“Does Congress Hate Our Freedoms?” Humanists Ask.
September 29, 2006
For Immediate Release
Contact: Roy Speckhardt, (202) 238-9088
rspeckhardt@americanhumanist.org
- www.americanhumanist.org
(Washington D.C., September 28, 2006) When the U.S. Senate voted this
evening to pass the Detainee Treatment and Trials Bill, it took the moral
low road in the so-called war on terror. The bill now goes to President
George W. Bush for his signature.
“How can we stand up for freedom around the world by abandoning our freedoms
at home?” asked Mel Lipman, president of the American Humanist Association.
“And how can we say we want freedom to ring worldwide if we won’t ourselves
recognize the human rights of foreign nationals?”
The Military Commissions Act of 2006 allows the executive branch of the
federal government to try “alien unlawful enemy combatants" under a lower
standard of justice than would be applied to U.S. citizens—despite a stated
goal of the Bush administration to spread human rights and the American
democratic ideal all over the world.
“Expanding the reach and influence of American values--those principles that
underlie our Bill of Rights--is a truly noble ideal that is only undermined
by the hypocrisy Congress has just displayed,” added Roy Speckhardt,
executive director of the American Humanist Association. "We have no moral
claim to our inalienable human rights if we don't believe everyone is
entitled to them regardless of their nationality, philosophy, or
criminality. And while there are those in the world who, as Bush has
declared, ‘hate our freedoms,’ we can't counter their influence by imitating
them. So why have our legislative leaders, by their votes yesterday and
today, suggested that we who they represent hate those same freedoms
ourselves?”
The legislation passed by the Senate today also tampers with other basic
human rights. It makes certain types of coerced evidence admissible,
prohibits detainees from invoking the Geneva Conventions as the source of
their rights, denies access to the U.S. court system for detainee habeas
corpus appeals, and declines to treat as crimes "outrages upon personal
dignity, particularly humiliating and degrading treatment," which are banned
under international law.
“We used to say, ‘It can’t happen here,’” said Mel Lipman, referring to a
loss of freedom and growth of government power. “But now it has happened. It
may only be a small step in the erosion of our liberties, but it is a step
that never should have been taken and must be reversed as soon as possible.”
