Miscellaneous News. - Page 24

"Campaigners on behalf of Bradley Manning, the US soldier accused of leaking classified cables to WikiLeaks, have welcomed assurances that the British government will restate its "concerns" to Washington over the soldier's treatment.

Manning, whose mother is Welsh, is being held in a military prison in Virginia, after being arrested in May 2010 on suspicion of leaking data including 250,000 diplomatic cables to the site.

His supporters argue that the conditions of his imprisonment he is held in solitary confinement, stripped of his clothes every night and subjected to continual checks because he is deemed a suicide risk are punitive and unduly harsh. The UN has launched an inquiry into whether his conditions amount to torture.

In a parliamentary debate late on Monday, the Foreign Office minister Henry Bellingham said staff at the British embassy in Washington had expressed concerns to the state department on 29 March about the treatment of Manning, who has not been tried or convicted. In response to the debate, he said, "we will instruct our officials at our embassy in Washington again to report our concerns to officials in the state department".

While acknowledging that Manning's lawyer has stated that he does not hold a British passport or consider himself to be British, the minister stressed that the soldier "is British by descent" despite being born in the US, thanks to his mother's nationality.

Naomi Colvin, from the UK Friends of Bradley Manning, welcomed the sympathetic approach of British ministers, adding: "We want Bradley to be given consular access. The British government should now support his family here in Wales, and somebody from the embassy should be visiting Bradley to report back."

The question of the 23-year-old soldier's conditions of detention was becoming a "strongly-felt issue" in Wales, said Colvin, "and Welsh nationalists in Plaid Cymru are keen to take this on".

Manning's father Brian, now divorced from his mother, met and married her when he was himself in the US military and stationed at Brawdy, near Haverfordwest. Manning was born in Oklahoma but spent some of his teenage years in Wales.

The case was raised in parliament by the Labour MP Ann Clwyd, who chairs the all-party parliamentary group on human rights. She said Manning's treatment was "cruel and unnecessary and we should be saying so". In response, Bellingham acknowledged that the US president, Barack Obama, had received assurances from the US military that Manning's treatment was "appropriate" and met "basic standards", but restated the government's commitment to "a foreign policy that will always have support for human rights ... at its irreducible core."

"As far as Her Majesty's government are concerned, the conditions in which an individual is detained must meet international standards," he said. "Conditions that fail to meet this standard may amount to cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment. This is particularly important for an individual in pre-trial detention.""
~ http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011...rnment-concern

"Highly embarrassing colonial-era files detailing the British army's repressive tactics against Mau Mau insurgents in Kenya during the 1950s will be revealed in a landmark compensation case.

The discovery of thousands of documents withheld for decades from the Kenyan government will raise awkward questions about the Foreign Office's attempt to deny liability for the allegedly systematic mistreatment of thousands of Kikuyu victims prior to independence.

The case, brought by four survivors of the notorious detention camps operated by the colonial authorities could also set a precedent by forcing the release of files relating to other colonies once controlled by the UK.

During the so-called "Emergency", detainees were subjected to arbitrary killings, castrations, sexual abuse, forced labour, starvation and violence from camp guards, lawyers for the detainees will argue in the high court on Thursday.

Among those detained and abused was Barack Obama's grandfather."
~ http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011...-rights-abuses

"The next big offshore oil disaster could take place in the remote Arctic seas where hurricane-force winds, 30ft seas, sub-zero temperatures and winter darkness would overwhelm any clean-up attempts, a new report warns.

With the ban on offshore drilling lifted in the Gulf of Mexico, big oil companies such as Royal Dutch Shell are pressing hard for the Obama administration to grant final approval to Arctic drilling. Shell has invested more than $2bn to drill off Alaska's north coast, and is campaigning to begin next summer.

But the report, Oil spill prevention and response in the US Arctic Ocean, by the Pew Environment Group, warns that oil companies are not ready to deal with a spill, despite the lessons of the BP disaster in the Gulf of Mexico.

"There is a lot of pressure by Shell to drill this summer," Marilyn Heiman, director of the US Arctic programme at Pew said. "But the oil companies are just not prepared for the Arctic. The spill plans are thoroughly inadequate."

It took BP three months to bring its ruptured well under control. The former chief executive, Tony Hayward, admitted this week that the company had to improvise its response plan as it went along.

Trying to clean up a spill in the extreme conditions of the Arctic would be on an entirely different order of magnitude. "The risks, difficulties, and unknowns of oil exploration in the Arctic are far greater than in any other area," the report said.

The consequences for the Arctic's environment would be dire, it said, wiping out populations of walrus, seal and polar bear and destroying the isolated indigenous communities that depend on hunting to survive."
~ http://www.guardian.co.uk/environmen...=ILCNETTXT3487