Posted on 05/27/2005 9:44:06 AM PDT by West Coast Conservative
Every year, human-rights watchdog Amnesty International (AI) releases a report on "The State of the World's Human Rights." It is an important document, providing a global inventory of abuses. Unfortunately, its credibility has been undermined by AI's recent practice of reserving its harshest criticism for the United States, as though the democratic nation's alleged failings -- e.g., the death penalty and inadequate due process for terror detainees -- were equivalent to the appalling instances of torture and genocide perpetrated by the world's dictatorships.
The current edition of the AI report is a case in point. By calling the U.S. Navy base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, "the gulag of our times," AI might have attracted the attention of journalists. (Predictably, the story was the lead item on Wednesday's broadcast of CBC-TV's The National.) But anyone who knows anything about Soviet history will recognize the claim is outrageous.
The post-revolution gulags to which AI so cavalierly refers represent one of the great genocidal tragedies known to man. Their horrors -- captured in terrifying detail by Aleksandr I. Solzhenitsyn in The Gulag Archipelago and, more recently, by Anne Applebaum in Gulag: a History -- are almost beyond comprehension. Tens of millions of people passed through the camps. Freezing temperatures, starvation, forced labour, rape and summary execution were the order of the day. Although it is impossible to calculate a precise death toll, historians accept that the camps claimed millions of lives.
It is simply unconscionable for AI to try to compare such a human catastrophe to what is happening at Guantanamo. Yes, American authorities can be credibly accused of thwarting international law by holding several hundred terror suspects from Afghanistan and elsewhere without charging them with a crime or providing them the full benefits outlined in the Geneva Conventions. But then, this is a pattern that has played out in many countries: The war on terror has led to a focus on security that has caused the protection of individual liberties to be eroded. No doubt, such observations belong in the AI report. But it is absurd for such complaints to be equated with genocide such as occurred at the hands of Stalin. One need only ask one question -- how many people have been murdered at Guantanamo? -- to understand how irresponsible the comparison really is. (The answer is zero.)
In an era that now seems distant, AI earned the praise of civilized nations through its unceasing efforts to bring human rights abuses to light and protect the most vulnerable people on the planet. But with every passing year, it seems to be abandoning that goal in favour of becoming just another partisan group eager to poke its finger in Uncle Sam's eye.
Especially since Amnesty never seems to notice that the real "gulag of our times" is just outside Guantanamo's fences.
"Especially since Amnesty never seems to notice that the real "gulag of our times" is just outside Guantanamo's fences."
Bingo. It's all just more leftist partisan politics. AI has absolutely no credibility with anyone with more than a hockey score IQ.
...or providing them the full benefits outlined in the Geneva Conventions.
They are not accorded protections under the Geneva Convention because they do not qualify. They must either wear a distinctive uniform or a symbol that distinguishes them from non-combatants. In their case neither was done so they do not qualify. What gripes my craw is everyone being so eager to stick up for these terrorists and not for the innocent victims that were killed because they do not abide by the Geneva Conventions themselves. You never heard this kind of outrage when the NVA were brutalizing our POWs in North Vietnam. I guess with these people the only thing that makes them happy is if the US is smeared at every opportunity whether it is justified or not. They'd rather sleep with the devil than stand by their own country. For all I care the sooner they left this country the better off the rest of us would be.
Well said.
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