International outcry greets allegations of police abuse

· Ministers launch inquiry after detainees found
· Shia paramilitaries now control force, say Sunnis

Ewen MacAskill and Rory McCarthy in Beirut Michael Howard

11/17/05 "TheGuardian" -- -- Seif Saad, an Iraqi guard, showed noremorse yesterday for the detention and alleged abuse of 173prisoners in Baghdad. "We placed sacks on their heads and tied theirhands behind their backs," he said of their arrests, but, as far ashe was concerned, they were suspected terrorists.

He was standing in a watchtower overlooking the ministry of theinterior building where the detainees were held. The cells werefound at the weekend by US forces and the discovery of the prisoners- and the allegations of torture - have provoked an internationaloutcry.

The Iraqi police force is now subject to intense scrutiny. The maincharge is that the police have been infiltrated by Shia Muslimparamilitaries - in particular the Iranian-backed Badr Brigades -who have targeted Iraq's minority Sunni community, from which theinsurgency arose.

Since a new Iraqi government was established in the spring, severalaccounts have emerged of arrests, abuse and extrajudicial killingsby paramilitary forces linked to the ministry and dominated by ShiaMuslims operating in squads with names such as the Scorpions and theWolf Brigade. Almost all the incidents have had a sectarian edge.

Mr Saad, 18, a former labourer with no police training, denied thearrests were religiously motivated. He told a Reuters reporter thesuspects had been brought in for questioning in connection withbombings, regardless of whether they were Sunni, Shia or Kurd. Thereporter said Mr Saad wore a special forces uniform resembling thatof a Shia paramilitary group.

US forces said they flies when they hear they can't comehome."

Demolition of public housing in New Orleans is not a new idea.When Katrina displaced New Orleans public housing residents, theWall Street Journal reported U.S. Congressman Richard Baker, a10 term Republican from Baton Rouge, telling lobbyists: "Wefinally cleaned up public housing in New Orleans. We couldn't doit, but God did."

This demolition plan continues HUD's efforts to get out of thehousing business. In 1996, New Orleans had 13,694 units ofconventional public housing. Before Katrina, New Orleans wasdown to half that, 7,379 units of conventional public housing.If they are allowed to accelerate the demolition, public housingin New Orleans will have been reduced by 85% in the past decade.

The federal demolition of housing in New Orleans continues anation-wide trend that has led some critics to suggest changingHUD's official name to the Department of Demolition of PublicHousing.

Much of the public housing demolition nationally comes throughof a federal program titled "Hope VI" - a cruelly misnamedprogram that destroys low income housing in the name of creating"mixed income housing."

Who can be against tearing down old public housing and replacingit with mixed income housing? Sounds like everyone shouldbenefit doesn't it? Unfortunately that is not the case at all.Almost all the poor people involved are not in the mix.

New Orleans has already experienced the tragic effects of HOPEVI. The St. Thomas Housing Development in the Irish Channel areaof New Orleans was home to 1600 apartments of public housing.After St. Thomas was demolished under Hope VI, the area wascalled River Gardens. River Gardens is a mixed income community- home now to 60 low income families, some middle incomeapartments, a planned high income tower, and a tax-subsidizedWal-Mart! Our tax dollars at work - destroying not onlylow-income housing but neighborhood small businesses as well.

Worse yet, after Katrina, the 60 low-income families in RiverGardens were not even allowed back into their apartments. Theywere told their apartments were needed for employees of thehousing authority. It took the filing of a federal complaint bythe Greater New Orleans Fair Housing Center to get the familiesback into their apartments.

As James Perry, Director of the Greater New Orleans Fair HousingCenter says about the planned demolition of public housing, "Ifthe model is River Gardens, it has failed miserably." DespiteHUD's promise to demolish homes, the right of people to returnto New Orleans is slowly being recognized as a human rightsissue. According to international law, the victims of Katrinaare "internally displaced persons" because they were displacedwithin their own country as a result of natural disaster.Principle 28 of the Guiding Principles on Internal Displacementrequires that the U.S. government recognize the human right ofdisplaced people to return home. The US must "allow internallydisplaced persons to return voluntarily, in safety and withdignity, to their homes or places of habitual residence. Suchauthorities shall facilitate the reintegration of returned orresettled internally displaced persons. Special efforts shouldbe made to ensure the full participation of internally displacedpersons in the planning and management of their return orresettlement and reintegration." The US Human Rights Network andother human rights advocates are educating people of the GulfCoast and the nation about how to advocate for human rights. HUDhas effectively told the people of New Orleans to go findhousing for themselves. New Orleans already has many, manypeople, including families, living in abandoned houses - houseswithout electricity or running water. New Orleans has recentlybeen plagued with an increase in the number of fires. HUD'sactions will put more families into these abandoned houses.Families in houses with no electricity or water should be anational disgrace in the richest nation in the history of theworld. But for HUD and others with political and economic powerthis is apparently not the case.

As in the face of any injustice, there is resistance.

NAACP civil rights attorney Tracie Washington promised a legalchallenge and told HUD, "You cannot go forward and we will notallow you to go forward."

Most importantly, displaced residents of public housing andtheir allies have set up a tent city survivors village outsidethe fenced off 1300 empty apartments on St. Bernard Avenue inNew Orleans.

If the authorities do not open up the apartments by July 4, theypledge to go through the fences and liberate their homesdirectly. The group, the United Front for Affordable Housing, iscommitted to resisting HUD's efforts to bulldoze theirapartments "by any means necessary."

If the government told you that they were going to bulldozewhere you live, and deny you the right to return to your home,would you join them?

[For more information about the July 4 protest by the UnitedFront for Affordable Housing, call Endesha Juakali at504.239.2907, Elizabeth Cook 504.319.3564, or Ishmael Muhammadat 504.872.9521. If you know someone who is a displaced NewOrleans public housing resident and they want to join in achallenge to HUD's actions, they can get more information at www.justiceforneworleans.org ; For more information on thehuman rights campaigns for Katrina victims, see the US HumanRights Network at www.ushrnetwork.org or the National Economic and SocialRights Initiative, www.nesri.org.]

Bill Quigley is a human rights lawyer and professor at LoyolaUniversity New Orleans School of Law. You can reach him at Quigley@loyno.edu