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	The founders rights stuff by Rosa Brooks Los Angeles Times USA   July 2008   This Fourth of July, celebrate by re-reading the Declaration of Independence, created by more or less the same crowd who brought us the Constitution, 11 years and one war later. Remember it? "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that 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."   To the founders, "all men" have "unalienable rights" - not just U.S. citizens in the continental United States. (If the founding fathers were around today, Rush Limbaugh and Rudy Giuliani would pillory them as limp-wristed, latte-drinking, soft-on-terror liberals.)   It was treasonous stuff too. When the Declaration of Independence was drafted, there were no U.S. citizens: Instead, there were about 2.5 million scrappy Colonists who legally owed allegiance to the king of England, George III. But they went to war over the little matter of freedom, law and unalienable, God-given rights.   Among their grievances against King George, the rebellious Colonists complained that he ignored the will of their representative bodies, refused "his assent to laws for establishing judiciary powers" and "affected to render the military independent of and superior to the civil power." The Colonists also objected to the denial of "the benefit of trial by jury" and the king"s practice of avoiding the inconveniences of due process by transporting prisoners "beyond seas to be tried for pretended offenses." (George III would have loved Guantanamo.)   The founders had a word for governments that respected rights only arbitrarily and selectively: tyranny. The signers of the declaration took rights seriously. They wrote, "For the support of this declaration, we mutually pledge to each other our lives, our fortunes, and our sacred honor." That wasn"t mere rhetoric. Technically, the signers were all traitors, liable to be executed for treason. And they accepted that standing up for rights means taking some real risks.   Of the 56 signers of the declaration, about a third fought in the Revolutionary War, and five were captured and severely mistreated by the British. Several later died. Many lost children in the war, and about a third had their homes damaged or destroyed by the British. About 25,000 Colonists died in the war, about 8,000 in combat, the rest of disease - including an estimated 8,000 to 12,000 who died as a result of mistreatment while prisoners of the British. Extrapolating to modern population figures, that"s like losing nearly 300,000 Americans in a war.   The Constitution is no "suicide pact," but the people who founded this nation risked war, prison and death for the sake of unalienable human rights. Their values guided us through good times and bad, through the Civil War, two world wars and the Cold War. But today, some Americans seem happy to discard those same precious values in the name of "security."   * Rosa Brooks is a law professor at the Georgetown University Law Center.
	Sri Lanka found guilty of serious human rights abuses by UN Human Rights Committee by Interights Sri Lanka   In a case brought by leading Sri Lankan human rights lawyer Mr V.S. Ganesalingam of the NGO Home for Human Rights, together with international NGO INTERIGHTS, Sri Lanka has been held to account for the torture and arbitrary death in police custody of an 18 year old student, Sathasivam Sanjeevan.   Mr Sanjeevan’s parents brought the claim to the Human Rights Committee, the body which monitors compliance with the Optional Protocol to the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, to which Sri Lanka is a party. The Committee found that the Sri Lankan State had deprived Mr Sanjeevan of both his right to life and right not to be subjected to torture, both guaranteed under the Covenant. This failure was compounded by the lack of any effective recourse to justice for Mr Sanjeevan or his parents.   Following his arbitrary arrest in October 1998 Mr Sanjeevan was subjected to repeated beatings and torture in custody, leaving him with such extensive injuries he was unable to stand. He then suffered four fatal gunshot wounds, which police claim were inflicted as a as result of an ambush by separatist fighters. However, subsequent inquests failed to confirm the police account and it took a further two and half years and interventions by the UN Special Rapporteur on Torture before Sri Lanka’s Attorney General confirmed that the police version of events was false. Despite this confirmation, no criminal proceedings for the torture or murder were instigated, the Attorney General simply recommending disciplinary action for the perpetrators.   In the decade which has followed, Sri Lanka has never acknowledgedresponsibility for what occurred, pursued a criminal investigation against those considered responsible or offered any redress to Mr Sanjeevan’s family. The Sri Lankan State failed to offer any explanation of the events to the Committee, which found it directly responsible for the arbitrary deprivation of Mr Sanjeevan’s life. The Committee also found that Sri Lanka had submitted Mr Sanjeevan to inhuman treatment and torture as well as failing to investigate the events or to provide any effective remedy.   In concluding its examination, the Committee noted that Sri Lanka is under an obligation to provide the victim and his family with an effective remedy including the initiation and pursuit of criminal proceedings and payment of appropriate compensation whilst taking measures to ensure such violations do not recur in the future. It has been given 180 days to respond on what measures it is taking to implement the decision.   The Sri Lankan government now faces an important challenge: whether to abide by the Committee’s decision and honour its international law commitments, or to ignore the Committee and sanction immunity. Mr Sanjeevan’s family have already waited nearly a decade for justice, how much longer they wait will depend on Sri Lanka’s response to this decision.   * INTERIGHTS defends and promotes human rights and freedoms worldwide through the use of international and comparative law. They achieve this through a range of activities designed to strengthen human rights jurisprudence and obtain redress for people whose rights have been violated. Visit the related web page
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