Catégorie : World People

Linked with op-icescr – again in Geneva of January 31, 2006.

Added February 28, 2008: her photo and this link of Human Rights Tool.org.

Claire Mahon – Consultant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights. She joined the Internat. Commission of Jurists (ICJ) in November 2004 as a Legal Consultant responsible for ICJ’s work on economic, social and cultural rights, in particular the campaign for an Optional Protocol to the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (OP-ICESCR).

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Claire Mahon – Australia & Switzerland

An Australian and New Zealand national, she obtained her LLB (with honours) and BA in International Relations from the Australian National University in Canberra, and later went on to study International Law and International Relations at the Graduate Institute of International Studies in Geneva.

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Linked to our presentation of Rethinking Islam on Jan. 20, 2006.

Ziauddin Sardar writes: the truth about the torture of detainees in Afghanistan and Iraq is simple. The Bush administration sanctioned it, the military deployed it, and the American public gave it a tacit nod of approval. Most of the people who were and are being tortured are innocent. And they are all Muslims.

Ziauddin Sardar – Pakistan

The Torture Papers provides a blow-by-blow account of how the US adopted torture as a standard policy after the events of 11 September 2001. A few days after the attacks, the deputy assistant attorney general John Yoo wrote a memo in which he reasoned that because Afghanistan under the Taliban was a « failed state » and because al-Qaeda was not a state, the Geneva Conventions were applicable neither to the Taliban nor to Qaeda operatives, given that the conventions dealt only with « states ». (Read more of this article in the ‘New Statesman‘).

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Mr. Shattuck is a 1970 graduate of Yale Law School. He has received honorary degrees from the University of Rhode Island, Kenyon College, the University of Western Bohemia in the Czech Republic, and the John Jay College of Criminal Justice at the City University of New York. He received his BA magna cum laude and Phi Beta Kappa from Yale University in 1965 and an MA with First Class Honors in law from Cambridge University in 1967. (Read more on JFKlibrary).

John Shattuck – USA

Chief Executive Officer of the John F. Kennedy Library Foundation.

Short bio.

Paul Kirk, in an introduction speak in December 2003 about John Shattuck: In keeping with the ideals that were at the heart of the presidency of John F. Kennedy, we focus this evening on the topic of freedom and human rights.

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Silja J.A. Talvi’s writings on prison and criminal justice issues have appeared in such publications as In These Times (where she is a senior editor), the Christian Science Monitor and AlterNet. She is a three-time SPJ Western Washington Journalism Award recipient, and her work appears in the anthology Prison Nation (2003). She is based in Seattle. Her work appears in the anthology, « Prison Nation » (Routledge, 2003). See also her story about suffering killing women on Zmag.

Silja J.A. Talvi – USA

CRIMINALIZING MOTHERHOOD, by Silja J.A. Talvi, 12/2003, published in Media Awareness Project:

Regina McKnight is doing twelve years in prison for a stillbirth, carving out a dangerous intersection between the drug war and the antichoice movement. In the eyes of the South Carolina Attorney General’s office, McKnight committed murder.

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Linked to our presentation of Again about Tortures on Jan. 16, 2006.

Added later: see his article ‘why the McCain torture ban won’t work, the Bush legacy of legalized torture’ of February 8, 2006.

See ALFRED W. McCOY’s new book: ‘Cruel Scienc – The Long Shadow of CIA Torture Research’. The photos from Iraq’s Abu Ghraib prison are snapshots, not of simple brutality or a breakdown in discipline, but of CIA torture techniques that have metastasized, over the past 50 years, like an undetected cancer inside the US intelligence community.

Alfred W. McCoy – USA

From 1950 to 1962, the CIA led massive, secret research into coercion and consciousness that reached a billion dollars at peak. After experiments with hallucinogenic drugs, electric shocks, and sensory deprivation, this CIA research produced a new method of torture that was psychological, not physical–best described as « no touch torture. »

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Usha Menon is the Director of Resource Development for Asia and the Pacific, at Habitat for Humanity International; and is a Board Member of The Resource Alliance. She is recognised as one of the very few Asian resource developers with experience and expertise in both fundraising and training with multi-national and multi-cultural exposure.

Usha Menon – India

Over the past decade, she has helped launch fundraising initiatives in several countries in Asia and is a celebrated speaker and trainer on this subject. (Read more on Resource Alliance).

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Linked with Liberty.

She is Director of Liberty. She began this work in September 2003. Having originally joined Liberty in 2001 as In-house Counsel, Shami has worked on a number of Liberty’s high profile cases and has become a recognised expert on the UK’s anti-terrorism laws. Shami also assisted with Liberty’s campaigning work by contributing to the development of policy and strategy and regularly appearing as Liberty spokesperson on a wide range of issues. (Read more on LSE).

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Alfred Sirleaf is punished for educating Liberians: In a country where newspapers are a luxury for the minority that can actually read, citizen of capital Monrovia Alfred Sirleaf came up with a novel way to bring the news to the locals. Every morning he would enter the wooden shack that he called the newsroom and started sketching the day’s top stories on a rotating blackboard.

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Sorry, I could not get any photo of Alfred Sirleaf.

Making do with limited tools such as a 70s dictionary donated by a diplomat, he would craft his front page and then turn it around to face pedestrians and drivers. He, who has no formal journalism training, says: “Poverty dominates this country but that doesn’t mean that people don’t want to know what’s going on”.

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Linked to our presentation of Special Rapporteur on Torture on January 10, 2006.

Manfred Nowak – Austria

Direct from the web of the International Commission of Jurists: Prof. Manfred Nowak was elected to the Commission in May 1995.

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Wien – Florian Klenk ist « Journalist des Jahres« . Der « Falter »-Journalist, der nun für zwei Jahre den Österreich-Teil der « Zeit » macht, hat 2005 « Meilensteine » gesetzt – « wieder einmal », wie die Jury feststellt. Zum zweiten Mal hat der « Österreichische Journalist » eine Jahresbilanz der journalistischen Arbeit in diesem Land gezogen. Chefredakteure wie Herbert Lackner, Karl Amon, Andreas Unterberger haben in der Jury mitgewirkt, auch renommierte Medienjournalisten, wie Bernhard Baumgartner und Harald Fidler. Und auch Armin Wolf, « Journalist des Jahres 2004 », war in der Jury.

Siehe auch seinen Artikel in Die Zeit Nr. 52 vom 21. Dezember 2005 zum UN Sonderberichterstatter über Folter, Manfred Nowak.

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Sorry, ich fand keine Photo von Florian Klenk.

Siehe auch unseren Beitrag auf unserem NGO-Blog vom 10. Januar 2006 über die UN-NGOs-Govs-working group in Genf vom 23.Febr. – 5. März 2006.

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