By Donna Ortega,
News Editor
QUEBEC CITY, Canada:
DESPITE MOUNTING foreign pressure over last month's killing of seven young men in Braeton, St. Catherine, Jamaica's human rights record did not come up for scrutiny at the Third Summit of the Americas -- the largest hemispheric meeting since the Santiago Summit in 1998.
Amnesty International had promised to take the matter to the international arena. However, an official of the Canadian government, hosts to the Summit, told The Gleaner that he was not aware of any effort by the group to bring the matter to the attention of hemispheric leaders during the three-day meeting.
"There are so many other issues it would probably get lost," he said. Clashes between demonstrators and the police as well as the thousands of protesters arguing against globalisation have occupied much of the attention here.
As to whether the matter would have affected Jamaica's participation in the process towards hemispheric integration and free trade, the official said it was unlikely. He believed that the Summit looked generally at what it meant to suspend participants from the process. However, "there will have to be a mechanism made to decide suspension. It would have to be a whole range of issues and human rights is just a part," he said.
Amnesty focused on the broader issues of human rights in its written submission, made along with proposals from other representatives of civil society, to the 2001 Summit. Their recommendations, written only in French, unlike other papers which were translated into the four languages of the Summit, were based on the premise that democracy is impossible without a true respect for human rights. If these rights are absent, the very idea of democracy is not very plausible, it said.
The organisation said it continued to warn of grave violations of human rights throughout the continent and to campaign against them. Among these were poor conditions in the prisons, the abuse of power by police, death threats, political assassinations, the shoddy treatment inflicted on asylum seekers, as well as threats and harassments against defenders of human rights.
This year in the body of its worldwide campaign for a world without torture, Amnesty said it drew attention to the awful reality of torture and treatment: sexual crimes, police brutality, excessive use of force, cruel treatment, inhuman and degrading treatment of detainees, adolescents, women and other persons. "The culture of impunity continues on the continent, the victims continue to be denied access to justice and for the most part these authors of acts of violence are never pursued or punished," Amnesty said.
The human rights group called on governments to strengthen the economic and human resources for the Inter American Commission for Human Rights and the Inter-American Human Rights Court. Amnesty demanded that the states and governments participating in the Summit place the questions of human rights ahead of the questions or considerations of a trade or economic agreement.
Amnesty also urged the 34 leaders of the hemisphere to observe the rules and international treaties that they signed or ratified and to respect the integral rights of their people.
