U.S. Amnesty chair speaks out on human rights violations
Chad Eggspuehler
Issue date: 2/14/05 Section: News
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Chip Pitts, AI U.S.A. chairman of the board, spoke to approximately 40 UTD students, faculty and staff in the Texas Instruments Auditorium of the Engineering Building on the increase in human rights violations, especially in the form of interrogation torture, at the hands of U.S. military.
Pitts, the former chief legal officer for Nokia, Inc. and a Stanford lecturer, noted the use of threats to kill detainees' families in order to elicit coerced confessions from suspected terrorists and Iraqi insurgents.
"Studies have shown that torture doesn't work," Pitts said, noting specific studies at Harvard, Syracuse and Yale, as well as the U.S. Department of State. "People have died in custody from human rights violations authorized by the highest level of U.S. government. There has been a real decline in the process of law."
Pitts suggested the use of torture tactics yields false confessions and misinformation - since people will tell interrogators anything to end the torture. Additionally, these harsh practices, he said, only act to increase the occurrence of terrorist activities.
The Patriot Act also drew criticism from Pitts, who said the measure authorizes constitutional violations that make the act inherently unconstitutional. Pitts said the increase in human rights violations hinders AI's objective to advance the International Declaration of Human Rights that, among other things, provides for the fundamental right to be free from torture or extra-judicial execution and the right to be free from persecution.
Pitts admitted human rights violations and terrorism could not be entirely wiped out, but reiterated Pres. John F. Kennedy's quote, "If you don't provide for peaceful evolution, you will have violent revolution."