Hague.
Amnesty International, Freedom House, Global Rights, Human Rights First, Human Rights Watch, International League for Human Rights, the Jacob Blaustein Institute for the Advancement of Human Rights, and Physicians for Human Rights all signed the letter.
Accountability for perpetrators and reparations for victims in Sudan's Darfur region are critical components missing from UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon's proposed solutions to the crisis ["What I Saw in Darfur; Untangling the Knots of a Complex Crisis," op-ed, Sept. 14].
While atrocities have been committed in the context of scarce resources, including water, these are certainly not the primary cause of the genocidal campaign waged by the Khartoum regime, which Mr. Ban failed to mention.
During Mr. Ban's recent trip to Sudan, President Omar al-Bashir named Ahmed Haroun, the Sudanese minister for humanitarian affairs, who is accused by the International Criminal Court of war crimes in Darfur, to co-chair an investigation into human rights violations there. Mr. Ban's silence about this outrageous appointment, as well as his failure to make justice a prerequisite for peace, is troubling.
The secretary general must pressure Sudan to arrest those accused of war crimes in Darfur, such as Mr. Haroun, and deliver them to The Hague. Upcoming peace talks will fail if reparations and accountability are not on the table.
The secretary general and the UN Security Council must put them there.
FRANK DONAGHUE
Chief Executive Officer
Physicians for Human Rights
Cambridge, Mass
.
Following the enactment of the 2006 Military Commissions Act, PHR united the legal expertise of Human Rights First with PHR’s medical expertise to issue the report “Leave No Marks” in August 2007, demonstrating that 10 “enhanced” interrogation methods purportedly used by the CIA amounted to war crimes. The report demonstrated that interrogation techniques are likely to cause severe or serious physical and mental harm to detainees, and that the authorization of these techniques, whether practiced alone or in combination, may constitute torture and/or cruel and inhuman treatment, and may place interrogators at serious legal risk of prosecution for war crimes and other violations.
To the Editor:
Re: ("Professional terrorists," Op-ed, July 10),
While H.D.S. Greenway is correct in pointing out that doctors are not immune from being swept up in revolutionary causes, he appears to minimize the unique conflict created when physicians elevate their support of a cause to the level of violence. Society holds many professionals in esteem, and gives many professionals privileges, but physicians have been granted unique privileges by civil societies that allow them to enter into the most intimate domains of human interaction, to administer powerful remedies, and even to wield a scalpel therapeutically.
At the same time, society expects physicians to honor, among others, these basic ethical principles: to do no harm, and, in the words of the American Medical Association's first principle of medical ethics, to "be dedicated to providing competent medical care, with compassion and respect for human dignity and rights." These principles chiefly govern professional conduct, but the obligation to respect for human dignity and rights is not excused at the end of office hours. When physicians resort to violence as a means to an end, they violate the social covenant and, I would argue, cease to be physicians.
Dr. Scott Allen
Providence
The writer is an adviser to Physicians for Human Rights.
On June 14, 2007, PHR Executive Director Leonard Rubenstein sent a letter to Dr. Sharon Brehm, President of the American Psychological Association, regarding involvement of psychologists in interrogations of US security detainees.
To the Editor:
Re "Advisers Fault Harsh Methods in Interrogation” (front page, May 30):
The abusive interrogation methods reverse-engineered from the military's Survival, Evasion, Resistance, and Escape torture-resistance program cause enormous psychological harm ranging from psychosis and suicidal ideation to post-traumatic stress disorder. They are not only unreliable and immoral; they constitute torture and violate the United States' commitment to respect the most basic human rights.
Yet according to the Pentagon's inspector general, psychologists, under the guise of behavioral science, have used their credentials to develop and carry out these highly abusive techniques at Guantánamo, in Iraq and Afghanistan, and elsewhere. The abuses are a direct result of trying to rely on science and scientists to break down detainees.
The only appropriate response, for the profession and for the government, is to end the direct participation of psychologists, who have an ethical obligation to minimize harm, in interrogations.
Leonard S. Rubenstein
Stephen N. Xenakis, M.D.
Washington, May 30, 2007
The writers are, respectively, executive director, Physicians for Human Rights; and a retired Army brigadier general who is a former commander of the Southeast Medical Command.