Is Amnesty International an "absurd" group of American Haters?

[CARLHAYDEN]

Update

By Lori Santos

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Despite highly publicized charges of U.S. mistreatment of prisoners at Guantanamo, the head of the Amnesty International USA said on Sunday the group doesn't "know for sure" that the military is running a "gulag."

Executive Director William Schulz said Amnesty, often cited worldwide for documenting human rights abuses, also had no information about whether Secretary Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld approved severe torture methods such as beatings and starvation.

Schulz recently dubbed Rumsfeld an "apparent high-level architect of torture" in asserting he approved interrogation methods that violated international law.

"It would be fascinating to find out. I have no idea," Schulz told "Fox News Sunday."

A weeks-long dispute has raged since Amnesty compared the prison for foreign terrorism suspects at the U.S. naval base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, to the vast, brutal Soviet gulag system of forced labor camps in which millions of prisoners died.

There have been a number of accusations of American mistreatment of the detainees and of the Koran, the Islamic holy book, at the base.

Schulz said, "We don't know for sure what all is happening at Guantanamo and our whole point is that the United States ought to allow independent human rights organizations to investigate."

He also said he had "absolutely no idea" whether the International Red Cross had been given access to all prisoners and said the group feared others were being held at secret facilities or locations.

President Bush, Vice President Dick Cheney and, most recently, Rumsfeld have repudiated the report with the defense secretary branding it "reprehensible."

Schulz noted that it was Amnesty's headquarters in London that issued the annual report on global human rights, which said Guantanamo Bay "has become the gulag of our times."

Asked about the comparison, Schulz said, "Clearly this is not an exact or a literal analogy."

"... But there are some similarities. The United States is maintaining an archipelago of prisons around the world, many of them secret prisons into which people are being literally disappeared ... And in some cases, at least, we know that they are being mistreated, abused, tortured and even killed."

"And whether the Americans like it or not, it does reflect how the more than 2 million Amnesty members in a hundred countries around the world and indeed the vast majority of those countries feel about the United States' detention policy," he added.

[The Duke]

Amnesty International's current front page links to news articles that criticize the following countries:

Two criticisms:
China

One criticism:
Afghanistan
Lebanon
European Union
Mexico
Nigeria
Russia
United Kingdom
United States
Zimbabwe

More critical of the United States than of Sudan, I take it.  Impressive.

[No more McShame]

Amnesty International's current front page links to news articles that criticize the following countries:

Two criticisms:
China

One criticism:
Afghanistan
Lebanon
European Union
Mexico
Nigeria
Russia
United Kingdom
United States
Zimbabwe

More critical of the United States than of Sudan, I take it.  Impressive.

Sure tells me something.  Good to know that Syria, Iran, and North Korea are bastions of human rights.

[opebo]

Amnesty International's current front page links to news articles that criticize the following countries:

Two criticisms:
China

One criticism:
Afghanistan
Lebanon
European Union
Mexico
Nigeria
Russia
United Kingdom
United States
Zimbabwe

More critical of the United States than of Sudan, I take it.  Impressive.

Sure tells me something.  Good to know that Syria, Iran, and North Korea are bastions of human rights.

I don't see why I should be more concerned about some foriegn lands I'll never visit violating human rights.  It makes more sense for Americans to be concerned about their own government's rampant abuses for two reasons; 1) the danger this represents to our rights, and 2) the detrimental effect on our foreign relations and security.

It doesn't effect me one bit if people are tortured in North Korea, but it certainly does if the CIA is doing it.

[○∙◄☻¥tπ[╪AV┼cVê└]

Amnesty International's current front page links to news articles that criticize the following countries:

Two criticisms:
China

One criticism:
Afghanistan
Lebanon
European Union
Mexico
Nigeria
Russia
United Kingdom
United States
Zimbabwe

More critical of the United States than of Sudan, I take it.  Impressive.

Sure tells me something.  Good to know that Syria, Iran, and North Korea are bastions of human rights.

Is there some rule that if Amnesty International didn't happen to mention a country on their current front page, then that country is a bastion of human rights?

[Lunar]

Amnesty International's current front page links to news articles that criticize the following countries:

Two criticisms:
China

One criticism:
Afghanistan
Lebanon
European Union
Mexico
Nigeria
Russia
United Kingdom
United States
Zimbabwe

More critical of the United States than of Sudan, I take it.  Impressive.

These are news stories.  So if Sudan hasn't don't something lately, it's not surprising.

[Jake]

From the Weekly Standard this week:


An American Gulag?

First came AI secretary general Irene Khan's press statement releasing the report in London, which announced that the U.S. detention facility at Guantanamo "has become the gulag of our times." That she meant the word gulag in its original sense--Stalin's camps in the Soviet Union through which millions upon millions of political prisoners passed and where many died--is underlined by the reference in her next sentence to Guantanamo evoking "images of Soviet repression." When the Washington Post editorial page, among many others, refused to countenance a comparison of such profound incomparables, she responded in a letter accusing it, astonishingly, of quibbling over semantics.

The "gulag" characterization was accompanied, however, by another allegation, nearly unnoticed in the press, yet if anything more 
outrageous in its implications. So-called "ghost detentions" by the United States, Khan said, do not merely evoke "images of" Stalin's camps. They actually "bring back" the "practice of 'disappearances' so popular with Latin American dictators in the past." Amnesty thus accuses the United States government of "disappearing"--kidnapping and secretly murdering--people. On what evidence? Well, none in Amnesty's actual report--but, in the press conference, it was said to be on the basis of not reporting all detainees, even ones who are not (in a perfectly defensible even if, to Amnesty, disagreeable reading of the Geneva Conventions) actual POWs who must be reported to the International Committee of the Red Cross.

Then there was the remarkable call by William Schulz, Amnesty International's USA executive director, in his own press conference, for foreign governments to investigate and arrest U.S. officials, should they venture abroad, for their alleged complicity in torture. Apparently very serious stuff--the media certainly thought so. "Torture," however, in AI's expansive view includes even the mere holding of a detainee "incommunicado." Moreover, since AI apparently regards all the detainees as entitled to full POW protections under the Third Geneva Convention, any departure from mere "name, rank, and serial number" questions is, for it, grounds for foreign governments to arrest U.S. officials and military officers for war crimes. Suffice it to say that the United States does not agree that all detainees are entitled to Geneva protections, and to the extent that something as flimsy as this is the basis for Amnesty's call for foreign governments to make arrests of U.S. officials, those foreign governments might want to be very, very careful.

I posted the interesting parts with the extreme comments.

[Palefire]

And for a collection of opinions that were published in various newspapers (ranging from the Washington Post to the Pittsburgh Post Gazette to the Miami Herald to the Oregonian to the Waco Tribune to the....well you get the point) that are not the Weekly Standard you can go to

http://www.amnestyusa.org/annualreport/quotes.html

if you would like.

[Jake]

No matter how bad the terrorists at Guantanamo are treated, and I couldn't care less how bad, the fact remains. Guantanamo is not like a Soviet Gulag. I really encourage the fools at AI to examine past reports about Soviet Gulags, some made by their organization, and see if they measure up. Of course, they prefer out there rhetoric that has no basis in fact.

[The Duke]

Amnesty International's current front page links to news articles that criticize the following countries:

Two criticisms:
China

One criticism:
Afghanistan
Lebanon
European Union
Mexico
Nigeria
Russia
United Kingdom
United States
Zimbabwe

More critical of the United States than of Sudan, I take it.  Impressive.

These are news stories.  So if Sudan hasn't don't something lately, it's not surprising.

There is an ONGOING genocide in Sudan right now.

[○∙◄☻¥tπ[╪AV┼cVê└]

They have recent news on the Sudan. The latest news only goes to the 8th, but if you click More News, you get to an article from the 6th.

In addition, if you hit More reports, you get a report from May 20th.

It also shows up multiple times in Urgent Actions:
http://web.amnesty.org/library/eng-recent/urgent_actions

[Beet]

They have recent news on the Sudan. The latest news only goes to the 8th, but if you click More News, you get to an article from the 6th.

In addition, if you hit More reports, you get a report from May 20th.

It also shows up multiple times in Urgent Actions:
http://web.amnesty.org/library/eng-recent/urgent_actions

Good point.

[Хahar 🤔]

BUMP

That brilliant, objective report - you know, based on what former detainees trained to lie about this stuff had to say - accused America of torture.

I wonder how unobjective this is now?

[Cubby]

Thanks for bumping this. Its fun to see what I wrote 3 years ago. What I wrote is still true.

States when you wrote in this thread back then, you had a South Carolina avatar. Do you remember?

[??????????]

Thanks for bumping this. Its fun to see what I wrote 3 years ago. What I wrote is still true.

States when you wrote in this thread back then, you had a South Carolina avatar. Do you remember?

Yes, when I was involved in fantasy govt.

[Queen Mum Inks.LWC]

No, but even my liberal friend said they were kinda wacky.

[DownWithTheLeft]

There awful people, funny enough, Keystone Phil will love this, the teacher that runs it at my school is the French teacher. 

Idk why the school continues to fund them, its awful.  Especially when the administration denied my requests for a Republican Club or a PLO Club

[Хahar 🤔]

PLO Club?

[Sensei]

There awful people, funny enough, Keystone Phil will love this, the teacher that runs it at my school is the French teacher. 

Idk why the school continues to fund them, its awful.  Especially when the administration denied my requests for a Republican Club or a PLO Club

I feel your pain. There was a Christian group, and they shot me down when I wanted to start a club for non-adherent people.

But bro, seriously? PLO Club?