An Open Letter to the Human Rights Defenders and Torture Fighters

Khiam Rehabilitation Center for Victims of Torture

Humanity is passing through a turning point, which threatens the civilization aspects acquired during the last decades. The number of human rights violations is increasing on daily basis, these violations don’t target only the individual’s rights but also the human existence as a social creature, the thing that the terrorist actions, happening in every place, assures.

The Palestinian population, from one hand, is being subjected to a real extermination war with the international community watching in silence. From another hand, the scandal of torture practiced in Abu-Gharib prison in Iraq shocked the human conscience in the whole world. And in Guantanamo the prisoners are de-humanized and tortured in uncivilized ways that takes us back in history to very dark stages.

If televisions were to be allowed getting into the Israeli, Arab or African prisons to picture the torture methods used there, we would have found ourselves in front of the most terrifying and atrocious scenes that goes beyond what we’ve seen in Abu Gharib.

Despite of these outrages, the international human rights organizations couldn’t establish an international movement to force the governments to be confined to the principles of the international law. On the contrary, the meetings of these organizations became inactive.

The World Wars I and II led to a peculiar development in the international conventions that guarantee the human rights, precisely Geneva Convention. Today, we are witnessing more dangerous conditions that put the human rights organizations in front of exceptional missions in preserving the human rights that have become inactive catchwords.

If we take the reports that Amnesty International issues and the Urgent Appeals that many organizations send around the world as an example, we notice that it became traditional and worthless if compared to the outrages being committed or to a picture that the media show. Assuring its documentary and informational importance though.

These organizations have contributed to the development of the human rights movement. However, the new stage that followed 11 September needs a revision for the work methods and a creation of new forms of action to preserve the achievements that were achieved over years by struggle.

For all that, we call upon for an international summit for the human rights defenders in order to form a new plan of action that scales to the forthcoming dangers surrounding the human rights and the human existence.

This international summit that we’re calling for should be preceded by regional summits for human rights organizations in every region. We hope that Amnesty International, The International Federation for Human Rights, World Organization Against Torture, The International Rehabilitation Council for Torture victims (IRCT) and other international and regional organizations take the initiative to establish preparing committees that collaborate with the UN Commission on Human Rights in order to give human rights again its credibility and vitality.

Khiam Rehabilitation Center for Victims of Torture

Mohammed Safa
Secretary General

Khiam Rehabilitation Center for Victims of Torture
Mazraa

Beirut - Lebanon
P.O. Box: 14-5843
Tel: +961 3 379612
Fax: +961 1 701692