2001 - Human Rights, Social Justice

Human Rights, Social Justice

The Tokyo government angers China and South Korea July 9 by announcing that it will not order further revisions of middle school textbooks that have been criticized for glossing over atrocities committed by Japanese occupation troops in Korea from 1910 to 1945 and in China from the 1930s to 1945, including such practices as sexual slavery.

The USA PATRIOT Act approved by Congress October 25 bends the Bill of Rights by authorizing the attorney general to detain an alien for 7 days without charging the individual with any offense if he has "reasonable grounds" for suspecting the alien is aiding terrorism and then to hold the person for 6 months should he or she be charged with any crime, even unrelated. Former Missouri governor and U.S. senator John Ashcroft, now 58, has won Senate approval as President Bush's attorney general February 1 by a vote of 58 to 42, the narrowest vote since the confirmation of Ed Meese in 1981. The religious right has supported Ashcroft's nomination, but his record on civil rights, environmental protection, gun control, and reproductive rights has aroused strong opposition. The bill sent to Congress by the Bush administration September 18 allowed indefinite detention of individuals when the Justice Department said it had "reason to believe" (rather than "reasonable grounds") they might be involved in terrorism, called for use against U.S. citizens in U.S. courts of information obtained abroad through wiretaps that would be unconstitutional in America, and permitted freezing of all assets of suspects even before they were tried (see politics [Quirin decision], 1942). Congress has not held hearings or debated the legislation but has deleted some of the harsher provisions, only one senator (Russ Feingold) and 66 House members have opposed Uniting and Strengthening America by Providing Appropriate Tools Required to Intercept and Obstruct Terrorism, but the hastily drawn up measure allows the FBI to share information on domestic criminal investigations with the CIA in violation of the CIA's charter, whose provisions bar the CIA from domestic spying, and it comes under attack from right-wing critics as well as liberals; many compare it to the Alien and Sedition Acts of 1798, some note that it violates the First, Fourth, Fifth, Sixth, and Eighth Amendments, they call it the Constitution Shredding Act, and the Bush administration will back off implementing some of its provisions next year (but see Domestic Security Enhancement Act, 2003).

Attorney General Ashcroft issues orders November 9 to round up some 5,000 people for questioning in connection with possible terrorist plots, most are immigrants from the Middle East, many are U.S. citizens, and police chiefs around the country balk at compliance (more than 1,000 people have been detained for weeks without having had any charges filed against them); President Bush signs a military order November 13 authorizing Secretary of Defense Rumsfield to detain anyone whom the president has "reason to believe" is or was a member of the Taliban or al Qaeda, or has aided or abetted an act of international terrorism, or has harbored one or more such individuals, and to detain such suspects indefinitely without due process of law, allowing special military tribunals to try non-citizens. The administration justifies the new repression by saying that the country is at war (although Congress has never declared war); Britain, Germany, Spain, and other countries refuse to extradite suspects if they are to face secret trials and possible death penalties, saying that it would violate the Universal Declaration of Human Rights of Man adopted by the United Nations late in 1948; civil libertarians object to violating the Sixth Amendment, and while Ashcroft and President Bush insist that the president is not exceeding his authority they suggest November 28 that detainees will improve their chances of obtaining citizenship if they provide information leading to the arrest of terrorists. The government uses its sweeping new powers to arrest "suspects" at home and abroad, even if incommunicado at Guantánamo, Cuba, where they will be subjected to treatment that clearly violates the rules of the 1949 Geneva Conventions, but the Bush administration insists that those rules do not apply to terrorists (see 2002).

Men in Kabul celebrate in November by having their beards shaved off and flying kites, music is heard once again in the capital after 5 years of Taliban repression, some women begin to appear without their faces covered, and some return to school and university. Western powers insist that women must play prominent roles in Afghanistan's society as they did before the Taliban took over in 1996, when a large percentage of physicians, students, and government officials were women.