RTÉ News | US assurances that Irish airports are not being used for rendition are not worth the paper they are written on, according to the Secretary General of Amnesty International.Speaking to RTÉ News on the publication of Amnesty’s annual report, Irene Khan accused European countries like Ireland of failing to put in place safeguards against rendition.
Amnesty International says that despite repeated calls by the Council of Europe, no government has yet put in place adequate measures to prevent their territory being used by the US for the secret transfer of detainees to detention, which is known as rendition.
The Government says it accepts US assurances that Ireland is not being used for rendition.
It is 60 years since the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, but Amnesty accuses world leaders of what it sees as their failure to deliver on it.
It expresses hope that the next president of the US will close the Guantanamo Bay detention centre.
Amnesty points to human rights abuses in Burma as the most glaring example of a decline in the global influence of the US and the EU.
In the Middle East it highlights the 2008 death toll for Palestinian and Israeli victims, which already exceeds the figure for all of 2007.
Amnesty also says it expects China, as an increasingly significant global power, to improve its human rights record both at home and abroad.
In the report, Amnesty International condemns Russia for its repression of political dissent, but sees the installation of President Dmitry Medvedev and new leaders taking over elsewhere in the world as a sign of hope for the future.
Read Amnesty International’s 2008 State of the World’s Human Rights report