The story headlined 'Another U.S. report fails Jamaica' in Wednesday's Gleaner evokes a reaction between amusement and outrage. The U.S. Government has adopted official policies that allow persons to be taken and held without their relatives or friends being notified. With just a declaration by the President or his designate, that a person is an 'enemy combatant', such person can then be held indefinitely with no access to lawyers, no access to Red Cross or any third party, no right to challenge his detention. He is not even allowed to see whatever 'evidence' there might be against him; and can be lawfully subjected to treatment that amounts to torture.

The U.S. Government has taken human rights back 800 years to a time before the Magna Carta. What, therefore, gives them the right to judge other nations on this subject? While we must strive to improve human rights in our country (and there is considerable room for improvement), we must treat this U.S. Government report with the contempt it deserves.

- Hugh P. Smythe, hsmythe@tstt.net.tt, Trinidad & Tobago

I read in Wednesday's issue about the United States giving Jamaica a failing grade with regards to our human rights practices. Who are they to talk to others about human right issues? They continue to close their eyes to the atrocities that they have committed and continue to commit in Iraq, and what about all those innocent individuals who are being held in Guantanamo Bay under such inhumane conditions? Those so-called human rights organisations that originate from the United States need to place all their efforts in cleaning up their own backyard before they criticise others.