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EXHIBITIONS 2006

Background to Libyan Cartoons:

These cartoons are the work of a number of detainees currently imprisoned in Long Lartin who for the past several months have been held in prison for the purpose of deporting them to countries where they may be tortured or killed. It is not only their assertion that they will be tortured or killed; the UK government has acknowledged in respect of each, that that is the case. However, since the Prime Minister announced that ‘the rules of the game have changed’. Each of these men has been told that he can now be swiftly deported to countries whose regimes are still acknowledged to practice torture and abuse of their own citizens on a regular basis. What the United Kingdom now says is different, is not each of the regimes has changed it’s policy, but that the United Kingdom has persuaded it to enter into an agreement that it will not use torture in relation to any of these men if they are to be returned.

Such memoranda of agreement are condemned universally by the informed international human rights bodies who have responsibility for monitoring and seeking to eradicate torture; these include The United Nations, several committees and rapporteurs with relevant bodies, Council of Europe, Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, the European Parliament, the European Committee for the Prevention of Torture, as well as independent experts in relation to each of the three countries so far to have been approached by the United Kingdom. The three countries are Jordan, Algeria and Libya. Much of the subject matter of these cartoons is focussed on Libya; the Libyan detainees whose deportation to Libya which is still run by Colonel Qaddifi; and where the only body to which the United Kingdom can point that reports to be a human rights organisation, is run by his son.

By entering into memoranda of understanding with regimes which it is acknowledged continue to practice torture, the United Kingdom is the subject of condemnation by every informed human rights organisation relevant to this issue, that such an alliance effectively supports this regime and supports it’s use of torture in so far as it is suggesting that it can address a particular position of one person, and not seek to eradicate the practice of torture as a whole. It is however the fundamental duty of all governments under the United Nations Convention Against Torture to seek to co-operate to eradicate torture.

Those persons who are detained for deportation in these circumstances, make clear their despair, anger and frustration at the United Kingdom’s current approach to respect for fundamental human rights.

August 2006.