Amnesty International criticizes human rights violations in Lebanon

Amnesty International accused the post-civil war government in Lebanon of committing flagrant human rights violations in the name of restoring security and civil peace.

A 38-page report by the London-based international human rights organization said the government was carrying out arbitrary political arrests, torture and ill-treatment of suspects in Lebanon and named three detainees who allegedly died under torture in 1994.

"Since 1990, hundreds have been arrested for political reasons or on grounds of security. Many were seized without arrest warrants and detainees have been held in prolonged incommunicado detention without access to lawyers,'' the report which was distributed by Amnesty International activists at a press conference in Beirut said.

Despite the violations, the situation represents a "significant improvement" in people's basic rights over the 1975-90 civil war years, it added. "The end of the war has signaled an end to mass human rights abuses such as deliberate and indiscriminate killings, abductions and 'disappearances,"with the state once more in a position to uphold the rule of law," the report said.

However, the group said it was concerned that individuals' basic rights are often "curbed in the name of 'security' and the need for enforcing the state's authority." "Since the end of the civil war, Lebanon has witnessed mass arbitrary political arrests and detention, torture and ill-treatment, violations of the right to fair trial and an expansion of the number of offenses carrying the death penalty," the report said.

The government's investigation into cases of torture were either non-existent or unsatisfactory according to Amnesty International. It was the first extensive report on Lebanese human rights conditions since the end of the war. The report also said an amnesty law issued by the Lebanese government in August 1991 pardoning political crimes committed during the civil war was an obstacle in the way of a successful resolution to the civil war. "Today, leaders of some of the militias responsible for abductions during the civil war are currently serving as government ministers," the report said.

Amnesty also criticized the government's silence towards detainees taken across the border to jails in neighboring Syria. It said the orgnisation was aware of at least 200 Lebanese nationals detained in Syria, some without charge or trial. Neither the Syrian nor Lebanese government has replied to Amnesty International's inquiries on behalf of the detainees.

Syria has some 35,000 troops stationed in Lebanon and controls the political decision-making process in its much smaller neighbor. Security arrangements, part of a number of accords between Beirut and Damascus, provide the legal ground for transfer of suspects to Syrian custody. Amnesty also criticized the increase in the number of post-civil war death sentences, saying the government has issued 27 death sentences and carried out 12 executions since 1994, when it restored the death penalty to stem a rise in crime.

Amnesty finally called for a commission of inquiry to investigate the cases of 17,415 people, mostly Lebanese, who disappeared during the civil war and said the government should consider compensation for their families. "A new future of true and lasting peace and human rights protection in Lebanon is only possible if the country comes to terms with its past." the report said. There was no immediate comment from the government on the report.