By Anwar Elshamy
THE Al Jazeera TV network yesterday launched its own rights watchdog. The Public Liberties and Human Rights Desk will be headed by its cameraman, Sami al-Haj, who spent six years at the Guantanamo prison.
The primary focus of the desk will be to promote respect for human rights and public liberties by monitoring, documenting, broadcasting and raising awareness about these key issues in the world as a whole and the Arab region in particular, a spokesman said.
Speaking at a seminar on promotion and protection of human rights, held to mark the 12th anniversary of the Doha-based Al Jazeera TV, the network’s director general, Wadah Khanfar said the idea of setting up the desk came after the “horrible experience and violations to which Sami al-Haj was subjected in the US-run Guantanamo detention centre.”
“The need for such a desk was a pressing one. Any delay by media in exposing the human rights violations and conveying the suffering of people would only mean further sufferings and violations,” Khanfar said.
Asked if the coverage of rights issues by the new desk would upset many governments, Khanfar said Al Jazeera had successfully faced many pressures by governments, and hence “will not care much about them as long as the channel is committed to the professional principles.”
To a question whether the desk will be also concerned with the rights of expatriate labour in the Gulf states, Khanfar stressed that Al Jazeera TV has highlighted abuses of labour rights in the Gulf in many exclusive reports.
“The new desk is concerned with any human rights violations including those committed against expatriate labour in the Gulf states. We have been the first TV to bring the labour woes under the spotlight,” he added.
Al-Haj said his experience in the US prison at Guantanamo was a key element in the shaping of the idea of the rights desk.
“The Guantanamo detention centre would be one of the main focuses of the desk. It has been an example of the glaring violations of human rights in a country that was known to be a supporter of human rights in the world. The violations going on in the prison made it a global concern,” al-Haj added.
The new desk will enable people to have direct access to the former Guantanamo detainee via e-mail.
Making an intervention in the seminar, Jarallah al-Marri, a former Qatari detainee at Guantanamo, appealed to international rights groups to reach out to his brother Ali al-Marri who is in a US jail.
“I have no choice but to remember my brother Ali who is still jailed without any charge,” al-Marri said.
National Human Rights Committee secretary general Dr Ali bin Semaikh al-Marri requested Al Jazeera to highlight the case of Ali al-Marri as it did with al-Haj.
Gitanjali Gutierrez, an attorney with the US-based Centre for Constitutional Rights, slamed the US policies towards the Guanatanamo inmates, saying that no detainee at the prison received a fair hearing.
“Because my organisation is based in the US, I have to apologise for what my government did to individuals during its so-called war on terror,” Gutierrez said. |
