Tutu

CAPE TOWN (Reuters):

Archbishop Desmond Tutu accused the United States and Britain yesterday of pursuing policies like those of South Africa's apartheid-era government by detaining terrorism suspects without trial.

At an event to commemorate the 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UNDR), the Nobel laureate said the detention of suspected al-Qaida and Taliban members at the U.S. naval base in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, was a "huge blot on a democracy".

"Whoever imagined that you would hear from the United States and from Britain the same arguments for detention without trial that were used by the apartheid government," Tutu told a news conference in Cape Town.

Campaign

Tutu is chairman of the Elders, a group of prominent international statesmen that includes former U.S. President Jimmy Carter, anti-apartheid icon Nelson Mandela and his Mozambican-born wife Graca Machel.

The group is spearheading a campaign to get one billion people to sign a pledge reaffirming the principles of the UNDR, passed by the United Nations General Assembly on December 10, 1948.

Tutu, who helped lead the struggle to overthrow white minority rule in South Africa, said he was surprised so many Americans had accepted the argument that the Guantanamo detentions were necessary because of national security.

"It is exactly what the apartheid government used to say here," the Anglican cleric said.