Two local non-governmental organisations have welcomed a United Nations report yesterday calling for the closure of the US military detention centre at Guantanamo Bay.

In a statement today, Amnesty International (AI) Malaysia said the report sent a clear message to the US government that it is time for Guantanamo to go.

However, its executive director Josef Roy Benedict described Guantanamo as just the "tip of the iceberg".

He claimed that the US also operates detention facilities at the Bagram Airbase in Afghanistan, Abu Ghraib and elsewhere in Iraq.

The superpower has been implicated in the use of secret detention facilities in other countries known as 'black sites', he said.

"All these facilities, including Guantanamo Bay must be opened to independent scrutiny. All detainees should have access to the courts and should be treated humanely.

"These are basic principles that cannot be overridden even in time of war or national emergency," he added.

Collective action

Meanwhile, Peace Malaysia coordinator Mukhriz Mahathir said world leaders must not be "intimidated" and must be bold enough to assert political and economic pressures on the US.

This, he said, can be done collectively through the UN or regional and economic groups such as the Organisation of Islamic Conference (OIC) and the Non-Aligned Movement (NAM).

"Governments should also have the courage to act independently in voicing out and asserting pressure on the US," he added in a statement.

The US has rejected the UN report. The White House called it a discredit to the UN and accused the investigators of not looking at the facts.

Peace Malaysia, a loose coalition of over 1,000 NGOs, also said it feared the release of the report will fuel anger in Arab and Muslim worlds following new torture claims in Abu Ghraib prison.

Mukhriz noted that the Muslim world is already outraged by the recent publication of offensive caricatures depicting Prophet Muhammad by the Danish press.

"We hope the report will not incite more violence in the Muslim world because it will only justify Western misconception that Muslims always resort to violence when incidences like these occur," he added.