Doublespeak undermines war on terrorism: Amnesty - Yahoo! News

Doublespeak undermines war on terrorism: Amnesty - Yahoo! News: "OLD FASHIONED REPRESSION

Despite international protests, the U.S. jail at Guantanamo Bay in Cuba remained full of prisoners who had not been charged or tried, and many European governments had tried to wriggle out of their legal human rights obligations, Amnesty said.

At the same time, powerful forces had paralyzed the
United Nations just when it could have acted decisively in regions like Sudan's crisis-torn Darfur, Amnesty said.

'As a result, the world has paid a heavy price in terms of erosion of fundamental principles and in the enormous damage done to the lives and livelihoods of ordinary people,' Khan said.

The report noted rising sectarian violence in
Iraq as well as killings and repression in Colombia,
Chechnya,
Afghanistan,
Iran, Uzbekistan and North Korea as governments felt they had impunity to act because of the double standards they saw.

'There is no doubt the war on terror has given a new lease of life to old-fashioned repression,' Khan said. 'These governments today do with much greater confidence what they used to do more quietly in the past.'"