Specialist Charles Graner, left, is escorted to military prison after his court-martial in Fort Hood, Texas, on Jan. 15. He was sentenced to 10 years after having been convicted of dereliction of duty, maltreatment of detainees, assault of detainees, and indecency with detainees while serving at the Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq. (Photo: AFP)

Human Rights Watch blasted Washington’s record in 2004 in its annual report released on Jan. 13. In a scathing critique of the Bush administration’s record, HRW maintains that 2004 was among the worst years in the United States’ history of rights.

While Washington has never had a perfect record on human rights despite being proud of its commitment to the rule of law, its constitutional system of checks and balances, the independence of its judiciary, and its democratic political culture, “its record at home and overseas in 2004 —most notably the government’s use of coercive interrogation and disregard for the Geneva Conventions in its treatment of detainees in Afghanistan, Iraq, and Guantanamo Bay, exemplified by the images of torture from Abu Ghraib prison — has undermined that reputation,” asserts the organization.

“The Bush administration’s efforts to expand executive power at the expense of judicial and legislative oversight in its approach to counterterrorism also continue to jeopardize long-established civil and political rights in the United States,” HRW said.

In its counterterrorism efforts, “The Bush administration continues to reject the applicability of fundamental rights protections found in U.S. and international law to persons apprehended in its global campaign against terrorism,” the report adds.

Apart from thrashing the record of detentions and military trials of detainees, HRW drew attention to Congressional and executive efforts “to curtail the rights of immigrants through new legislation and administrative policies.” “Non-citizens face violations of their right to seek asylum, to be free from arbitrary detention, to defend against their deportation when it will result in separation from their U.S. citizen children or other close family members, and to be afforded full and fair deportation hearings,” according to HRW.

Back in 2002, HRW issued a report on alleged mistreatment of post-Sept. 11 detainees. Some of its findings were confirmed by a December 2003, report of the Inspector General of the U.S. Department of that some of the detainees had been physically abused.

According to the Inspector General, guards in the federal Metropolitan Detention Center in Brooklyn maliciously slammed detainees against walls, twisted their fingers and wrists, and jerked their restraints to make the detainees fall. None of the detainees were indicted for crimes related to the Sept. 11 attacks. Most were eventually deported for ordinary visa violations. The rights organization accuses the Bush administration continuing its new immigration policies based on an “assumed” link between noncitizens and terrorism, and since June 2004, subjecting every undocumented noncitizen within 160 miles of the Mexican or Canadian border to “expedited procedures” and deporting without hearing, those without legal papers.

The report questions the training and capacity of border and airport inspectors to assess the legal status of noncitizens and the viability of their asylum claims.