War on terror dividing the world

London - Fears stoked by the post-9/11 "war on terror" are increasingly dividing the world, Amnesty International said Wednesday, while rapping rights abuses from China to Darfur and Russia to the Middle East.

The gap between Muslims and non-Muslims notably deepened, fuelled by discriminatory counter-terrorism strategies in Western countries, warned the international human rights group in its annual report.

Human rights are also routinely flouted in Iraq and Afghanistan, the front line of the US-led crackdown on extremism since the September 11, 2001, attacks on the United States, which triggered a profound geopolitical shift.

The report showed the "terrible price that ordinary people are paying for the failure of their leaders to uphold human rights," said Amnesty chief Irene Khan.

"The politics of fear is fuelling a downward spiral of human rights abuse in which no right is sacrosanct and no person safe," she said.

"The 'war on terror' and the war in Iraq, with their catalogue of human rights abuses, have created deep divisions that cast a shadow on international relations," making it harder to resolve conflicts and protect civilians.

The 320-page report, covering rights abuses worldwide in 2006, focused particular attention on violence against women, as well as torture, terror and the death penalty, which Amnesty fiercely opposes.

The US detention camp at Guantanamo Bay came in for particular criticism: Amnesty said 400 detainees from more than 30 countries are still held in what it called "the public symbol of the injustices in the 'war on terror'."

As for violence against women, it said one in three women is subjected to intimate abuse by a partner during their lifetime, while 70 per cent of casualties in recent conflicts are civilians -- mostly women and children.

Regional conflicts around the globe provide the context for much of the abuse documented in the report.

"Darfur is a bleeding wound on world conscience," said its authors on the troubled Sudanese region, adding that the UN Security Council "is hampered by distrust and double-dealing of its most powerful members," with Russia and China fingered.

"Nothing proves more clearly the loss of US moral authority than its failure to persuade the Sudanese government to accept UN troops," Khan said.

Last year's war between Israel and Hezbollah brought shame on the international community, with the UN taking "weeks ... to muster the will to call for a ceasefire" in a conflict which saw 1,200 civilians killed.

"A human rights nightmare is unfolding under our very eyes while the international community remains complacent," Khan added on the plight of the Palestinians.

In Iraq "the worst practices of Saddam (Hussein)'s regime -- torture, unfair trials, capital punishment and rape with impunity -- remained very much alive" last year, Amnesty said.

The report condemned clampdowns on human rights defenders in China, Zimbabwe and Iran and "repression" in Egypt.

It identified "an arc of instability" extending from the borders of Pakistan to the Horn of Africa, where armed groups were flexing their muscles.

"Unless governments address the grievances on which these groups feed, unless they provide effective leadership to bring these groups to account ... the prognosis for human rights is dire," said Khan.

But the "war on terror" provided an over-arching theme of the report's criticism.

"Five years after 9/11, new evidence came to light in 2006 of the way in which the US administration treated the world as one giant battlefield for its 'war on terror'," said Khan, singling out "extraordinary renditions" which also implicated countries including Italy, Pakistan, Germany and Kenya.

Overall, "short-sighted, fear-mongering policy undermined the rule of law and human rights, fed racism and xenophobia, fuelled discrimination, suppressed dissent, intensified conflict and sowed the seeds of more violence".

"Fear, distrust and division run so deep in the international community that it was virtually disfunctional in the face of human rights violations," she said.

Agence France Presse