From: MSN NicknameEagle_wng  (Original Message)    Sent: 1/21/2006 1:56 PM
 
January 20, 2006
War on terror fuels minority rights abuses - study
By Irwin Arieff

UNITED NATIONS (Reuters) - The U.S.-led "war on terror" has led to gross human rights abuses around the world by giving governments cover to crack down on minority groups, an international rights group said on Thursday.

Those governments have in effect transformed "what should be a struggle against terrorism into a war on minorities," said Mark Lattimer, the executive director of London-based Minority Rights Group International.

"When the history of the war on terror is written, I believe that perhaps the greatest strategic mistake that will be identified is the failure to criticize other governments around the world who are on the front line (of the war on terror) for mass abuses directed against minorities," Lattimer said.

He spoke to reporters at a news conference at U.N. headquarters in New York marking the launch of his group's new report on the state of the world's minorities in 2006.

In the Americas, the war on terror has fueled abuses of minority rights in the United States, Canada and numerous Latin American countries including Chile, Colombia, Bolivia, Ecuador and Guatemala, according to the report.

Such abuses have also occurred in several Western European nations including Britain, the Netherlands and France, Iraq, Pakistan, China, the Philippines, Afghanistan, Russia's Chechnya province, Uzbekistan and Indonesia, the report said.

Using a basket of 10 indicators such as measures of conflict, governance and economic risk, the group compiled a list of 70 countries where minority groups were under threat for any reason at all including the war on terror.

The top 15, in descending order of threat, were Iraq, Sudan, Somalia, Afghanistan, Myanmar, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Nigeria, Burundi, Angola, Indonesia, Ivory Coast, Uganda, Ethiopia, Russia and the Philippines, it said.

In Iraq, the top concerns were the violent repression of Sunni Muslims and others considered opponents of the U.S.-supported government, and the forced displacement or intimidation of smaller minorities, it said.

In Sudan, the biggest threat was to non-Arab groups in the east and center as well as in the western Darfur region.

Ivory Coast was the sole nation in the top 15 without a previous history of genocide, but extensive polarization and the prevalence of hate speech by political militias made the situation there "extremely dangerous," the group said.

While a recent peace agreement between rebel and government forces in Aceh may lower the threat to minorities in Indonesia, it was too early to say with confidence whether the peace deal would hold, it said.

Across the board, the most common threat was found to be repression of minorities by the state, sometimes in the context of a struggle for self-determination, the group reported.


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