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“THE 2004 INTERNATIONAL DAY IN SUPPORT OF VICTIMS OF TORTURE” mentioning the U.S. Dept of State was published in the Extensions of Remarks section on pages E1291 on June 25, 2004.
The publication is reproduced in full below:
THE 2004 INTERNATIONAL DAY IN SUPPORT OF VICTIMS OF TORTURE
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HON. EDWARD J. MARKEY
of massachusetts
in the house of representatives
Friday, June 25, 2004
Mr. MARKEY. Mr. Speaker, tomorrow we will observe the seventh International Day in Support of Victims of Torture. The date June 26 is no accident: it was on June 26, 1987 that the International Convention Against Torture came into effect, and on June 26, 1945 the United Nations Charter was signed. Tragically, torture and other severe human rights abuses continue in many countries around the globe to this day.
Even more tragically, the world has seen in the past few months that the United States is not as firmly placed as it should be among those nations that abhor and fully reject torture. The prison abuses at Abu Ghraib have disappointed all Americans. Although President Bush has asserted that ``the values of this country are such that torture is not a part of our soul and our being'' much of the world remains skeptical about the Bush administration's commitment to repudiation of torture in light of the recent revelations about internal administration legal memoranda which attempted to carve out broad exemptions from domestic and international prohibitions on torture based on the Presidential power as Commander-in-Chief.
While the Abu Ghraib revelations were appalling, there is another practice going on right now which merits equal attention, and that is the outsourcing of torture by this administration. Under a practice known as ``extraordinary rendition,'' the CIA delivers terrorism suspects in U.S. custody both domestically and abroad to foreign governments known to use torture for the purpose of interrogation. This extra judicial practice has received little attention because of the great secrecy with which it occurs. Attention was drawn to the practice in September 2002 when Maher Arar, a Canadian citizen, was seized while in transit to Canada through JFK airport, and sent to Jordan and later Syria at the request of the CIA. While in Syria, Arar was tortured and held in a dark, 3-by-6-foot cell for nearly a year. He was ultimately released and detailed his story to the media upon his return to Canada.
In October 2002, outgoing CIA director George Tenet testified to the 9/11 Commission that over 70 people had been subject to extraordinary rendition before September 11, 2001. The numbers since then are classified. Human rights organizations including Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, the Center for Constitutional Rights and the ACLU have detailed numerous cases of extraordinary rendition and are pursuing litigation in some of them. On June 21, the Canadian government launched an investigation into Arar's case.
This practice is inconsistent with U.S. and international law and is a moral outrage. It must be stopped. If the Bush administration continues to permit this sort of outsourced, third-party torture, it is more likely that our own troops in Iraq could be subject to the same type of brutal treatment. I have recently introduced legislation, H.R. 4674, that directs the State Department to compile a list of countries that commonly practice torture or cruel, inhumane or degrading treatment during detention and interrogation, and prohibits rendition to any nation on this list, unless the Secretary of State certifies that the nation has made significant progress in human rights. The bill explicitly permits legal, treaty-based extradition, in which suspects have the right to appeal in a U.S. court to block the proposed transfer based on the likelihood that they would be subjected to torture or other inhumane treatment.
Extraordinary rendition to countries known to practice torture amounts to outsourcing torture. It is morally repugnant to allow such a practice to continue. H.R. 4674 is designed to ensure that we not only ban torture conducted by our own forces but we also stop the practice of contracting out torture to other nations. Torture enabled by extraordinary rendition is outrageous and could expose our own forces to the same type of treatment.
It is also deeply foolish of the Bush administration to allow any questions to be raised as to America's rejection of torture. Quite simply, actions such as those at Abu Ghraib and the ongoing practice of extraordinary rendition endanger American soldiers and civilians who may be captured in Iraq, Afghanistan or elsewhere. By failing to firmly bar methods of torture with U.S. detainees, the Bush administration has increased the likelihood that Americans overseas will be tortured or subjected to inhumane treatment.
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