121 Banks help companies violating human rights

Interesting information that i've got from the blog of Foreign Policy

121 Banks invest in companies violating fundamental human rights
You can download the full report here (39 page pdf file)

You're reading this blog and i have a question for you.
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It's up to you where you put your money

Bank Secrets Cracked
Tuesday, 11 December 2007

New report reveals alarming investment practices by financial groups

Today, the financial watchdog Netwerk Vlaanderen launches the report ‘Bank Secrets’. The dossier details the investments by 121 financial groups in companies violating fundamental human rights. The investors channel money to 13 companies selling weapons to dictators, denying people access to land and clean water, co-operating with armed rebel groups and being involved in forced relocations and heavy and irreversible pollution.

International banks involved
121 banks from 24 different countries play a role in the financing of these companies, including banks based in Abu Dhabi, Australia, Belgium, Canada, China, DRC, France, Germany, India, Indonesia, Italy, Japan, Kuwait, Malaysia, Mauritius, The Netherlands, Peru, Singapore, South Africa, Spain, Switzerland, Taiwan, the UK, the US and the multilateral World Bank.

Netwerk Vlaanderen reports that for the period 2003 – 2007, loans add up to a total of US$13 billion. Furthermore, during the period 2004-2007 banks have arranged and underwritten bond issues to a total value of US$ 28.4 billion. During the same period, the companies were assisted in issuing shares to a total value of US$ 14.8 billion.

Investors complicit to human right abuses
Although the human rights abuses are well documented, financiers keep on supporting the involved companies. The lack of sustainability standards in their investments policies, allows them to channel money to companies like AviChina, which sells military material to China, Burma and Sudan. Because of violations of human rights in these countries, the European Union decided on an arms embargo. By financing AviChina, investors undermine this embargo.

Other reported investments include the support to mining companies which systematically pollute the environment. The Australian company Emperor Mines, for example, exploits a gold and silver mine in an ecologically and culturally precious area in Papua New Guinea. Emperor Mines dumps monthly 14.000 tuns of toxic waste - containing lead, chromium, arsenic, cadmium, nickel and copper - in the local river. Thousands of people depend on the water for fishery and small scale agriculture. This does not stop several major international financial groups from backing the company financially.

Netwerk Vlaanderen promotes an environmentally and socially responsible approach to money. Netwerk gives advice on sustainable saving and investment products. And Netwerk has been running the campaign "My Money. Clear Conscience?" to show banks where their responsibilities are around human rights abuses.

The right to kidnap

In Declaration of Independence (1776) the americans wrote "all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness."
Well, apparently the Bush administration thinks that the right not to be kidnapped is not an unalienable right, is not self-evident.
All men might be created equal, but when they grow up they can be put in 3 different groups:
1 US citizens (human beings with human rights)
2 Foreigners (human beings with some human rights, not all of them)
3 Enemy combatants (they are not human beings, obviously they have no rights)

From Sunday Times:

December 2, 2007
US says it has right to kidnap British citizens
David Leppard

AMERICA has told Britain that it can “kidnap” British citizens if they are wanted for crimes in the United States.

A senior lawyer for the American government has told the Court of Appeal in London that kidnapping foreign citizens is permissible under American law because the US Supreme Court has sanctioned it.

The admission will alarm the British business community after the case of the so-called NatWest Three, bankers who were extradited to America on fraud charges. More than a dozen other British executives, including senior managers at British Airways and BAE Systems, are under investigation by the US authorities and could face criminal charges in America.

Until now it was commonly assumed that US law permitted kidnapping only in the “extraordinary rendition” of terrorist suspects.

The American government has for the first time made it clear in a British court that the law applies to anyone, British or otherwise, suspected of a crime by Washington.

Legal experts confirmed this weekend that America viewed extradition as just one way of getting foreign suspects back to face trial. Rendition, or kidnapping, dates back to 19th-century bounty hunting and Washington believes it is still legitimate.

The US government’s view emerged during a hearing involving Stanley Tollman, a former director of Chelsea football club and a friend of Baroness Thatcher, and his wife Beatrice.

The Tollmans, who control the Red Carnation hotel group and are resident in London, are wanted in America for bank fraud and tax evasion. They have been fighting extradition through the British courts.

During a hearing last month Lord Justice Moses, one of the Court of Appeal judges, asked Alun Jones QC, representing the US government, about its treatment of Gavin, Tollman’s nephew. Gavin Tollman was the subject of an attempted abduction during a visit to Canada in 2005.

Jones replied that it was acceptable under American law to kidnap people if they were wanted for offences in America. “The United States does have a view about procuring people to its own shores which is not shared,” he said.

He said that if a person was kidnapped by the US authorities in another country and was brought back to face charges in America, no US court could rule that the abduction was illegal and free him: “If you kidnap a person outside the United States and you bring him there, the court has no jurisdiction to refuse — it goes back to bounty hunting days in the 1860s.”

Mr Justice Ouseley, a second judge, challenged Jones to be “honest about [his] position”.

Jones replied: “That is United States law.”

He cited the case of Humberto Alvarez Machain, a suspect who was abducted by the US government at his medical office in Guadalajara, Mexico, in 1990. He was flown by Drug Enforcement Administration agents to Texas for criminal prosecution.

Although there was an extradition treaty in place between America and Mexico at the time — as there currently is between the United States and Britain — the Supreme Court ruled in 1992 that the Mexican had no legal remedy because of his abduction.

In 2005, Gavin Tollman, the head of Trafalgar Tours, a holiday company, had arrived in Toronto by plane when he was arrested by Canadian immigration authorities.

An American prosecutor, who had tried and failed to extradite him from Britain, persuaded Canadian officials to detain him. He wanted the Canadians to drive Tollman to the border to be handed over. Tollman was escorted in handcuffs from the aircraft in Toronto, taken to prison and held for 10 days.

A Canadian judge ordered his release, ruling that the US Justice Department had set a “sinister trap” and wrongly bypassed extradition rules. Tollman returned to Britain.

Legal sources said that under traditional American justice, rendition meant capturing wanted people abroad and bringing them to the United States. The term “extraordinary rendition” was coined in the 1990s for the kidnapping of terror suspects from one foreign country to another for interrogation.

There was concern this weekend from Patrick Mercer, the Tory MP, who said: “The very idea of kidnapping is repugnant to us and we must handle these cases with extreme caution and a thorough understanding of the implications in American law.”

Shami Chakrabarti, director of the human rights group Liberty, said: “This law may date back to bounty hunting days, but they should sort it out if they claim to be a civilised nation.”

The US Justice Department declined to comment.

UK terror detention limit

From The Guardian: The human rights group Liberty today releases a comprehensive study of terrorist pre-charge detention powers in 15 countries, including the United States, Spain, Russia, France and Turkey. The study, based on advice and assistance from lawyers and academics around the world, demonstrates that the existing 28-day limit already far exceeds equivalent limits in other comparable democracies.
Here you can download the 65 page paper of Liberty.

UK terror detention limit is longest of any democracy

New research piles pressure on ministers over plans to extend 28-day limit
Alan Travis
Monday November 12, 2007

Britain's existing 28-day limit on holding terror suspects without charge is already far longer than that for any comparable democracy, according to a study to be published tomorrow.

The survey, by the human rights organisation Liberty, was carried out by lawyers and academics in 15 countries. It shows that the four-week maximum in Britain outstrips limits in countries that have also suffered al-Qaida inspired terrorist attacks in recent years, including the United States, Spain and Turkey.

Although police in these countries also face increasingly complex terror plots with growing international dimensions, their maximum periods for pre-charge detention remain as short as 48 hours in the US, five days in Spain and seven and a half days in Turkey.

The findings are released as MPs await the publication of a new counter-terrorism bill that will propose extending detention without charge beyond 28 days.

Police chiefs have argued that complex investigations, including trawling computers and telephones for evidence of terrorist plots, mean they need the option of holding suspects for longer.

But critics have expressed concern that police have failed to bring forward compelling evidence to show the need for an extension.

The home secretary, Jacqui Smith, is determined to avoid a repeat of the humiliating Commons defeat suffered by Tony Blair two years ago when he proposed a 90-day limit and saw 49 Labour MPs rebel.

Ministers have indicated they would favour a maximum of up to 56 days, but no government position has been made clear. There is evidence that Gordon Brown has not yet formed any strong personal opinion and he is said to remain "genuinely open-minded" on his preferred option.

Liberty's experts around the world found that in comparable democracies the closest equivalent to a charge for those who have been detained in connection with terrorist activities must happen within days and not the months or even the years claimed by those who want to double the British limit to eight weeks.

The absence of a final decision has been reflected in a slippage of the publication date of the counter-terror bill. It was expected to appear by the end of this month but has now been pencilled in for December-January, with Smith only saying publicly that she hopes it will happen by Christmas.

The home secretary has claimed that carrying out international comparisons of pre-charge detention limits are so complex that they are on a level with doing a PhD thesis, while the Metropolitan police commissioner, Sir Ian Blair, has claimed that in countries such as France and Germany judicial oversight allows people to be detained for years.

Shami Chakrabarti, the director of Liberty, said any extension of pre-charge detention would put Britain even further out of line with comparable democracies around the world: "The new prime minister is neither Tony nor Ian Blair. I have every hope that this new, damning evidence, alongside proportionate alternatives to lengthy pre-charge detention, will persuade him to think again."

She said the Liberty study "explodes self-serving assertions about extended detention in inquisitorial Europe and other western democracies. It makes embarrassing reading for all of us in the land that gave Magna Carta to the world."

The human rights organisation acknowledged that comparisons with other common law systems such as in Canada, New Zealand and Australia were more straightforward than those with inquisitorial civil law systems such as France and Germany, but said it had asked legal experts in each country to identify the closest equivalent to pre-charge detention.

"We found that the closest equivalent to a charge must happen within a matter of days, not months or years as Sir Ian Blair and others have suggested," the Liberty study concludes.

It also warns that any extension of pre-charge detention in Britain could have broader implications around the world and give the green light to other governments such as Robert Mugabe's in Zimbabwe to pass more draconian anti-terror laws: "Some states, and some individuals seeking to radicalise Muslim youths also might use the disparity to undermine the UK's claim to civility and moral authority."

Anti-terrorism legislation in UK

From The Economist: Sir Ian Blair (head of the Metropolitan Police Service) should go; the 28-day limit should stay.

The article is interesting but it doesn't talk about the government amendment of 90 days limit, to get more info you can look here in wikipedia.

Terrorism
And how not to fight it
Nov 8th 2007
Britain's top cop and prime minister are both crying wolf

SPIES seldom step out of the shadows, but when they do they make the news. A year ago Dame Eliza Manningham-Buller, then head of MI5, attracted headlines when she revealed that her agency was tracking some 1,600 suspected terrorists—a sixfold increase from 2001. This week Jonathan Evans, her successor, said that more than 2,000 people were now on the list, and “as many again that we don't yet know of” were suspected.

It was against this background that Sir Ian Blair, the Metropolitan Police Commissioner, fought this week to save his job as Britain's top-ranking policeman. On November 1st his force was found guilty of endangering the public through a “catalogue of errors” that led to the shooting on July 22nd 2005 of an innocent man, mistaken for a terrorist. No individual was singled out for punishment but the taxpayer-financed police force was fined £175,000 ($368,000), plus legal costs, for the “corporate failure”. Sir Ian apologised and promised to do better, but as The Economist went to press he was turning a deaf ear to calls for his resignation.

His supporters, who include the home secretary, Jacqui Smith, and Ken Livingstone, London's mayor, reckon that a tragic but understandable excess of zeal in the confusing aftermath of the second terrorist attempt in a month on London accounted for the death of Jean Charles de Menezes. Sir Ian has proved a doughty crime-smiter and policing moderniser. To make the ace cop pay for a mistake that had no author and occurred in the heat of righteous battle would cheer only terrorists.

Others are less convinced. When there is corporate failure, the person who represents the corporation should take the rap, they maintain. Sir Ian's authority is shot anyway. On November 7th the London Assembly passed a vote of no confidence, asking the Metropolitan Police Authority to sack Sir Ian. The following day the Independent Police Complaints Commission (IPCC) published a report on the specific circumstances surrounding the shooting with yet more criticism of the Met and its embattled chief. And the way has now been cleared for an inquest into de Menezes's death that will give his family the chance to put other questions. A pre-inquest hearing is scheduled for December.

Mr Evans's warning that terrorist activity is increasing provided an equally useful backdrop for the prime minister. The day after the intelligence chief's remarks, Gordon Brown outlined (for at least the third time) controversial new anti-terrorism powers that he wants to introduce. Top of his wishlist is extending the period of time for which terrorist suspects can be held without charge, a measure that most policemen back. In the past seven years this period has increased from four days to 28 (see chart). The main opposition parties say they won't raise the limit again without compelling reason to do so and some Labour backbenchers are not keen either.

The government has struggled to come up with convincing evidence. Gordon Brown said in July that six suspects had already been held for 27 or 28 days, implying that the police were up against the buffers. Others claim the police use the full extent of whatever limit they have, whether it is 14 days or 28. Suspects can already be held without charge in Britain for longer than in any other big European country. Legal systems differ, but last month Spanish courts convicted 21 people involved in the Madrid train bombings although their police had had just 13 days to find probable cause to charge those detained. And the prospect of harsh treatment on possibly flimsy grounds will deter some Muslims from giving the police useful information.

The biggest argument against giving the police more powers, however, is provided by the de Menezes shooting itself: they have misused the ones they have. Sir Ian should go; the 28-day limit should stay.

Shame on you, Yahoo!!

A sad story from The Times: the search engine Yahoo! supplied information to Beijing authorities and a chinese journalist was sent to jail for ten years.

More business for Yahoo! and 10 years of jail for somebody who doesn't want to live in a dictatorship! Well done, Yahoo!

Yahoo! chief was ‘moral pygmy’ over aid to jailing in Beijing
November 7, 2007
Suzy Jagger in New York

Washington yesterday accused the chief executive of Yahoo! of being morally stunted after the search engine supplied information to Beijing authorities that led to the imprisonment of a Chinese journalist.

At a hearing in Washington, Jerry Yang, chief executive of Yahoo!, was told that he was a “moral pygmy” despite being a technological and financial giant, because he authorised that confidential data about Yahoo! users be turned over to the Beijing authorities.

Shi Tao, a journalist in China, was sent to jail for ten years for engaging in pro-democracy efforts perceived by Beijing as subversive after Yahoo! supplied information about his online activities requested by the authorities.

Both Mr Yang and Yahoo!’s general counsel, Michael Callahan, were questioned yesterday by the House of Representatives Foreign Affairs Commitee. Tom Lantos, its chairman, said: “I do not believe that America’s best and brightest companies should be playing integral roles in China’s notorious and brutal political repression apparatus.”

Chris Smith, a committee member, compared Yahoo!’s cooperation with China’s Governnment to companies that cooperated with Nazi Germany.

Human rights groups have long accused Yahoo! of helping China to stifle the flow of ideas in exchange for greater access to the country’s rapidly growing internet market. In 2005, Yahoo! bought a 40 per cent stake in China’s biggest online commerce group.

Mr Yang said that Yahoo! “has been open and forthcoming with this committee at every step of this investigative process”.

Mr Callahan said that Yahoo! staff in China had little choice but to comply with government demands. He said: “I cannot ask our local employees to resist lawful demands and put their freedom at risk, even if, in my personal view, the local laws are overbroad.”

Shi Tao had forwarded foreign human rights groups an e-mail from the Chinese authorities that told journalists to avoid coverage of the 15th anniversary of the Tiananmen Square protests. Mr Yang apologised to Mr Shi’s family and claimed that it was trying to help to get him released.

Mr Callahan would not say whether there were outstanding demands for information by Beijing or, if so, whether Yahoo! would react the same way.

The film Rendition sweetens the reality

From Salon.com : the journalist Stephen Grey tells us the difference between the film Rendition and the reality.

U.K.-based journalist Stephen Grey is author of the award-winning book "Ghost Plane" and reporter for the upcoming FRONTLINE/World documentary "Extraordinary Rendition"

The agonizing truth about CIA renditions

The fate of prisoners secreted away under the Bush administration is in some ways worse than even Hollywood has portrayed.
Nov. 5, 2007
By Stephen Grey

At 3:44 p.m. on Jan. 24, 2004, a luxury Boeing 737 business jet operated by the Central Intelligence Agency landed at Kabul Airport in Afghanistan. Onboard were its flight crew, eight members of a CIA rendition team and a blindfolded prisoner who was shackled by his wrists and feet.

The behavior of the prisoner, a German citizen named Khaled el-Masri, concerned the CIA team leader onboard. According to an agency insider, the leader sent word to Washington that "there was something strange about el-Masri. He didn't behave like the others they'd captured. He was asking: Is he the right guy?"

Within days it emerged that el-Masri was indeed the wrong man. It was a "100 percent case of mistaken identity," said another former agency official. Yet, despite this discovery, el-Masri spent 18 weeks in solitary confinement in a CIA "black site," or secret prison used by the United States in its war on terror. He is still waiting for an apology or an explanation.

The case of el-Masri -- whose lawsuit against the CIA has been dismissed by U.S. courts on the grounds of protecting "state secrets" -- caused a huge controversy within the CIA at the time of his capture. A five-month standoff between employees at the Counterterrorism Center and others in the clandestine service led then director George Tenet to step in. "On at least this occasion, Tenet made the right choice," a source told me. "He ordered the release of a man who was clearly not a terrorist."

The current Hollywood movie "Rendition" looks at a fictional case of a wrongly identified terrorist. It calls to public attention the CIA program of "extraordinary rendition," the practice of nabbing terrorist suspects abroad and transferring them without legal process to a third country -- often one where torture is commonplace -- for detention and interrogation.

In the course of investigating the rendition program for the past four years, I have interviewed victims, CIA pilots, case officers who have actually carried out renditions, senior CIA officers who directed such operations and officials at the White House who were involved in authorizing such measures. All of these sources told me in private or on the record that repeated claims by the White House that we "don't send people to countries where they will be tortured" are plain lies.

As Tyler Drumheller, head of CIA covert operations in Europe from 2001 to 2005, said in an on-camera interview, the assurances obtained from countries like Egypt that prisoners would not be tortured were hardly treated as serious. "You can say we asked them not to do it, and they do say that, but you have to be honest with yourself and say there's no way we can guarantee they are not going to do that."

Hollywood's "Rendition" makes some mistakes. It is not true, as the movie depicts, that CIA officers stand by in some Egyptian or Syrian torture room while a prisoner is electrocuted. Most CIA officers would find that abhorrent, and it would breach the CIA's own rules and be a clear violation of U.S. law.

But in some ways the truth about rendition is worse than what is depicted in the Hollywood film. When prisoners are handed over to countries like Egypt or Syria, CIA officers keep well clear of what happens next because agency rules prevent them from witnessing any strong-arm interrogations. But keeping their eyes wide shut, in effect, allows for much darker, more immoral things to occur, and for the U.S. government to preserve plausible deniability.

Inside its own "black site" prisons, the CIA uses interrogation methods that -- while falling short of the medieval techniques used in the Arab world -- still, in the eyes of many within the agency, amount to straightforward torture. It is not only the physical methods like waterboarding (simulated drowning), but also refined techniques of sensory deprivation, that can cripple a prisoner psychologically.

One witness to such abuse was Bisher al-Rawi, a longtime British resident who was snatched by the CIA and held for more than four years, first in Afghanistan, then in Guantánamo Bay, Cuba. In a recent interview he told me about the "dark prison" where he was held in solitary confinement while being bombarded with strange music. It was freezing cold and so dark, he said, "you couldn't see the end of your nose." Physical torture, like the beatings he later endured, could be overcome, he said, but psychological torture "lives with you all your life."

The Bush administration now acknowledges its program of rendition and the existence of its black sites. But much remains a deep secret. Most of the terrorist suspects involved remain in custody and cannot talk. And we know the fate of just a small fraction of the thousands of prisoners captured by U.S. forces around the world since 9/11.

Recently, by refusing to hear the lawsuit of Khaled el-Masri, the U.S. Supreme Court has added to this veil of secrecy. It left standing a judgment by the circuit court that however bad el-Masri's treatment, the objectives of national security outweighed the public interest in airing the truth about his arrest and detention in a public court of law.

As long as a terror suspect remains a "ghost prisoner" whose location and fate can only be guessed at, then a prison guard or interrogator need feel little fear of the consequences of what he or she might do. Secrecy is a friend of the torturer.