AMNESTY INTERNATIONAL NEWS FOR HEALTH PROFESSIONALS

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1 AMNESTY INTERNATIONAL NEWS FOR HEALTH PROFESSIONALS AI Bulletin Vol 3, No. 22, 3 November 2000 AI Index: ACT 84/22/ To subscribe or unsubscribe from the bulletin or to contact AI please write to mailto:medical@amnesty.org. Visit the AI web-site: and the AI Health Professional web-site at: Contents of external sites are not the responsibility of Amnesty International. Links are provided for the convenience of readers. NOTE: Some sites may require registration or only be available to subscribers. Summary AI reports & statements: Russian Federation / FRY / Israel & OT / Pakistan / Sierra Leone / Spain / Sri Lanka / Campaign against Torture Death penalty: Kenya MPs vote against abolition / protest Mexico against execution US / doctors approve participation executions US / documentary: witness to execution USA / sleeping lawyer case USA / doubts conviction death row inmate Ohio International tribunals & Impunity: Cambodia signs, Spain ratifies ICC / deportation genocide suspect from UK Further news: possible torture charges Australian soldiers East Timor / deaths in custody Falun Gong / massacre Abidjan / public hearings torture Nigeria / prison levels Russian Federation / ICRC course for police Sudan / HR Committee Taiwan to be set up / helping torture survivors in USA / medical experiments prisoners USA / sentencing policy USA Vacancies: Rwanda & FRY researcher / Program Officer Sexuality and Reproductive Health / Web Advocate Conferences & training: Int. Diploma Humanitarian Assistance / Int. Human Rights Training Program Publications Amnesty International reports & statements Federal Republic of Yugoslavia: Release of prisoner of conscience - let's keep up the momentum! 1 November [EUR 70/59/00] a005efb4d!OpenDocument Also see the Boston Globe(2 November): s_freed+.shtml New York Times (2 November): Israel / OT: Failure to investigate deaths cheapens life. 26 October 2000 [ MDE 15/52/00]. 6d !OpenDocument Two reports by Physicians for Human Rights on recent events in Israel, the Occupied Territories and the Palestinian Authority are published today (3 November). Excessive Use of Force in Israel. Press release: Report: Death of Issem Judah press release: Report: For ICRC statement on medical neutrality, see: e1?OpenDocument Pakistan: Killing of Ahmadis must not go unpunished. 1 November 2000 [ASA 33/13/00].

2 a004ecc1f!OpenDocument Russian Federation. What future for Chechens - citizens or a subjugated people? 30 October 2000 [EUR 46/44/00]. DERATION Sierra Leone: the statute of the Special Court must make all recruitment of children under 15 a crime. 20 October 2000 [AFR 51/81/00] e0055b5d0!OpenDocument Spain: Ratification of the International Criminal Court Rome Statute --one more step away from impunity, one step closer to justice. 26 October 2000 [EUR 41/14/00] c74!OpenDocument Sri Lanka: Open letter to Sri Lanka's President on the killing of 26 detainees. 27 October 2000 [ASA 37/31/00]. 8f d7!OpenDocument Torture campaign: Electronic activism an outstanding success. 20 October 2000 [ACT 40/37/00] d00522a94!OpenDocument The Special Rapporteur on Torture told the Social, Humanitarian and Cultural Committee that victims of torture should receive compensation commensurate with the gravity of the harm suffered. See UN press release: ocument Death penalty Kenya - "Here's why the hangman should be retrenched". The Daily Nation gives a commentary on abolition of the death penalty after MPs have voted against abolition (29 October). Mexico/USA - protest Mexico to prevent execution. According to the New York Times, the Mexican government has formally protested against to prevent the execution of Miguel Angel Flores scheduled for 9 November. In the protest the government says Flores was not advised of his right to contact the Mexican embassy (30 October). Miguel Angel Flores was convicted for the rape and murder of 20-year-old Angela Tyson in Psychiatrist Dr Clay Griffith testified that Flores would certainly commit future violent acts, having never met or diagnosed the defendant. Also see medical action: USA - study: doctors' opinion on participating in executions. AP reported that a survey had found that a substantial number of doctors approve of allowing physicians to participate in executions (22 October). USA - Witness to an Execution. A company called Sound Portraits Productions has recorded a documentary entitled Witness to an Execution in which men and women involved in executions of death row prisoners in Huntsville, Texas, talk about their work (20 October). ortraits.org/on%2dair/feature%5fdocumentaries/witness%5fto%5fan%5fexecution/

3 USA - sleeping lawyer. The Boston Globe reported that a defendant in a capital murder trial does not have an absolute constitutional right to have a lawyer who stays awake for the entire trial according to an appeals court in New Orleans. A panel of the 5th US Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that "it is impossible to determine - instead, only to speculate - that counsel's sleeping" (28 October 2000). ml USA - doubts conviction death row inmate Ohio. Kenny Richey has spent 14 years on death row after being convicted for arson which killed a two-year-old girl, according to the BBC, but new evidence has cast doubt on his conviction (31 October). International tribunals & impunity ICC On Monday 23 October 2000 Cambodia became the 115th State to sign the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court. On 25 October Spain became the 22nd country to ratify the Rome Statute. The ICC will be formally established after 60 countries have ratified the Rome Statute. See the web-site of the Coalition for an ICC: United Kingdom - deportation Rwanda genocide suspect. Two years after applying for refugee status in the UK, Lieutenant Colonel Muvunji was deported from the UK to stand trial at the International Criminal Tribunal in Tanzania on charges of genocide. Mr. Muvunji was arrested in the UK in February this year (BBC 31 October). Further news Australia - possible charges against soldiers in East Timor. Australian soldiers may be charged with torture of militiamen in East Timor, according to the Sydney Morning Herald (2 November). China - death in custody of three Falun Gong members. Newsagency AP reported that three Falun Gong members had died in custody, two of them after beatings. Since the Chinese government banned the Falun Gong movement in July 1999, 62 Falun Gong members have died whilst imprisoned, AP reported (30 October). El Salvador - possible compensation for National Guard murders. A court in Florida is deciding whether retired Salvadoran generals José Guillermo García and Carlos Eugenio Vides Casanova should pay damages to the surviving siblings of Sisters Ita Ford, Maura Clarke, Dorothy Kazels, and lay missionary Jean Donovan who were murdered by National Guard officers in El Salvador in For background see BBC report: Ivory Coast - massacre near Abidjan. Reuters reported that dozens of bodies of young men, apparently shot dead at close range, were found in a forest on the outskirts of Abidjan on one day after protests in the city turned into political and ethnic clashes (27 October) e21?OpenDocument Nigeria - public hearings into torture. On 24 October a human rights violation investigation panel started to conduct public hearings into the alleged torture of victims of Nigeria's 1995 alleged coup plot (Panafrican News Agency, 25 October). Russian Federation - high prison levels. As part of the work of the Council of Europe/Russian Federation steering group on the reform of the prison system in Russia, a seminar was held in Moscow between 11 and 13 October 2000 for judges and prosecutors from 15 regions in the Russian Federation to discuss the high levels of imprisonment in Russia and possible alternative methods of dealing with who appear before criminal courts. The paper presented by Roy Walmsley of the

4 International Centre for Prison Studies is available from the ICPS site: 'Prison population size: problems and solutions': Sudan - ICRC course for police instructors. In October 22 Sudanese police instructors attended a human rights course organised by the ICRC in cooperation with the Sudan Unified Police Forces. This course is the first stage in a programme agreed upon with the Ministry of Interior (ICRC News 00/42, 2 November) eb5a5?OpenDocument Taiwan - establishing a National Human Rights Committee. Members of the national human rights task force have formed an advisory body which will draft a human rights covenant for the country (Taipei Times, 24 October). Turkey - head Parliament's human rights commission asked to step down. Sema Piskinsut, head of Parliament's human rights commission, has been asked to step down. She made a number of surprise visits to police stations and found soundproofed torture cells. The Istanbul branch of Turkey's Human Rights Association said that she was fired because her findings of torture made her unpopular with the Interior Ministry and the police (AP, 27 October). No link available. USA - helping torture survivors. The LA Times reports that helping survivors of torture is becoming a public health specialty (22 October). USA - medical experiments Philadelphia prison. After teaching at Philadelphia's Holmesburg Prison, Allen Hornblum published the book "Acres of the Skin" on the physical and psychological effects of medical tests carried out on inmates. Now a lawsuit has been filed on behalf of 298 former prisoners claiming the testing exposed inmates to infectious diseases and various drugs without their informed consent (CNN, 19 October). USA - sentencing policy. The USA is the world leader in imprisonment with an custody rate of 690 prisoners per 100,000 population. A review of US sentencing policy in the 1990s is available at the web site of The Sentencing Project: Press release: PDF version of full report: For an article discussing the US policy ("The Issue Politicians Are Ignoring -- 2 Million Prisoners" by Stuart Taylor Jr) visit the Atlantic Monthly web-site: [25 October] Vacancies Associate Researcher Rwanda / former Yugoslavia, Human Rights Center, University of California to work on three-year project "Justice, Accountability, and Social Reconstruction in the Aftermath of Genocide in Rwanda and the former Yugoslavia". Please send cover letter, resume, references, a writing sample and record of research to: Human Rights Center, University of California, Berkeley, 460 Stephens Hall #2300, Berkeley, CA Fax: Program officer, Sexuality and Reproductive Health, Ford Foundation based in China. Particular areas of focus will be advocacy for and access to quality health and family planning services, sexual health information and services for adolescents, and advocacy and prevention of HIV/AIDS. Ref. No: #735. Please send resume, cover letter and writing sample (5-20 pages of original work) to: Ms J. Graber, The Ford Foundation, 320 East 43rd Street, New York, NY 10017, USA. Mailto:j.graber@fordfound.org Web Advocate, Human Rights Watch, New York. The Web Advocate will develop HRW's capacity to involve the public in our advocacy work through the internet. Please send a cover lettter, resume, names or letters of reference, URLs and an unedited writing sample to: Human Rights Watch, Att.

5 Search Committee (Web Advocate), 350 Fifth Avenue, 34th Floor, New York, NY USA. Conferences & training International Diploma in Humanitarian Assistance. Organised by the Center for International Health and Cooperation, the University of Geneva, Hunter College of the City University of New York and the Royal College of Surgeons in Ireland. Date: 4 February - 3 March Venue: ICRC Ecogia Training Centre, Geneva. For details and an application form, please contact: Michel Veuthy, Academic Director and Geneva Representative, 14 Pierre Longue, CH-1212 Geneva, Switzerland. Mobile: Fax: Mailto:michel.veuthey@ties.itu.int International Human Rights Training Program, organised by the Canadian Human Rights Foundation. Date: June Venue: John Abbot College, Ste-Anne-de Bellevue, Québec, Canada. For information and an application form see: Contact details: Canadian Human Rights Foundation, 1425 boul Rene Levesque West, Suite 407, Montreal, H3G 1T7, Canada. Tel: Fax: Mailto:lawrence@chrf.ca Publications Allan A, Allan M.M. The South African Truth and Reconciliation Commission as a therapeutic tool. Behavioral Sciences and the Law, 2000; 18 : Mailto:a.allan@cowan.edu.au Amnesty report paints a grim picture of torture around the world. Lancet 2000; vol 356; no. 9240, 28 October Ataxia : The Chemical and Biological Terrorism Threat and the US Response.Henry L. Stimson Center (Washington DC, 25 October 2000). This new report suggests that the risks of biological and chemical terrorism in the USA have been exaggerated. For details see: Foxen P. Cacophony of voices: A K'iche' Mayan narrative of remembrance and forgetting. Transcultural Psychiatry, 2000; 37: Kennedy J. The current status of psychological debriefing. BMJ 2000; 321: MacDonald R. Time to talk about rape. BMJ 2000; 321: (28 October). MRI of the plantar structures of the foot after falanga torture. European Radiology; Vol 10; issue 10 (2000) pp For an abstract see: Neglia A. M., Rochon P.A. General medical journals should have covered war in Kosovo more. BMJ 2000; 321: 1084 (28 October). Politische Traumatisierung: Therapie im Kontext. Zeitschrift fuer Politische Psychologie (No ; no , Bonn). ISSN Prado R. La psiquiatria: etica y derechos humanos. [Psychiatry: Ethics and human rights ]. Revista del Hospital Psiquiatrico de la Habana, 2000; 40: Southall D et al. The Child-Friendly Healthcare Initiative (CFHI): Healthcare Provision in Accordance With the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child. Pediatrics 2000; 106: State of Denial: Texas Justice and the Death Penalty? This report published in September by the Texas Defender Service is available at:

6 Summerfield D. Childhood, War, refugeedom and 'trauma': Three core questions for mental health professionals. Transcultural Psychiatry, 2000; 37: Quiroga J. U.S. Statement on Torture to OSCE "Human Dimension" Review (19 October 2000). =/products/washfile/newsitem.shtml Seidler, E. Pediatricians: Victims of Persecution (Bonn, 2000). For a book review see The New England Journal of Medicine (Vol. 343, No. 17, 26 October). Shanks L., Schull, M. J.. Rape in war: the humanitarian response. CMAJ 2000; 163 (9): Commentary: (with forensic spin) War/environment/health linked: Ward G.F. U.S. Statement to the OSCE on the Death Penalty (18 October 2000). =/products/washfile/newsitem.shtml "Welcome to Hell". Arbitrary Detention, Torture and Extortion in Chechnya. Human Rights Watch (October 2000). Zarowsky C. Trauma stories: Violence, emotion and politics in Somali Ethiopia. Transcultural Psychiatry, 2000; 37: ===================================================================== This newsletter may be freely distributed in unrevised form. For free subscription contact the AI Medical Program at Amnesty International, 1 Easton Street, London WC1X 0DW, UK. (mailto:medical@amnesty.org ) AI web-site: Newsletters are archived at: