IRAQ:DESPITE THE removal of the dictator Saddam Hussein and the five-year long War on Terror, the standard of human rights in Iraq remains disastrous, Amnesty International has said.
In its new report Carnage and Despairthe organisation says attacks and sectarian killings by armed groups, torture and ill-treatment by Iraqi militants and the continuing detention of thousands of suspects by US and Iraqi forces have had a devastating impact.
Amnesty claims that civilians have borne the heaviest brunt of the war, with more than four million Iraqis displaced from their homes since 2003 and about 1,200 people fleeing the country to Syria every day.
Malcolm Smart, Amnesty International's director for the Middle East, said: "Saddam Hussein's administration was a byword for human rights abuse, but its replacement has brought no respite at all for the Iraqi people.
"Arbitrary arrests, detentions and torture continue to be reported," he said.
The report says the exact number of people killed in Iraq since the US-led invasion in March 2003 is unknown, but according to a survey carried out jointly by the World Health Organisation and the Iraqi government, more than 150,000 people had died by June 2006 and the UN said some 35,000 people were killed in Iraq in 2006 alone.
Amnesty also said trials in Iraq are routinely unfair with convictions being based on evidence allegedly obtained under torture resulting in hundreds of people being sentenced to death.
"This is one of the most worrying aspects for the future. Even when faced with overwhelming evidence of torture under their watch, the Iraqi authorities have failed to hold the perpetrators to account," Mr Smart said.
Amnesty International Irish section executive director Colm O'Gorman said the international community cannot abdicate its responsibility for what has happened to the people of Iraq.
