The organisation’s secretary general, Irene Khan, said: “To argue that torture is warranted is to push us back to the Middle Ages.”The international community failed to answer calls for help when mass abuse was taking place, Amnesty says. In the Sudanese region of Darfur, the United Nations stopped short of describing the violence against civilians as genocide. There had been a similar lack of action in other parts of Africa, including Zimbabwe and the Democratic Republic of Congo, with the international community seemingly impotent to act against human rights abuse.Ms Khan said the rest of the world took its lead from the US. Amnesty says the UN was “held hostage” to Russian arms-trade interests and Chinese oil interests when it debated Sudan.

Australia may be among the most urbanised countries in the world, but most people have a great respect and affection for farmers and mountain cattlemen.”New South Wales has prohibited alpine grazing since 1972, while the Australian Capital Territory, which includes Canberra, outlawed it a century ago. But the practice has always been primarily associated with Victoria. The state goverment said the national park’s fragile ecosystem needed to be conserved.. The United States is condoning torture and abuse in the name of the war on terror, setting up a latter-day Gulag and creating a new generation of the “disappeared”, according to Amnesty International. The government took responsibility for major infrastructure rebuilding of bridges and roads, which other reconstruction work depends on. But it did not release its plans for weeks and only printed them in Indonesian. The military has accused the separatist movement Gam of hindering relief work Gam has denied this and blamed government corruption.

There have been reports of the military selling food and other aid instead of distributing them freely. Aid groups said their first priorities were emergency food, shelter and schooling. They blame government and port authority bureaucracy for the delays.What problems do aid workers face?The task is enormous as 500, 000 Acehnese are registered as refugees. Some survivors are expected to need food aid for at least another year. Pre-tsunami Aceh was largely closed to foreigners after martial law was declared in May 2003.

What infrastructure had not been run down since then was largely wiped out by the tsunami that destroyed the capital, Banda Aceh.Are there any other underlying issues?Aceh is also still a conflict zone, as it has been for 30 years. More than 260 suspected separatists have been killed by the military since 26 December. After the storm, Gam proposed a unilateral ceasefire, but the government refused. An 18-month state of emergency was lifted last Wednesday, but 39,000 government troops remain in Aceh. Aid workers have had their travel restricted, as the government has said it cannot guarantee their safety outside certain areas. On 23 May the government announced that foreign NGOs must sign a memorandum of understanding confirming that they will not support the separatist movement.What’s the government’s position?It is nervous of foreign aid workers, but has not got the resources to handle the crisis on its own.

Jakarta fears another East Timor-style secession, where pressure from humanitarian workers aided the successful 1999 independence campaign. Prime Minister Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono said he wanted a non-military solution in Aceh when he was elected last September Then the storm struck and killed 160,000 Acehnese. The massive international relief effort has been a catalyst for a new round of peace talks between the government and Gam. The government wants to keep the Aceh dispute a domestic issue, and get aid workers out of the province as soon as possible. The fourth round of talks starts today in Helsinki and runs until 31 May.. The father of a Devon man killed with his girlfriend in Thailand has said their killer “cannot expect us to give him any mercy” as he was sentenced to life imprisonment.