Sure, such testaments will serve to AI everlasting credit, but please note that they all date back to early 80-s. Could it be that AI lost perspective as of late, as evidenced by this latest fiasco? At the least it was a mistake, all the more regrettable because there are very few credible watch-dog groups to begin with…
Let’s remember that Amnesty International retained enough credibility for the Bush Administration to cite them as a reference to how eeeeeeeevil Saddam Hussein was just a few years ago.
The latest attempts by the Bush Administration (and its apologists) to try to smear AI is both laughingly transparent and sadly predictable.
OK how about 2003:
Everybody can make a mistake and AI admitted to making mistakes before, again to its own credit.
When Rumsfield was using AI reports he was relying on factual cases they reported, not sweeping generalizations, which they seldom used before. There is huge difference between documenting abuses and slapping labels, etymology of which you don’t bother to learn.
Any evidence about human rights violations in Gitmo need to be documented, but to compare a military detention camp with few hundred inmates, openly set up and constantly monitored with secret system of political repression and slave labor, where millions of people perished in unbelievable cruelty was “absurd”, just as Bush said. And the reason Bush was able to say it was “absurd”, because AI made a mistake.
My guess GULAG comparison, buried in the long report, was sneaked in by some over-eager young smart ass, already reassigned to cafeteria duties for an indefinite duration.
qoute: My guess GULAG comparison, buried in the long report, was sneaked in by some over-eager young smart ass, already reassigned to cafeteria duties for an indefinite duration.
An over-eager young smart ass loose cannon would be forgiveable. It seems rather that this attitude is fostered toward the top…
Amnesty’s ‘Gulag’ [from the Wall Street Journal Op-Eds 5/26/05]
“Gulag” is the Russian acronym made famous by Alexander Solzhenitsyn to describe the vast network of Soviet slave labor camps in which millions died. It is thus one more sign of the moral degradation of Amnesty International that the pressure group is now calling the U.S. detention facility for Taliban and al Qaeda suspects at Guantanamo Bay “the gulag of our time.”
At a press conference yesterday releasing its annual human rights report, William Schultz, the executive director of Amnesty’s U.S. branch, called the U.S. a “leading purveyor and practitioner” of torture. He urged foreign governments to investigate and arrest U.S. officials. “The apparent high-level architects of torture should think twice before planning their next vacation to places like Acapulco or the French Riviera,” he said, “because they may find themselves under arrest as Augusto Pinochet famously did in London in 1998.”
The “apparent” is a nice touch, perhaps an unconscious bow to the fact that multiple probes and courts martial have found no evidence that the U.S. condones or encourages torture.
“Our list,” as Mr. Orwell – er, Mr. Schultz – puts it, is too long to print in full. But in includes Donald Rumsfeld, Douglas Feith and William Haynes at Defense; Alberto Gonzales, John Yoo, Jack Goldsmith, and Patrick Philbin from Justice; Tim Flanigan, just nominated to be Deputy Attorney General; George Tenet, former head of the CIA; and Lieutenant General Ricardo Sanchez, former commander of the U.S. forces in Iraq.
It’s old news that Amnesty International is a highly politicized pressure group, but these latest accusations amount to pro-al Qaeda propaganda. A “human rights” group that can’t distinguish between Stalin’s death camps and detention centers for terrorists who kill civilians can’t be taken seriously.
You’re right! Let’s demand a thorough public investigation, wide open and full disclosure! That’ll sure shut up them Al Queda Amnesty bitches!
Ya think?
From the U.S. State Dept’s site:
Response of the Government of the United States of America to the Opinion No. 5/2003 dated May 8, 2003, and the Communication Dated January 8, 2003 of the Working Group on Arbitrary Detention
http://www.state.gov/s/l/2003/44335.htm
an excerpt…
*It is the view of the United States Government that we cannot have an international legal system in which honorable soldiers who abide by the law of armed conflict and are captured on the battlefield may be detained and held until the end of a war without access to courts or other benefits, but terrorist combatants who violate the law of armed conflict must be given special privileges or released and allowed to continue their belligerent, unlawful or terrorist activities. Such a legal regime would signal to the international community that it is acceptable for armies to behave like terrorists. *
In summary,
- In light of 9/11 we are defending ourselves in an armed conflict against al Queda (and other terrrorist groups) and those who harbour them (the Taliban).
- The laws and customs of war are the applicable law in armed conflict. Not international humanitarian law. AI ignores this crucial juridical context, suggesting that the detainees are entitled to judicial review or enjoy the right to resort to the courts.
- Prisoners in this armed conflict are enemy combatants, and are considered unlawful enemy combatants at that, as neither al Queda nor the Taliban meet certain criteria of the Geneva Convention. As such they are not afforded POW status under the Geneva Convention and are not subject to a military tribunal hearing.
- Enemy combatants are not entitled to be released prior to the end of hostilities or to have access to Court or Counsel. Individuals detained at Guantanamo are captured in the course of ongoing hostilities or directly acting in support of a hostile armed force engaged in an ongoing armed conflict. As such, they are being held in accordance with the laws and customs of war, which permit the United States to capture and detain enemy combatants to prevent their re-engaging in the ongoing armed conflict.
- Notwithstanding the fact that the detainees at Guantanamo are unlawful enemy combatants, the Armed Forces of the United States are "treating and will continue to treat [the detainees] humanely and, to the extent appropriate and consistent with military necessity, in a manner consistent with the principles of the [Geneva Convention]. . . . The detainees will not be subjected to physical or mental abuse or cruel treatment.
THAT is U.S. Policy. AI has its panties in knots as it believes that International Humanitarian Law applies, and the U.S. is arbitrarily rounding up civilians and submitting them to torture as matter of policy.
Absurd, indeed.
Part of this debate becomes a lingustic stand-off. “The gulag comparison is appropriate becasue Gitmo fits definition X of gulag” versus “it’s not because it doesn’t fit defintion Y of gulag”.
The disagreement over whether US has a policy of torture or not might be (in part) a similar disagreement on what “a policy” is. To clarify: I do not think that US government has issued direct orders to torture people, using the word “torture”. I do, however think that the current abuses are a forseeable consequence of a consistent US policy, and that those at the top bear a direct responsibility for those abuses. Those who state otherwise put me in mind of a Star Wars roleplaying campaing smiling bandit described in a Cafe thread, where the characters blew up a huge building and then claimed that they didn’t deserve Dark Side points because they didn’t intend all the people in the building to die.
[ul][li]It is an undeniable fact that several thousand prisoners are kept in US camps, held indefinitively and incommunicado, and without the protection of PoW status. This is, in itself, a dire human rights violation.[/li][li]The reports about abuses, torture and murder come from several sources, not just outside sources, but also several Pentagon documents. (To say something nice about USA, in a thread devoted to some of the worst aspect of your government’s actions: I envy you your Freedom of Information Act, and wish my own country had a similar law.)[/li][li]Documents from the top levels of your governement discuss various ways of dancing around the word torture, and how to inflicting pain and mistreat prisoners but calling it something other than torture. (This is common knowledge, surely? It isn’t? Take this document from US dept. of Justice as an example, then.)[/li][li]Your government does not, to put it mildly, encourage an “innocent until proved otherwise” stance versus the prisoners in these camps.[/ul][/li]
I could go on, but I’m not sure there’s much point. I’m having problems understanding a world view of someone who claims that US does not commit serious human rights violations.
It’s late here, I’d better round off. Here’s one of those “isolated incidents”:
(link) More than two years ago. “Under investigation”. No charges. What kind of message does this, and similar “isolated incidents” send to the people working in US prison camps?
It should also be noted, double-underlined and yellow highlightered that this memo was written BY OUR CURRENT ATTORNEY GENERAL! And he was confirmed not only after writing it, but after it became public knowledge that he’d written it. WELL after it became public knowledge that he’d written it.
I do weep for my country at times.
The trouble with people like you is that you demand everything and concede nothing.
How can you grant to a person PoW status and civilian ‘presumption of innocence’ all at the same time?
PoW status is for open combatants. If you insist that all people in US detrention camps were treated as PoWs, you are summarily defining them as open enemies of US.
Iinnocent until proved otherwise" applies to civilians, who can’t be classified as PoWs.
The problem with “people like you” is that you want to play by your own rules. To wit:
That’s just it. Through legalistic legerdemain the US has denied the prisioners the rights inherent in either of those two classifications.
So what are they now? "Slighty opposed to the US " thus not worthy of any rights?
Back to square one. Call them neither and make up the rules as you go along. Circular arguments, what’s not to love?
Well, there’s the annoying fact that a few die here and there while being tortured. And that that no one seems to know how many are guilty or not…or even what they are charged with.
No big whoop.
Rah rah USA!
Projecting too much there, the tap dancing is done by the current administration. The Europeans already concede the “having our cake and eating it too” mentality of the current administration, if you check their resolution, the point is that if the status of POW’s is not applicable, then their human rights have to be considered.
So in that resolution, they point out that even if we like to say that they are not POWs we have to consider basic human rights.
And that is the focus of Amnesty International.
I have no problem with AI activities, only wish they would maintain historical perspective.
First, they already have rights any GULAG prisoner couldn’t imagine in wildest dreams.
But I wasn’t talking about detainees. I was talking about their purported protectors, like you and others. If you want to be taken seriously and accomplish something, don’t demand things that are mutually exclusive. You can not maintain that those detainees are innocent and deserve PoW status at the same time. By definition PoWs are not innocents, they are enemy soldiers apprehended at the field of battle. So you make up your mind.
Once again: it is the administration that has not made up its mind. Our point is that IF they are not POWs then human rights have to be considered, especially when one considers that there is a good number of them that were at the wrong place when captured, or obtained with the same “flawless” intelligence that gave us Iraq.
Perhaps I did not phrase myself clearly. I’ll try again:
[ul][li]Some people were taken prisoner during the war against Afghanistan, and during the war against Iraq, in war-like circumstances. They should get PoW treatment (including full protection of the Geneva convention), and should have been released after the war against their country was over.[/li][li]Some people were and are taken prisoner during peace time. They should be treated as people suspected of a crime – presumed innocent, access to lawyers, etc etc.[/ul]I don’t demand the protection of both civilian and PoW status, I demand one of them. They get neither.[/li]
A couple of comments to an earlier post:
I strongly disagree. The basic idea of a group like AI is that it should make everybody uncomfortable. I doubt there is any government on the planet which could face an in-depth report from AI without flinching. I know my government couldn’t. (We don’t get an chapter in the last report. I suppose I can’t fault AI for going after bigger fish, but I’d dearly like a strong, sharp look at my government’s treatment of asylum seekers, among others.)
Do you have any examples of these more deserving targets of criticism which escape AI’s attention?
I understood your point from the first time; well put, although I can’t agree with it completely, but let’s just leave it at that.
Which people were and are?
Were: Anyone captured in Iraq after (goes to check) 15th April 2003, or in Afghanistan after (hm, can’t find exact date) end of December 2001.
Are: That would be those who are captured right now.
Do you want specific examples?
Yes, please.
Are you arguing that being an enemy soldier on a battlefield makes you guilty of a crime? That’s a novel legal theory. German, Italian and Japanese soldiers captured during WW2 were not treated as guilty of crimes, except for a few leaders that were tried in post-war tribunals such as Nuremberg. If enemy soldiers are automatically guilty of crimes, then American soldiers are guilty of crimes in the coutries that the US goes to war with. Would you be OK with Saddam Hussein’s regime treating captured American soldiers as criminals?
Why only one or the other?
The Geneva convention very carefully defines what a POW is: basically* only * someone in uniformed army. So they aren’t POWs, at least in the Geneva sense.
And it’s flatly absurd to extending the full benefits of the US legal system – including presumption of innocence, miranda warnings, and standards of evidence – to foreign nationals who are detained in a war zone outside US jurisdiction. You would never get a conviction. The de facto effect of such a policy would lead to either certain defeat and/or a “kill 'em all” mentality among troops.
If you really are trying to think of a solution to the problem, you’ve got to start by acknowledging this double bind that nonstate actors such as terror groups create.
There is legal historical precedent for dealing with groups officially unaffiliated with any nation-state (even if tacitly supported by one) that commit acts that go beyond the merely criminal and rise to casus belli. At one time the word “pirate” was as feared as “terrorist” is today, and they had little of the charming rogue patina that has been added since.
To put it concisely, pirates were hung on sight; in the event that an accused pirate pleaded innocence, the military authorities were empowered to investigate and render judgement. Harsh, but effective: nobody who treasured their neck thought about aiding a pirate, and the vermin were kept under control.
I think we could count on current military commanders to be as circumspect as practicable; but not everyone shares that view, and would be horrified to hear about soldiers shooting people. I do not know whether or not they realize that their concern might aid the enemy and prolong the conflict – and thus increase the harm to innocents.
Alas, Colonel Kurtz was right: sometimes it is the judgment that defeats us.