A Daily Briefing on Iran: Amnesty International Sees the Tree, Misses the Entire Forest

The Blue State Conservatives:

Amnesty International has released its newest report on global human rights abuses and you'll never guess what's right at the top of the list.

Yep, you got it, Guantanamo Bay. READ MORE

Amnesty International's head, Irene Khan said, "Guantanamo has become the gulag of our time..." In her foreword to the report, she devotes four paragraphs to Guantanamo and Abu Ghraib (as well as other passing comments elsewhere) and only three to Darfur, where hundreds of thousands of people have been killed.

Is that a distorted view of the world? I sure think so.

The Washington Post sums up the report thusly:
Amnesty International branded the U.S. prison camp at Guantanamo Bay a human rights failure Wednesday, calling it "the gulag of our time" as it released a report that offers stinging criticism of the United States and its detention centers around the world.
The 308-page report accused the United States of shirking its responsibility to set the bar for human rights protections and said Washington has instead created a new lexicon for abuse and torture.

In the harshest rebuke yet of U.S. detention policies, Amnesty International called for the camp to be closed.

"Attempts to dilute the absolute ban on torture through new policies and quasi-management speak, such as 'environmental manipulation, stress positions and sensory manipulation,' was one of the most damaging assaults on global values," the annual report said.

What I find interesting is that nowhere in the article, or in Khan's foreword, will you find a single mention of the actual gulags currently operating in Cuba. It is as if Amnesty International's outrage stops at Guantanamo Bay and doesn't recognize the actual torture (as opposed to things that are "tantamount to torture", to quote the ICRC) and indefinite imprisonment of people who have done nothing more than openly criticize Fidel Castro or try to flee his tyranny.

Is there a section on Cuba? Most assuredly. you'll find it in the pulldown list. However, if you read their summary on the Americas, you'll find a lengthy section on Guantanamo Bay and the War on Terror and not one single mention of Cuba itself or of Fidel Castro.

Zero. Nothing.

Here is how AI sums up the situation in Cuba itself:
By the end of 2004 there were at least 70 prisoners of conscience, most of them held since the 2003 crackdown on the dissident movement. However, 18 prisoners of conscience were released and many were moved to prisons nearer their homes.

Dissidents and their relatives continued to be threatened and harassed. The US embargo and related measures continued to have a negative effect on the enjoyment of the full range of human rights in Cuba.
Got that? Cuba has at least 70 people in prison for speaking out against the government, but it's not all that bad. Some of them are in jail closer to home now.

Really, though, the fault lies with the United State because of our embargo. How, exactly, our embargo isn't allowing people the "full range of human rights" is beyond me. Maybe AI believes that if we lift the embargo, Castro will grant the people of Cuba free elections, freedom of speech, freedom of the press, freedom of assembly, or freedom of religion?

Ridiculous.

By contrast, here's how AI sums up the United States:
Hundreds of detainees continued to be held without charge or trial at the US naval base in Guantánamo Bay, Cuba. Thousands of people were detained during US military and security operations in Iraq and Afghanistan and routinely denied access to their families and lawyers.

Military investigations were initiated or conducted into allegations of torture and ill-treatment of detainees by US personnel in Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq and into reports of deaths in custody and ill-treatment by US forces elsewhere in Iraq, and in Afghanistan and Guantánamo. Evidence came to light that the US administration had sanctioned interrogation techniques that violated the UN Convention against Torture. Pre-trial military commission hearings opened in Guantánamo but were suspended pending a US court ruling.

In the USA, more than 40 people died after being struck by police tasers, raising concern about the safety of such weapons. The death penalty continued to be imposed and carried out.
Which one sounds worse to you? Which place would you suspect has a Bill of Rights or free elections or free enterprise - the first or the second?

Here's another quick comparison. AI finishes each national summary with a note about any visits it's had to the country in the past year. Here's its note on the United States:
AI delegates visited Yemen in April and spoke with relatives of detainees from the Gulf region held in Guantánamo Bay. An AI delegate attended pre-trial military commission hearings in Guantánamo Bay in August and November.
And here's its note on Cuba:
AI last visited Cuba in 1988 and has not been permitted into the country since then.
I find it interesting that the only time that AI set foot on the island of Cuba in the last six, it did so only at Guantanamo Bay. I think that tells me far more about the relative human rights situations in the US and Cuba than nearly anything else AI could have written.

It is exceedingly rare that any open and free society systematically abuses human rights. I might even argue that it does not happen at all. What is certain is that the more closed a nation is to outsiders, the more likely it is that it is abusing its citizens. Perhaps the reason that AI is able to criticize us more voluminously than it is Cuba is because we allow scrutiny of what we do and how we do it. That, though, does not seem to be a part of AI's calculations. It is a criticism they seem utterly unable to make. Make no mistake. I do not condone the deaths of detainees in our custody as the military has reported them. I do not condone the use of reckless and sadistic torture. We are human beings and as such, we are prone to doing cruel and brutal things - even those of us who live in a country as enlightened and free as America. But our failings as individuals should not indict us as a nation so long as we continue to act quickly to try and punish those guilty of true abuse. AI does not recognize that distinction either.

AI has its collective head screwed on backwards and upside-down. If its most pressing concern worldwide is our detainees at Guantanamo Bay, to the point where it is almost completely ignoring and excusing the rampant human rights violations that are occurring just outside the fenceline, then it's failed miserably at its mission. The shame of it is, I doubt seriously that even recognizes its own failure.