Sir, - I write in connection with the letter from the Charge d'Affaires of the Nigerian Embassy, Mr Edwin Edobor (June 10th) in which he defends Nigeria's human rights record against the suggestion that it could ever warrant refugee claims in Ireland.
It may interest your readers and indeed Mr Edobor to consult the recent observations of the United Nations Human Rights Committee on a report submitted to it by the government of Nigeria concerning human rights in Nigeria. Along with some 130 other States, Nigeria is a party to the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights. That instruments obliges states parties to protect and implement in their jurisdictions certain basic rights, including the rights to be free from torture, inhuman and degrading treatment and punishment, fair trial, liberty and freedom of expression, amongst others. Each state party is obliged to report periodically to a group of independent experts, the Human Rights Committee, on the measures which they have adopted to give effect to the rights set out in the covenant. The committee invites state representatives to attend meetings at which the reports are discussed. Ultimately, the committee adopts concluding observations on the report of the state.
In July last year, I attended particular sessions of the Human Rights Committee at which Nigeria presented its report. State representatives attempted to answer the numerous concerns which members of the committee had with respect to Nigeria's implementation of the covenant.
Mr Edobor may find many of the committee's comments enlightening, especially in relation to his query to Mr O Cuanachain as regards when "given various international covenants . . . capital punishment became an element in the violation of human rights?" On that issue, the committee stated its concern that ". . . under Nigerian law, the death penalty may be imposed for crimes which do not constitute `most serious of fences' as required by Article 6 of the Covenant and that the number of death sentences passed and actually carried out is very high. The fact that sentences of death are passed without the safeguard of a fair trial violates the provisions of articles 14(1) and 6 of the Covenant. Public executions are also incompatible with human dignity". The committee stated that the failure to respect these guarantees "led to the arbitrary deprivation of life of Mr Ken Saro Wiwa and the other accused."
The committee also stated that it was deeply concerned by the "high number of extra judicial and summary executions, disappearances, cases of torture, ill treatment, and arbitrary arrest and detention by members of the army and security forces"; and by the establishment by decree of special tribunals which operate without observing the requirements of a fair trial.
The committee expressed grave concern that "the continuation of military government and rule by Presidential decrees which suspend or override constitutional rights and which are not open to review by the courts are incompatible with the effective implementation of the covenant". In regard to freedom of expression (which Mr Edobor assures us is alive and well in Nigeria) the committee was "seriously concerned at violations of this right, as exemplified by the adoption of a number of decrees suspending newspapers as well as the arbitrary arrest, detention and harassment of editors and journalists".
The foregoing are just some of the principal subjects of concern expressed by the committee, notwithstanding the establishment of the new Nigerian Human Rights Commission. No doubt your readers will draw their own conclusions as to whether the picture painted above by an independent body of experts on human rights would be capable of producing a refugee applicant on our shores.
Finally, as regards Mr Edobor's challenge to produce a list of Nigerian refugee claimants in Ireland to ascertain their individual claims, may I point out that under Ireland's Refugee Act 1996 it will be an offence to publish any matter likely to lead members of the public to identify a person as a refugee claimant in the state without the consent of the applicant and the Minister for Justice. The reason for this provision according to the Department of Justice is as follows: "By definition a refugee is a person in fear of persecution and much of the material relating to the application should not be made public as it could identify the applicant and have very serious implications for the applicant or for his or her family". - Yours, etc.,
Lecturer in International
Human Rights Law, UCD,
Dublin 4.