Interview with UN special rapporteur on extrajudicial executions

As special rapporteur on summary, extrajudicial and arbitrary executions to the UN Human Rights Commission, Asma Jahangir, a Pakistan-based lawyer and longtime human rights campaigner, recently travelled to Afghanistan to report on the human rights situation there. In an interview with IRIN, she defended her call for an international inquiry into human rights abuses in Afghanistan, because she believes only peace backed by accountability is sustainable. Jahangir also demanded a moratorium on the death penalty in Afghanistan until such time as a functional justice system is re-established in the country. QUESTION: What is your mandate as the UN special rapporteur on summary, extrajudicial and arbitrary executions? ANSWER: Well, my mandate is to look at the situation of extrajudicial killings or summary executions where the state is linked to such executions, and then to look at the whole question of impunity that when people don’t have a right to life, and how is impunity entrenched and what happens in such situations. Q: Does your mandate also include investigations into mass graves in Afghanistan? A: As rapporteurs, we are not investigators. We report about the whole issue, including the situation, with recommendations to the UN Human Rights Commission - that is the member states. That is what I was looking at [in Afghanistan]. Of course, this will also mean to look at the number and the extent of extrajudicial killings, which would include mass graves as well. Q: Fresh from your trip, did you see any improvement in human rights in Afghanistan? A: There is a turnaround from the past, but there are also linkages from the past. The situation of extrajudicial killings has dramatically decreased, but the culture of impunity has not gone away. There is prevailing fear, plus people are asking for justice. They are saying that if there is a change, it must include justice and an end to impunity. Q: You have called for an international inquiry into human rights abuses in the country. Can you elaborate on that? A: I have called for an independent international inquiry to map and to sketch the large-scale violence that is grave human rights violations - crimes against humanity that have been committed in Afghanistan for the last 23 years - because the country has just opened up and there has been no documentation of it. The seriousness of the situation has not been looked at to see whether these crimes do constitute crimes against humanity or not. If we have to start with that process, it has to go step by step, and this I believe is a first step to an eventual goal for justice. Q: There were media reports that some of the warlords, Generals Rashid Dostum and Mohammad Ata in particular, now part of the Afghanistan administration in the north of the country, refused to cooperate with your mission. Did you receive enough assistance from all the parties involved? A: Let me say that their representatives met me, and I got no indication from them that there was lack of cooperation or [that] there were deliberate attempts not see me or to obstruct my visit, because I had access completely and fully to every part of Afghanistan that I wished to visit. Q: Is the UN hesitant to push human rights issues at the moment in Afghanistan because many of the alleged perpetrators of extrajudicial killings are part of the new administration? A: I don’t think that because the political events have evolved in this way that the UN is hesitant to push human rights. Very recently the UN deputy secretary-general [Louise Fréchette] was there, and she very much stressed on the agenda of human rights. I think what is difficult there is that how do you proceed. The question is not whether it should be respected, it is how to go about it in a very effective way. Q: How would you like such cases to be dealt with, given the lack of evidence, witnesses and a functioning legal system? A: Obviously, we don’t think that there should be punishment without proper proof. I very much believe in the rule of law, in the due process, and because I fear as I have seen there that the trial standards were very deficient. I have called [on] and requested and urged the government to place a moratorium on the death penalty and to abstain to use the death penalty until such time when these standards are met. Q: The UN does not have a great track record in dealing with war crimes - the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda in Arusha [Tanzania] set up to try those perpetrating genocide in Rwanda has dealt with very few cases. Is there a better way of bringing such people to justice in countries with no legal system? A: I think it is a very challenging task, but we have to try and try again and improve our message to ensure that there is no impunity for crimes against humanity. If the international community is unable to do that, then I am afraid that we are giving a sort of licence to non-state actors and very brutalised governments to go and kill people around them. Unarmed civilians will always be at risk in that case. Q: What will happen to the report that you produce before the UN Human Rights Commission? Will it change something on the ground in Afghanistan? A: I think that even a special rapporteur’s visit if properly understood, which in this case [it] was, makes a difference in the atmosphere. The very fact that there were misgivings and apprehensions expressed shows that people are willing to [take] and they have taken the message, and the message is that nobody gets free of such crimes. I hope that the report is not simply to be kept on the shelf, and I will continue to engage governments so that an inquiry is set up as the first step.