UN Panel gets it wrong again

Since far too many countries seem to make a habit of imprisoning people with no trials or seriously inadequate ones, it seems to be that it would be a very good idea of the United Nations had a panel to monitor, consider and make wise recommendations about the issue of arbitrary detention.

Unfortunately it would appear, if their findings about the decision of Julian Assange to hide in the Ecuadorian Embassy is anything to go by, that the panel which the UN actually has to review such things leaves a great deal to be desired.

The "Working Group on Arbitrary Detention” recently celebrated its 25th anniversary and considered four requests to review previous decisions, one of these being the Assange case. It decided that none of these cases met the threshold for a review from which I conclude that being an absolutely crazy decision is evidently not included in the criteria for that threshold.

Which is a shame, because it was an utterly crazy decision as I previously wrote here.

They are supposed to be monitoring arbitrary detention of people who have been detained without due legal process, not people who go and hide in an embassy to avoid a legal process!

I cannot think of a better way of summarising the reasons for this than to quote again the minority report of Vladimir Tochilovsky, the one member of the panel who did not vote for the finding against Britain and Sweden, and recorded his disagreement with the finding of his colleagues as follows:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Nick Herbert on his visit to flood hit areas of Cumbria

Please note that the post below was published more than ten year ago on 21st November 2009 Nick Herbert MP, shadow cabinet member for the Environment, Food, and Rural Affairs, was in Cumbria this morning to see the areas affected by the flooding. He writes on Conservative Home about his visit. Here is an extract. I’ve been in Cumbria today to see the areas affected by the floods. I arrived early in Keswick where I met officials from the Environment Agency. Although the river levels had fallen considerably and homes were no longer flooded, the damage to homes had been done. And the water which had got into houses wasn’t just from the river – it was foul water which had risen from the drains. I talked to fire crews who were pumping flood water back into the river, and discovered that they were from Tyne & Wear and Lancashire. They had been called in at an hours’ notice and had been working on the scene ever since, staying at a local hotel. You cannot fail to be impressed by the
Read more

Quotes of the day 19th August 2020

Image
"Wise men profit more from fools than fools from wise men; for the wise men shun the mistakes of fools, but fools do not imitate the successes of the wise."  ( Cato the Elder , who lived 234 BC - 149 BC, quoted in "Lives" by Plutarch.) There is a similar saying by Germany's Iron Chancellor, Otto von Bismarck: Benjamin Franklin is supposed to have put the same saying in a more humorous form: "Wise men profit by the mistakes of others, while fools will not learn even from their own blunders." See also this thread on the "Quote Investigator" website . Let us all be wise and learn from the events of the last few days.
Read more

Quote of the day 24th July 2020

Image
I was moved to put the passage below forward as a quote today when I saw a horrible post on twitter from someone writing that it was "excellent" that someone who took a different view from her about Brexit had died. I won't write which way round it was so that all the Remain supporters can assume the post was from a Brexit fanatic welcoming the death of a remainer and all the Leavers can assume it was a Remainiac welcoming one less Brexiteer. There's been plenty of nasty stuff on both sides but if you catch anyone of your own viewpoint  posting something like that who might listen to you, please do call them out on it - and point out that they're giving everyone on your side of the argument a bad name. Anyway, here's the quote from John Donne.
Read more