Wednesday 27th of November 2024
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the value of british justice .....

the value of british justice .....

During the 1960s and 1970s British governments, Labour and Tory, tricked and expelled the entire population of the Chagos Archipelago, more than 2,000 British citizens, so that Diego Garcia could be given to the United States as the site for a military base. It was an act of mass kidnapping carried out in high secrecy.

As unclassified official files now show, Foreign Office officials conspired to lie, coaching each other to “maintain” and “argue” the “fiction” that the Chagossians existed only as a “floating population.”

On 28 July 1965, a senior Foreign Office official, T.C.D. Jerrom, wrote to the British representative at the United Nations, instructing him to lie to the General Assembly that the Chagos Archipelago was “uninhabited when the United Kingdom government first acquired it.”

Nine years later, the Ministry of Defense went further, lying that “there is nothing in our files about inhabitants [of the Chagos] or about an evacuation.”

Since 2000, no fewer than nine high court judgments have described these British government actions as “illegal,” “outrageous” and “repugnant.” One ruling cited Magna Carta, which says no free man can be sent into exile. In desperation, the Blair government used the royal prerogative – the divine right of kings – to circumvent the courts and parliament and to ban the islanders from even visiting the Chagos.

When this, too, was overturned by the high court, the government was rescued by the law lords, of whom a majority of one (three to two) found for the government in a scandalously inept, political manner. In the weasel, almost flippant words of Lord Hoffmann, “the right of abode is a creature of the law. The law gives it and the law takes it away.”

Forget Magna Carta.

Human rights are in the gift of three stooges doing the dirty work of a government, itself lawless.

http://www.lewrockwell.com/pilger/pilger71.html

shared values .....

Today (December 1), a surreal event will take place in the center of London.

The Foreign Office is holding an open day “to highlight the importance of Human Rights in our work as part of the 60th anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.”

There will be various “stalls” and “panel discussions” and Foreign Secretary David Miliband will present a human rights prize. Is this a spoof? No. The Foreign Office wants to raise our “human rights awareness.” Kafka and Heller have many counterfeits.

There will be no stall for the Chagos islanders, the 2,000 British citizens expelled from their Indian Ocean homeland, which Miliband’s government has fought to prevent from returning to what is now a US military base and suspected CIA torture center. The High Court has repeatedly restored this fundamental human right to the islanders, the essence of Magna Carta, describing the Foreign Office actions as “outrageous”, “repugnant” and “illegal”. No matter. Miliband’s lawyers refused to give up and were rescued on 22 October by the transparently political judgments of three law lords.

There will be no stall for the victims of a systemic British policy of exporting arms and military equipment to ten out of 14 of Africa’s most war-bloodied and impoverished countries.

In his speech today, with the good people of Amnesty and Save the Children in attendance, shamefully, what will Miliband say to the sufferers of this British-sponsored violence? Perhaps he will make mention, as he often does, of the need for “good governance” in faraway places while his own regime suppresses a Serious Fraud Office investigation into BAE’s £43 arms deals with the corrupt tyranny in Saudi Arabia - with which, noted the Foreign Office Minister Kim Howells in 2007, the British had “shared values”.

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article21374.htm

meanwhile, back in follywood ….

For those hoping for a dramatic change in U.S. foreign policy under an Obama administration - particularly regarding human rights, international law, and respect for international institutions - the appointment of Hillary Clinton as Secretary of State is a bitter disappointment. 

Indeed, Senator Clinton has more often than not sided with the Bush administration against fellow Democrats on key issues regarding America’s international legal obligations, particularly international humanitarian law.

This will be particularly disappointing for those in the international community who were so positive about Obama’s election as president.  The selection of Hillary Clinton, at best, represents a return to the policies of her husband’s administration.

Because the Bush administration had taken things to new lows, many seem to have forgotten the fact that the Clinton administration had also greatly alienated the international community.  Regarding Iraq, Iran and Israel, the Clinton administration engaged in a series of policies which put the United States sharply at odds with most of its Western allies and a broad consensus of international legal scholars. 

And these were not the only issues during the Clinton years over which the United States found itself isolated from the rest of the international community:  there was U.S. opposition to the land mine treaty, the strengthening of the embargo against Cuba, support for Morocco’s occupation of Western Sahara, foot-dragging on the Kyoto Protocols, support for Turkey’s vicious military offensive in the Kurdish regions of that country, among others.

Even worse, Hillary Clinton allied herself with the Bush administration on many its most controversial actions, such as the 2003 invasion of Iraq, threats of war against Iran, support for Israel’s 2006 offensive against Lebanon and 2002 offensive in the West Bank, opposition to the International Criminal Court, attacks against the International Court of Justice, and support for the unrestricted export of cluster bombs and other anti-personnel munitions used against civilian targets.

http://www.alternet.org/audits/109264/