4A
NEWS
THE UNIVERSITY DAILY KANSAN
POLITICS
THURSDAY, FEBRUARY 5, 2009
Symposium addresses human rights
Closing Guantanamo Bay and detainee cases among topics to be addressed
BY BETSY CUTCLIFF bcutcliff@kansan.com
Questions about human rights and President Obama's decision to shut down the controversial detention center Guantanamo Bay will be addressed at Friday's Human Rights Symposium in Green Hall.
The conference, sponsored by three School of Law groups, will host six distinguished professionals speaking about issues surrounding Guantanamo Bay, procedures for prosecuting and defending alleged criminal terrorists and the future treatment of prisoners of war.
Dana Watts, Syracuse second-year law student and president of the International Law Society, said the questions surrounding the closing of Guantánamo were a main theme of the symposium.
"This is a very current event, and there are still lingering questions on where these detainees will go, will anyone be prosecuted, and how will
they be prosecuted." Watts said.
Though a few court cases involving Guantanamo detainees have already begin, Watts said there was speculation about how these types of international cases would be judged in the future.
"As future lawyers, we are still learning about this," she said. "These cases are totally new to everybody."
Oneofthespeakers will be Brent Mickum, lawyer to Guantanamo
detainee and suspected terrorist Abu Zubaida. The U.S. government alleged that Zubaida was a top al Qaida lieutenant and he was the first suspected terrorist to be detained after Sept. 11. Zubaida said he was waterboarded during his detention, a method the United Nations Council on Human Rights
considered torture.
Mickum said that people should've been more aware of what was going on behind the barbed wire and that they didn't question the Bush administration's actions
"These people are not the worst of the worst. Some were just in the wrong place at the wrong time."
BRENT MICKUM
Lawyer
because of an innate desire to trust the government.
ists.
Mickum said he would correct the myths about Guantanamo Bay at the symposium, and emphasized that the majority of the people detained weren't international terror-
"These people are not the worst of the worst," he said. "Some were just in the wrong place at the wrong time."
Prisoner treatment was the main concern for Samantha Snyder, Topeka senior and president of KU Amnesty International. She said she
hoped the symposium would make students and teachers think about what really went on.
"Because of the light shed on the nature of the war on terror, questions need to be raised about the situations at Guantánamo Bay," Snyder said.
On Jan. 23, the United Nations Council on Human Rights issued a press release denouncing the treatment of detainees at Guantanamo Bay and commending President Obama's order to close the facility.
In the release, Leandro Despouy, special rapporteur on the independence of judges and lawyers, called the Bush administration's treatment of detainees a "violation of international human rights norms"
Other speakers at the symposium will address different aspects of how the legal system is shifting in order to accommodate these new types of crimes. Topics will include refugee asylum, international human rights and the laws of war.
symposium schedule
WHAT: Second Annual Human
"National Security and Individual Liberty: Whose Rights at What Cost?"
WHEN: 8 a.m. to 3:30 p.m.
Friday, Feb. 6
WHERE: 203 Green Hall
WHERE: 203 Green Hall
Panel 1: Guantánamo Bay
8-8:30 a.m. - Registration opening remarks
8:30-9:10 a.m.
Douglass Cassell, University of Notre Dame
'Adios, Guantánamo?'
9:10-9:50 a.m.
9:10-9:50 a.m.
Brent Mickum, Spriggs & Hollingsworth
"Guantanamo: The Myths and the Reality"
Panel 2: Criminal Terrorism Prosecutions
10:20-11 a.m.
Jordan Paust, University of Houston
11-11:40 a.m.
Wadie Said, University of South
Carolina
Panel 3: Perspectives on Terrorism
1-1:40 p.m.
1-140 p.m.
Christina Wells, University of Missouri
"National Security and the 'Information' Problem"
1:40-2:20 p.m.
Richard Levy, University of
Kansas
source: www.law.ku.edu
Reflections of the past
Chance Dibben/KANSAN
Chance Dibble/KANSAN
Jack Connor, Overland Park senior, mans the recently restored KU office boot outside Stauffer Flint Hall late Wednesday afternoon. The boot, which re-opened at the start of the semester, is integrated in a bus station that was a gift of the class of 1950. In the 1970s, workers would go up to the booth to Watson Library to look for information.
NATIONAL Virginia Tech president defends Asian students
BLACKSKBURG, Va. — An internationally diverse student body is vital to Virginia Tech, the
The killing last month was the first since Seung-Hui Cho, a Korean student, killed 32 people.
school's president said Wednesday in response to e-mails and blogs disparaging Asians that surfaced after a Chinese student was accused of decapitating a classmate.
Some of the comments from parents, alumni and members of the public questioned whether the university should allow international students to attend the school. Others supported the university's international community
in a mass shooting in 2007.
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"Virginia Tech is an open and accepting community including many races, ethnicities, and cultures from around the world," Steger wrote in the letter.
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President Charles Steger said in an open letter that the school was enriched by its diversity and that overall there were few reports of international students getting into trouble.
Steger said there was no evidence that the decapitation of Xin Yang, 22, in a campus coffee shop Jan. 21 had anything to do with her ethnicity, Steger said. Both Yang and suspect Haiyang Zhu, who is charged with first-degree murder, are from Chjna. The school has more than 2,100 students from 72 foreign countries among its full-time enrollment of 30,000.
Associated Press
NOW TAKING RESERVATIONS
LEGISLATION
President Barack Obama speaks before signing the State Children's Health Insurance Program, or SCHIP, legislation in the East Room of the White House on Wednesday.
President extends health care to kids
Bill will raise taxes on cigarettes by 62 cents
WASHINGTON — President Barack Obama on Wednesday signed a bill extending health coverage to 4 million uninsured children, a move he called a first step toward fulfilling a campaign pledge to provide insurance for all Americans.
ASSOCIATED PRESS
"As I think everybody here will agree, this is only the first step." Obama said of the bill that reauthorizes the State Children's Health Insurance Program.
"Because the way I see it, providing coverage to 11 million children through CHIP is a down payment on my commitment to cover every single American," he said to applause before turning to the economic recovery bill.
"It won't be easy; it won't happen all at once," Obama said. "But this bill that I'm about to sign, that wasn't easy either."
Obama and his advisers see the economic crisis as his window to push through many of his campaign pledges. Renewable energy, financial regulation and even rural Internet access all have been tied to repairing the nation's fractured economy. In the process, Obama has exposed his plan to criticism and questions that threaten to jettison the first major legislation his team has assembled.
"I refuse to accept that millions of our children fail to reach their full potential because we fail to meet their basic needs. In a decent society, there are certain obligations that are not subject to trade-offs or negotiations, and health care for our children is one of those obligations." Obama said.
Obama has faced a difficult week, his second full one in office, Daschle, the former Senate Democratic leader, withdrew his nomination as secretary of health and human services after acknowledging he failed to pay taxes on a car and driver provided by a Democratic fundraiser. His departure also left in the president's team a large gap for someone to usher through sweeping reform Obama has promised.
The children's health bill calls for spending an additional $32.8 billion on SCHIP, which now enrolls an estimated 7 million children. Lawmakers generated that revenue by raising the federal tobacco tax.
Health officials project that
there are about 8 million to 9 million uninsured children in the United States.
The bill went to the White House fresh from passage in the Democratic-controlled House, on a vote of 290-135. Forty Republicans joined in approval.
Most Republicans, though, criticized the cost of the legislation. They also said it will mean an estimated 2.4 million children who otherwise would have access to private insurance will join the State Children's Health Insurance Program instead.
"The Democrats continue to push their government-run health care agenda — universal coverage, as they call it," said Rep. Pete Sessions (R.Texas).
The bill's passage has long been a top priority of Democratic lawmakers. In late 2007, President George W. Bush twice vetoed similar bills. The Senate passed the same bill last week. Obama made it a top priority in his first 100 days and one step in his push for universal coverage by the end of his first term.
"President Obama and Congress are demonstrating that change has come to Washington, and we are moving forward to improve the quality of life for American families struggling during these hard times," said Rep. Charles Rangel (D-N.Y.), chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee.
SCHIP was created more than a decade ago to help children in families with incomes too high to qualify for Medicaid but too low to afford private coverage.
Federal money for the program was set to expire March 31. To cover the increase in spending, the bill would boost the federal excise tax on a pack of cigarettes by 62 cents, to $1.01 a pack.
Opponents of the bill complained that the tobacco tax increase hits the poor the hardest, because they are more likely to smoke than wealthier people. Many also took exception to expanding the program and Medicaid to children of newly arrived legal immigrants.
Republicans said they supported SCHIP and providing additional money for the program. However, they argued that Democrats were taking the program beyond its original intent and encouraging states to cover middle-class families who could get private insurance.
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