Rights watchdog slates inaction over rendition

The Government has been criticised by the Council of Europe's Human Rights Commissioner for its failure to investigate if aircraft landing at Shannon airport are being used by the US for rendition.

Thomas Hammarberg said it was not enough for the Government to say that it had no evidence that such planes were being used to carry prisoners to other countries to be tortured. He said there was "an obligation" on the Government to investigate if prisoners were being carried on these aircraft.

If they were, then the Government was "playing a part in a process that leads to torture", he said. "So I don't think that the response that we are getting now from Irish and other governments is satisfactory."

Mr Hammarberg was speaking in Dublin last night when he gave the Irish Human Rights Commission's annual lecture.

He also said he would be appealing to the Irish Government to ban the corporal punishment of children. "We have now a situation where the majority of Council of Europe members have decided to prohibit corporal punishment and it would be very nice if Ireland took the same position," he said.

Mr Hammarberg said "a fairly complacent Europe" had much to do in areas such as protecting the rights of suspected terrorists, prisoners and Roma and Traveller groups. He also highlighted the need to do more to prevent homophobia and xenophobia.

He criticised the failure of member states to ratify a UN convention on migrant workers' rights and said it appeared to be "taboo" to accept that illegal immigrants had human rights.

They still had rights to due process and their children had the right to healthcare and education, he said. The commissioner said he was "horrified" that some countries had certain targets to meet for the deportation of illegal immigrants.

He said governments in western Europe had a tendency to see human rights as a problem for other countries but this was slowly changing. "But still we are seeing some governments who react with surprise when they are criticised," he said.

He pointed to an occasion when a UN committee on the rights of the child questioned the UK's record on protecting children's rights. In response, the Daily Telegraphran a headline "How dare they?" he said.

In 1993, the world conference on human rights recommended that each member state produce a comprehensive national plan of action for the implementation of human rights.

"Almost no country in Europe has tried that," Mr Hammarberg said, adding that a comprehensive plan would avoid situations such as the misdiagnosis of some women who presented for mammograms at the Midlands Regional Hospital in Portlaoise, Co Laois.