EUROPEAN DIARY:The fate of the dying after the battle of Solferino provoked the founding of a great humanitarian institution, writes Jamie Smyth
THE EIGHT prisoners stand motionless in silence. They are all bound, shoeless, their heads covered with a sheet to prevent them from seeing or speaking. They have been stripped of their dignity and humiliated by their captors as they are made to stand in the midday sun.
This is the stark image that greets visitors to the museum at the headquarters of the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) in Geneva. The eight prisoners standing with their heads bowed are stone carvings created by the Swiss sculptor Carl Bucher in 1979. Titled The Petrified, the work represents the continued violations of human rights that occur during wars.
Almost three decades after it was completed, the sculpture has taken on even greater significance because of the ill-treatment meted out to suspects in US military prisons in Guantánamo Bay and in Abu Ghraib, Iraq, during the so-called "war on terror".
The museum tells the story of the foundation of the ICRC by Henri Dunant, a Geneva-based businessman who was so shocked at the treatment of the wounded at the battle of Solferino in 1859 that he resolved to improve conditions for all war casualties.
He published a book, A Memory of Solferino, in 1862, which was an eyewitness account of the horror he encountered among the dying on both the French and Austrian sides of the battle. "Every 15 minutes for the last three days I have seen a human being die in unimaginable agony. A glass of water, a cigar, a friendly smile - and they become changed . . . and peacefully await their last hour of death," wrote Dunant.
Together with the Swiss jurist Gustave Moynier, he founded the ICRC in Geneva in 1863 and set to work to organise a conference of 16 states in 1864, which signed the Geneva Convention for the Amelioration of the Condition of the Wounded in Armies in the Field.
The museum has on display the original document which laid the basis for the four Geneva conventions, adopted in 1949, which provide the legal foundation for most humanitarian law.
The third convention deals with the rights of prisoners of war, so movingly depicted in Carl Bucher's sculpture.
"Combatants who are out of the fight due to wounds, detention, or any other cause shall in all circumstances be treated humanely, including prohibition of outrages upon personal dignity, in particular humiliating and degrading treatment," states the third convention.
Bucher's work probably resonated with me more than usual because I had just visited the UN human rights committee, directly across the street from the museum, which had strongly criticised our Government's failure to deal with US policy on renditions.
The extraordinary rendition programme was set up by the US government headed by President George Bush as a way to transfer terrorist suspects to countries where they could be interrogated.
Flown in secret in planes chartered by the CIA, scores of suspects were subjected to torture techniques such as waterboarding to extract information from them.
An investigative report by the European Parliament has expressed "serious concern" at the 147 stopovers by CIA-operated aircraft at Irish airports, many of which were coming from or directed to countries linked with extraordinary rendition. Amnesty International has also unearthed flight records that link Shannon airport to the kidnapping and rendition case of cleric Abu Omar.
Omar was bundled into a white van on a city street, before he was transferred to Germany and then flown to Cairo where he was tortured. The CIA plane later flew to Shannon airport for refuelling, according to Amnesty.
It emerged yesterday that a CIA plane which rendered British suspect Binyam Mohamed to Morocco - where he faced 18 months of torture - may also have refuelled at Shannon.
The UN Human Rights Committee was clear in its verdict on Government policy: "It must be careful in relying on official reassurances," said Judge Elizabeth Palm, who recommended setting up a random inspection regime for rendition at Irish airports.
But the Government - fearful of upsetting the US - still refuses to set up an inspection regime, preferring to rely on guarantees from US officials, who most legal experts believe have deliberately undermined the Geneva conventions.
An inscription over the reception desk at the museum could provide food for thought for Attorney General Paul Gallagher, who defended the Government at the committee hearings. "Everyone is responsible for everyone and for everything," reads the quote from Fyodor Dostoevsky.
Until now the Government has been unwilling to take responsibility for how the US has being using Shannon airport to support its renditions programme.
Whether the UN Human Rights Committee's recommendations will be heeded remains to be seen.