Western governments have jumped on the "anti-terrorism bandwagon" since September 11th by stepping up repression and undermining human rights, according to Amnesty International.
In its annual report, the organisation expresses concern about the fate of 1,200 people arrested in the US since last year's suicide attacks. It also criticises the continued use of the death penalty in the US.
The human rights abuses committed by the US since September 11th were "tantamount" to the killing of people "without a right of appeal" in the suicide attacks, Ms Kathy Bachman of Amnesty's US section told the launch of the report in Dublin yesterday.
Ms Bachman said the US was on "a slippery slope" not seen since the second World War, when US citizens were held in concentration camps simply because they were of Japanese origin.
She cited the reintroduction of racial profiling, proposed powers for the arrest without charge of foreign nationals and plans to introduce the death sentence without right of appeal as evidence that Americans were "blatantly discriminating" against certain groups.
The director of Amnesty's Irish section, Mr Seán Love, accused the Government of "complacency" in its attitude to human rights.
Mr Love singled out the failure to incorporate the European Convention on Human Rights into Irish law, the tardiness in setting up the Human Rights Commission and absence of an independent Garda complaints procedure as evidence.
"We do good things internationally but there seems to be an awful complacency about the way we address human rights in our own country," he said.
Amnesty's report documents extrajudicial executions in 47 countries; judicial executions in 27 countries; "disappearances" in 35 countries; cases of torture and ill-treatment in 111 countries and prisoners of conscience in at least 56 countries. The organisation believes the true figures are much higher.
The worst region for human rights last year was the Middle East, where almost every state is the target for criticism.
According to Amnesty, the Israeli armed forces had been "increasingly on the offensive" in 2001, and had "killed more than 460 Palestinians, including 79 children", most of them "unlawfully" and many in random firing.
However, on the other side, "armed groups and individuals arbitrarily killed 65 Israeli civilians in the occupied territories and 89 Israeli civilians within Israel", the group said. Both Israel and the Palestinian Authority are accused of torture, ill-treatment, arbitrary arrests and detentions.
