Many worthwhile alternatives are listed here.

The Blair government's secret policy was in use for nearly a decade, reports the Guardian, until it was revoked by the coalition government last year.

This, in spite of the fact that torture is unequivocally illegal in international law under all circumstances, and the fact that information extracted by torture — if it can be trusted at all — cannot be used in court.

The UK has been a party to the UN Convention Against Torture since 1988.

The secret document admits that torture could increase terrorism, if its use ever became known.

A number of British Muslims have complained of being questioned by British agents after having been tortured by foreign agents in Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Pakistan and the US base in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.

Others have implicated British agents in torture they suffered in Egypt, Dubai, Syria and Morocco.

The UK government is currently undertaking an inquiry into British involvement in rendition and torture.  However, leading human rights groups, including Liberty and Amnesty International, have criticised the inquiry on a number of grounds.

The Cameron government's new policy for secret agents working abroad has also been criticised as containing 'loopholes' that may still allow involvement in torture.

Private first class Manning was arrested in May 2010 on suspicion of leaking incriminating military documents to the whistle-blowing website WikiLeaks.  He remains in US custody awaiting court marshall.

The conditions of his detention have been widely criticised as violating human rights, especially the period July 2010 to April 2011 which he spent in a maximum-security military prison in Virginia called Quantico.  Since then, Manning has been in a medium-security prison in Kansas, where his conditions are said to have improved.

UN Special Rapporteur Juan Méndez, an Argentine human rights lawyer and himself a survivor of torture, notes:

“I am assured by the US Government that Mr Manning’s prison regime and confinement is markedly better than it was when he was in Quantico.  However, in addition to obtaining first hand information on my own about his new conditions of confinement, I need to ascertain whether the conditions he was subjected to for several months in Quantico amounted to torture or cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment.  For that, it is imperative that I talk to Mr Manning under conditions where I can be assured that he is being absolutely candid.”

The UN Special Rapporteur, an independent expert on the prevention of torture, is entitled to interview prison inmates in private.  Such unrestricted, confidential access is a critical tool in uncovering and preventing torture.

However, despite months of negotiations, the US Defense Dept will only allow Prof. Méndez to visit Manning if their meeting is monitored.

Last year Prof. Méndez sought US permission to visit their detention facilities to Guantanamo Bay, but has yet to receive a reply.

The 7-month old Baillieu conservative coalition government last month created two 21-member 'public order response teams' of police to 'stamp out antisocial behaviour' and 'break up public protest', reports the Herald Sun.

These new squads are said to have training in the use of police dogs and horses and have their own distinctive uniform and cars.

A large number of police, clad in apparently 2 types of uniform, attended a peaceful Palestine solidarity demonstration on Friday night outside a Max Brenner cafe in Melbourne's 'QV' building where police 'kettled' or corralled the crowd of protesters by forming a line shoulder-to-shoulder and moving suddenly forward.

Witnesses estimate between 100 and 200 protesters were present and 'up to 100' police.

'Scores' of demonstrators suffered bruising and one a dislocated shoulder.  The Herald-Sun reports that 3 police suffered minor injury.

The Israeli-owned Max Brenner cafe is subject to a boycott because it provides chocolate for Israeli Defence Force rations. The Palestinian Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions campaign seeks to exert political and economic pressure on Israel to respect universal human rights in the Occupied Territories.

All who addressed Friday's assembly with a loud-hailer were afterwards targeted for arrest.  Nineteen arrests were made in all — described by Indymedia as the state's 'largest political arrest in a decade'.

Sixteen accepted bail conditions prohibiting them from entering the QV complex and nearby Melbourne Central for 2 months until their court appearance.

The 3 who refused these conditions risked being kept in custody over the weekend — 'with murderers and rapists' warned the police — but after another hour they were offered unconditional bail.

The 19 will appear in court on 5 September.

Contrary to some media reports, the protesters insist their gathering was peaceful and video footage appears to support this.  Melbourne University student Abdul Aziz:

“I was horrified by the police’s unprovoked behaviour … they just started grabbing people around the neck and dragging them away.”

Describes another demonstrator:

"We were peacefully gathered in the QV courtyard. People were making speeches about the daily attacks that Palestinians endure … All of a sudden some special operations-type group rushed into the area and split the demonstration in two. They began by targeting the people with megaphones and pushing people to the ground.  They were calculated in their approach.

"… pushed by maybe 40 cops, they drove us into the ground and then surrounded us. We sat and linked arms, refusing to move any further. A number were then arrested as the cops picked off people on the outside of the group and dragged them away."

Human rights lawyer Rob Stary says the arrests show "the new Victorian government is prepared to criminalise legitimate dissent."

Meanwhile, signs have appeared in the shopping-cum-residential complex QV and in Melbourne Central (above) prohibiting individuals or 'an assembly of people' from picketing commercial premises or in any way 'demonstrating disapproval.' 

Drones — known in military jargon as ‘unmanned aerial vehicles’ or UAVs — are miniature aircraft with no human crew on board. They are controlled by long-distance remote as they fly over foreign lands spying, bombing infrastructure and 'incinerating' people.

Armed drones are "fast becoming the weapons of choice by the United States and its allies in South Asia and the Middle East," observes Prof. Paul Rogers of Bradford University Peace Studies Department, "yet their use raises major questions about legality which have been very largely ignored.”

A report published this month by the Oxford Research Group argues that respect for the right not to be arbitrarily deprived of life requires those who authorise, use and control drones to identify victims of their attacks.

Likewise, the right to redress in instances of wrongful killing or injury requires that victims be identified.

“This is not asking for the impossible. The killing of Osama Bin Laden suggests the lengths to which states will go to confirm their targets when they believe this to be in their own interest. Had the political stakes in avoiding mistaken or disputed identity not been so high, Bin Laden (and whoever else was in his home) would almost certainly have been typical candidates for a drone attack.”

Drone attacks are usually isolated strikes, rather than part of a battle, and so identification should commence immediately.  Difficulty identifying someone killed by ‘high explosive attack’ is no excuse for not attempting it.

It is also necessary to identify the deceased’s religion, if any. If they cannot be returned to their family, the dead must be buried individually and with dignity, according to the rites of their religion.  The burial site must be recorded by the party in control of that territory on an official register of graves.

These are all legal obligations found in international humanitarian law, international human rights law and domestic law, are:

“binding on all parties at all times in relation to any form of violent killing or injury by any party.”

Prof. Susan Breau (left), lead author of the report, argues for the establishment of “a global casualty recording mechanism which includes civilians so that finally every casualty of every conflict is identified,” including people killed by drones.

The Oxford Research Group seeks to "raise public awareness and build political will" towards establishing such a global and systematic mechanism of recording the details of every single person killed as a consequence of armed conflict.

They are people fleeing serious harm. People for whom we would have compassion, in the normal course of events, and seek to help. Instead, we, as a polity, treat them with harsh inhumanity.

I have never understood why asylum seekers are such an intense focus of debate in Australia. After all, refugees make up only 7% of our annual intake of migrants. Taken soberly and in context, they should rarely make the headlines.

And yet Australia’s treatment of asylum seekers has made notorious headlines around the world.

The United Nations Human Rights Committee has determined no fewer than 11 times that Australia’s policy of mandatory detention of undocumented asylum seekers is a form of arbitrary detention and therefore a violation of human rights. And yet successive Australian governments have ignored these repeated, unambiguous rulings. We are currently keeping around 6,000 people in immigration detention – it is arbitrary, indefinite and inhumane.

While there is ample evidence of the harm detention does to asylum seekers – already traumatised and vulnerable – there is no evidence that off-shore processing (on Nauru or wherever) or mandatory detention or temporary protection visas deter people from coming to Australia to seek asylum.

Moral philosophers condemn the use of people as a means to an end. If Australia is punishing asylum seekers escaping war and terror into order to ‘send a message’ to people smugglers, or even to other asylum seekers, that is immoral.

The prospect of trading 800 of our boat-people for 4,000 refugees languishing in Malaysia — and paying for all the Malaysian government’s expenses in the process — can only be understood in these terms: using people as objects in a misguided attempt to ‘turn back the boats’.

And make no mistake, turning back boats, discriminating against people who arrive without documentation and all other fiendish techniques intended to punish and deter asylum seekers from arriving in Australia and applying for refugee status are illegal. There are no queues to jump, no such thing as illegal migration when you are fleeing persecution.

Refugees have a right to cross borders however they must and apply for protection in any country that has signed the Refugee Convention. We have an obligation to receive and protect them and to respect their human rights while their claims are being determined.

We are, in truth, obliged to accept all who make legitimate claims on our protection – setting quotas or arbitrary limits on the number of refugees we accept violates the Refugee Convention, the purpose of which is to guarantee safety to all who need it.

How many do we accept? Currently, fewer than 14,000 per year – and the great majority of those – over 97% – arrive not by boat, but by plane.

‘Boat people’ is, I believe, a term coined in Australia, reflecting a paranoia about our vast coastline, and yet the facts just don’t support the fear. Australia is host to 0.2% of the world’s refugees. In terms of our population and wealth, we rank 77^th in the world for refugee intake. Yes, there are 76 countries in the world taking more refugees than Australia. We are paranoid.

It’s true the number of boat people arriving in Australia has increased in the past few years. Amnesty International attributes this to a “well documented spike in conflict around the world, which has led to more asylum applications globally.” It has little to do with what the Australian government does or doesn’t do. Too rarely are our debates based on fact or our policies on evidence, much less on international human rights law, moral principle or compassion.

It’s World Refugee Day, and a special one at that, being the 60^th anniversary of the UN Refugee Convention. In those years Australia has been the fortunate recipient of a great many refugees from Europe after the tumult of World War Two; we have been immeasurably enriched by people fleeing notorious conflicts in Asia and Africa and, in the 21^st century, refugees from wars we ourselves have fought in Iraq and Afghanistan. How many refugees do you suppose have called Australia home in all those 60 years?  Millions?  No, about 750,000.

Let’s redouble our efforts to combat unfounded fears and misinformation, condemn our leaders' use of vulnerable, innocent people for political gain and make Australia a place of welcome for refugees.

Five years on, RightsBase is still produced in Australia by Olivia Ball and her Lovely Assistant.

RightsBase's purview is "human rights news and views."  In over 150 articles, RightsBase has covered a broad gamut of human rights concerns in over 100 countries.

It tends not to comment on the major human rights stories of the day — except perhaps to posit a minority view of events, such as the latest post questioning the assassination of Bin Laden.

Rather, RightsBase tends to focus on human rights developments that don't get the attention they deserve — such as that first post of 21 May 2006 which drew attention to the UN Human Rights Committee's condemnation of the abusive treatment of Australian teenager Corey Brough.

RightsBase strives to deliver a high-quality, accurate and interesting product in a medium that is as accessible as possible to you our readers.  Web accessibility is of great importance to us here at RightsBase.  One day RightsBase may have a captioned Auslan video!  If you are a speaker of Auslan, or have any other special access needs, do get in touch via our contacts page and let us know what would be most useful.

Since the launch of RightsBase we are delighted to say The No-Nonsense Guide to Human Rights is now in its second, fully updated edition — special thanks to Canadians who have shown a particular enthusiasm for the Guide — and it has been published in Spanish under the title Los Derechos Humanos.

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Here's to the next 5 years being far more RightsBased!

For answers to these questions I refer readers to this top-notch analysis by Sarah Joseph, Director of the Castan Centre for Human Rights Law at Monash University.

Meanwhile, fellow Australian human rights lawyer Geoffrey Robertson, calls the killing a 'summary execution' and possibly a 'cold-blooded assassination.'  He argues that bringing Bin Laden to trial would have been a more just and even a smarter move.

Speaking to Cambridge University students — presumably by video link, given he is still under house arrest in Norfolk — Assange (pictured) described the internet as the "greatest spying machine the world has ever seen" and an obstacle to freedom of expression.

On the plus-side, reports Indian Express, Assange says the internet gives us an 'unprecedented' ability to know what a 'government is doing', while social networking sites like Facebook can assist the organising of human rights movements, such as we've seen in the Arab world.

And yet, "Facebook was used to round up all the principal participants" in Egypt's pro-democracy movement, claims Assange, who "were then beaten, interrogated and incarcerated."

"It is not a technology that favours freedom of speech.  It is not a technology that favours human rights.

[The internet] can be used to set up a totalitarian spying regime, the likes of which we have never seen."

Describing Manning's conditions as "mistreatment," then-assistant secretary of state for public affairs, Philip 'P.J.' Crowley, said:

"What is being done to Bradley Manning is ridiculous and counterproductive and stupid on the part of the department of defence."

Described as 'America's top foreign policy spokesman,' 59-year-old Crowley apparently made it clear that his remarks on this occasion were not on behalf of the government.

His on-the-record comments made at Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) prompted President Obama to comment on the controversial case for the first time:

"I have asked the Pentagon whether or not the procedures that have been taken in terms of his confinement are appropriate and are meeting our basic standards. They assure me that they are."

If only he had asked whether they meet human rights standards.

Private Manning has been charged with various offences relating to allegedly passing confidential diplomatic cables to Wikileaks.  The 23 year-old's most serious charge is 'aiding the enemy', which carries the death sentence.

Capital punishment is one of the 3 human rights violations which can never be justified under any circumstances.  Only 3 human rights are absolute: freedom from capital punishment, from slavery and from torture.

(All other human rights are relative, and must, at times, be balanced against competing legitimate interests, such as other human rights.)

Serious concerns persist about Manning's treatment in the brig at Quantico in the state of Virginia, with fears that the Pentagon's 'Cold War methods' may constitute torture.  The United Nations Special Rapporteur on Torture has been investigating the claims.

Arrested in Iraq in May last year and transferred in shackles back to the US, Manning has been held in solitary confinement for 10 months, awaiting court marshall planned for July.  He is confined to a small cell for 23 hours a day and stripped naked at night.

Amnesty International has described his treatment as "unnecessarily harsh and punitive" and in breach of international human rights.

Crowley (left) made the comments on 10 March.  On 13 March, he was forced to resign.  Clinton accepted his resignation 'with regret.'

A number of MIT academics have written an open letter to Clinton in protest:

"… If public officials are made to fear expressing their truthful opinions, we have laid the groundwork for ineffective, dishonest and unresponsive governance."