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Every so often Amnesty International has to toss a bone to its wealthy liberal contributors. Otherwise the Ted Turners and George Soroses may begin to wonder whether they are getting the best bang for their buck. No doubt its annual assault on the U.S. is the meatiest bone Amnesty International can serve up.
After all, what profit is there in constantly harping about third world dictators? Not only is it ineffective, but more important it's not going to make headlines. And headlines equal more donations. Besides we all know that conditions in Sudan, Haiti, Zimbabwe, etc., etc., are hellish. And what wealthy liberal wants to pick on a developing country? Haven't they endured enough suffering at the hands of the brutal European colonials? This explains why Amnesty International spends an inordinate amount of time trying to dig up dirt on countries like the U.S. and Britain (and not enough time on France, in my opinion).
Speaking of headlines, last week Amnesty International's Secretary General Irene Zubaida Khan called Guantanamo Bay "the Gulag of our time." The obvious reference was to the Soviet Union's notorious Gulag Archipelago, made infamous by Aleksandr Isaevich Solzhenitsyn's memoir/history, called by one reviewer, "the modern equivalent of Luther's 95 Theses." Evidently, the Muslim head of Amnesty International has never found time to read Mr. Solzhenitsyn's book or even bothered to look up the word gulag on the online encyclopedia. If she had Ms. Zubaida Khan would have been amazed to learn that the 30 million inmates of the secret Soviet camps were by and large political prisoners, writers, and dissidents like Solzhenitsyn (arrested for writing a private letter criticizing Stalin), or Soviet soldiers welcomed home from years in German prison camps with a one-way ticket to Siberia. (Besides punishing dissidents, Lenin and Stalin had important economic reasons for the camps. It was due largely to this slave labor that the Soviet economy remained precariously afloat for 70 years.)
Gulag prisoners were systemically starved, beaten, and forced to labor in sub-zero weather. The lucky ones were shot immediately. In contrast, at Guantanamo Bay, 1,300 Korans in 13 different languages were handed out to prisoners. Prisoners are served "proper Muslim-approved food." The International Red Cross has been monitoring the camp from Day One. Gen. Richard Myers noted that the organization has consistently given the U.S. high marks for the way it takes care of terrorists. What is Amnesty's biggest beef about Gitmo? That some guards "mishandled" a book.
Nevertheless Amnesty International's "gulag" reference came as a bit of a surprise. The left has been notoriously silent about the gulags. It is normally a chapter in the history of socialism they prefer to leave out. On the other hand, the fact that Amnesty International used the term shows how little respect the left has for the tens of millions that suffered the hell of the gulag. You would never hear Amnesty International call Guantanamo Bay the "Auschwitz of our Time." Auschwitz is sacred to the memory of the Jews and Poles who died there. The gulag? That's not sacred. Just a failed experiment.
A final "minor" point. The gulag prisoners were innocent. The roughly 650 prisoners that have gone through Guantanamo Bay, on the other hand, are terrorists and terrorist allies.
Ms. Zubaida Khan apparently cannot tell the difference between Solzhenitsyn and Bin Laden.
By making such asinine comparisons, Amnesty International risks losing whatever credibility it has left. This is unfortunate because the organization normally does important work. However, Amnesty is caught in a Catch-22 situation. It can risk losing its credibility by throwing a bone to its wealthy liberal donors, or risk losing its funding. Amnesty has obviously chosen to risk its credibility.
If nothing else good came out of the recent "gulag" stories, I was encouraged to go back and reread some of The Gulag Archipelago. How nice to be reminded that Solzhenitsyn's masterpiece contains some of the most darkly humorous and lyrically beautiful writing of the 20th century:
We have been happily borne -- or perhaps have unhappily dragged our weary way -- down the long and crooked streets of our lives, past all kinds of walls and fences made of rotting wood, rammed earth, brick, concrete, iron railings. We have never given a thought to what lies behind them. We have never tried to penetrate them with our vision and our understanding. But here is where the Gulag country begins, right next to us, two yards away from us. In addition, we have failed to notice an enormous number of closely fitted, well-disguised doors and gates in these fences. All those gates were prepared for us, every last one! And all of a sudden the fateful gate swings open, and four white male hands, unaccustomed to physical labor but nonetheless strong and tenacious, grab us by the leg, arm, collar, cap, ear, and drag us in like a sack, and the gate behind us, the gate to our past life, is slammed shut once and for all.
I intend to send Irene Zubaida Khan my copy. It's a little worn, so perhaps it's time I found another.
Pasquinade said:I read with interest your post about Amnesty International, although I agree that there are indeed differences in Solzhenitsyn's Gulag and what is happening at Gautanemo Bay, I do take issue with your comment about the 650 "terrorists and terrorist allies". The fact is that these people have been locked up without charge or trial, denied access to legal representation all for what? I do not see any evidence of a decrease in terrorist attacks in Iraq or Afghanistan.
I for one appluad Amnesty International and the work they are doing to publicise human rights violations around the world, sure they are not everyone's cup of tea and I'm sure that there are Governments around the world who cringe everytime they hear the word Amnesty International. Maybe if more people took an interest in what was happening in this world instead of driving their gas guzzling SUV's to the mall then Amnesty would have a much easier job and we could do something to ease the suffereing of those less fortunate than the majority of the population.
Anyway I liked your piece and I look forward to reading more.
Pasquinade said:I read with interest your post about Amnesty International, although I agree that there are indeed differences in Solzhenitsyn's Gulag and what is happening at Gautanemo Bay, I do take issue with your comment about the 650 "terrorists and terrorist allies". The fact is that these people have been locked up without charge or trial, denied access to legal representation all for what? I do not see any evidence of a decrease in terrorist attacks in Iraq or Afghanistan.
Pasquinade said:I for one appluad Amnesty International and the work they are doing to publicise human rights violations around the world, sure they are not everyone's cup of tea and I'm sure that there are Governments around the world who cringe everytime they hear the word Amnesty International.
gop_jeff said:When Amnesty International starts documenting humans rights abuses in China, Cuba, Zimbabwe, Darfur/Sudan, Pakistan, Iran, Syria, Saudi Arabia, and Liberia, just name the ones off the top of my head, then I would start paying more attention to them. As it is, AI seems to only whine and cry about human rights abuses when it fits with their pre-conceived political agenda.
TALES OF HORROR FROM THE AMERICAN GULAG
Now that Amnesty International has declared Gitmo the "gulag of our time," the terrible stories are leaking out:
Americans are very kind people, one English-challenged detainee said in the March 4 paper. If people say there is mistreatment in Cuba with the detainees, those type speaking are wrong, they treat us like a Muslim not a detainee.
Im in good health and have good facilities of eating, drinking, living, and playing, remarked another. The food is good, the bedrooms are clean and the health care is very good.
In a February 16 Gitmo dispatch, an American Forces Press Service report described the treatment of Camp Deltas roughly 520 detainees from about 40 nations. Troublemakers wear prison-style orange jumpsuits and mainly are confined to rudimentary accommodations. But those who follow camp rules wear white outfits and exercise seven to nine hours daily, often playing soccer and volleyball. In quieter moments, chess, checkers and playing cards are the most requested items, Rhem wrote. As for reading, A security official explained Agatha Christie books in Arabic are very popular and that camp officials are working to get copies of Harry Potter books in Arabic.
Detainees eat culturally sensitive meals and follow arrows painted on dorm floors to face Mecca. Prayer calls are broadcast over loudspeakers five times a day, Rhem added.
This only confirms earlier stories of torture and humiliation from 2004:
Mohammed Ismail Agha, 15, who until last week was held at the US military base in Guantanamo Bay, said that he was treated very well and particularly enjoyed learning to speak English. His words will disappoint critics of the US policy of detaining "illegal combatants" in south-east Cuba indefinitely and without trial.
In a first interview with any of the three juveniles held by the US at Guantanamo Bay base, Mohammed said: "They gave me a good time in Cuba. They were very nice to me, giving me English lessons."
Mohammed, an unemployed Afghan farmer, found the surroundings in Cuba at first baffling. After he settled in, however, he was left to enjoy stimulating school work, good food and prayer.
"At first I was unhappy . . . For two or three days [after I arrived in Cuba] I was confused but later the Americans were so nice to me. They gave me good food with fruit and water for ablutions and prayer," he said yesterday in Naw Zad, a remote market town in southern Afghanistan close to his home village and 300 miles south-west of Kabul, the capital.
He said that the American soldiers taught him and his fellow child captives - aged 15 and 13 - to write and speak a little English. They supplied them with books in their native Pashto language. When the three boys left last week for Afghanistan, the soldiers looking after them gave them a send-off dinner and urged them to continue their studies.
Shocking.
Now, I'm not stating that Guantanamo - based on either the case review policy and criteria for continued detention, or all individual cases of confinement and interrogation - is a paradise or fair, but when Amnesty International compares the facility to the network of Soviet slave labor camps where millions were worked to death ... well, let's just put things lightly and say that it mortally undermines itself as an effective and credible human rights organization.
Take note, Human Rights Watch.
Especially when the WaPo editorial board backs up that assessment.
Also, John Podhoretz: "Why Gitmo's no gulag."
(Second link via AoS)
UPDATE: Yet they keep digging ...
Posted by Bill at June 2, 2005 08:18 AM
IControlThePast said:The way I interpreted the statement, that Gitmo is the "gulag of our times" doesn't say that it actually has the same exact conditions as a Russian gulag, which was undboutedly worse, but that it is similar because it holds detainees, who may have been tortured/beaten to death, who have not been convicted of crimes, and because its overall function is to be a means for controlling political opposition to the US, which is the same purpose the Russian gulags served.
Comrade said:No, North Korea's concentration camps are the gulag of our times.
Guatanamo is an intelligence debriefing center for a few hundred high priority military opponents, and NOT some sort of massive state labour and holding center for domestic political malcontents. If you can't see this clearly as what this is, a tool for the US military to hunt down and kill or capture Islamic terrorists, then call it a holding center for illegal combatants found armed on the battlefield out of uniform. But please, leave the 'gulag of our times' to the countries like North Korea, Iran, and former Iraq, who truly practice what you imply in numbers and severity of a far more drastic nature.
IControlThePast said:Howerver, the prisoners at the camp have not been through the Article 5 tribunals required by law to count them as illegal enemy combatants. In addition, the courts ruled these prisoners can't be tried as enemy combatants in a military tribunal in Bush vs. Rasul, so legally these alleged (because they have not had trial) Terrorists being held there as civilians. Gitmo is a tool, basically a grey area where the government is trying to escape from fulfilling some of the principles this country was founded on for the sake of expediency.
Why Gitmo's no gulag
By John Podhoretz
Tuesday, May 31, 2005 - Updated: 01:35 AM EST
Can it be? Did Amnesty International, which purports to be the world's leading independent monitor of human rights abuses, describe the U.S. facility at Guantanamo Bay as ``the gulag of our times''?
Yes, it did. So let's do a few comparisons between Gitmo and the Gulag - the network of Soviet prison camps set up by Stalin in the 1920s.
Number of prisoners at Gitmo: approximately 600.
Number of prisoners in the Gulag: 25 million, according to peerless Gulag historian Anne Applebaum.
Number of camps at Gitmo: 1.
Number of camps in the Gulag: At least 476, according to Applebaum.
Political purpose of Gulag: The suppression of internal dissent inside a totalitarian state.
Political purpose of Gitmo: The suppression of an international terrorist group that had attacked the United States, killing 3,000 people while attempting to decapitate the national government through the hijack of jets.
Financial purpose of Gulag: Providing totalitarian economy with millions of slave laborers.
Financial purpose of Gitmo: None.
Seizure of Gulag prisoners: From apartments, homes, street corners inside the Soviet Union.
Seizure of Gitmo prisoners: From battlefield sites in Afghanistan in the midst of war.
Even the most damaging charge Amnesty International levels against the United States and its conduct at Gitmo, that our government has been guilty of ``entrenching the practice of arbitrary and indefinite detention in violation of international law,'' bears no relation to the way things worked when it came to the Gulag. Soviet prisoners were charged, tried and convicted in courts of law according to the Soviet legal code.
For this reason, Gulag prisoners like Vladimir Bukovsky and Anatoly Sharansky (later Natan Sharansky) were able to gum up the Soviet legal works by using the letter of Soviet law against their captors and tormentors.
The problem with the Gulag wasn't that the letter of the law wasn't followed, that the prisoners were given ``arbitrary and indefinite'' sentences. It's that the charges were trumped up and confessions were coerced.
The situation at Gitmo is entirely different. No one argues that the vast majority of those imprisoned there wereal-Qaeda personnel. The problem, according to those who scream about unfairness, is that the prisoners aren't being treated as lawful combatants under the terms of the Geneva Convention or as prisoners of war.
They have been handled under special terms because they are stateless with allegiance not to a country but to a terrorist group. Their nations of origin wouldn't have wanted them back, would have killed them or would have foolishly released them to foment further terrorism.
Amnesty International was founded in part to serve as a watchdog of Communist human-rights abuse. They surely know that even though they might consider the American camp at Guantanamo Bay a terrible violation of human rights, it is a speck on a speck of a mote of dust compared to the Everest of horror that was the Soviet Gulag.
Or, maybe not. The people at Amnesty International really do think that the imprisonment of 600 certain or suspected terrorists is tantamount to the imprisonment of 25 million slaves.
The case of Amnesty International proves that well-meaning people can make morality their life's work and still be little more than moral idiots.
Comrade said:Millions died in the genuine Communist Gulag. The average life expectancy for most was a single Winter. How many have died under custody at Guantanemo?
Are we done with arguing about whether or not Gitmo is still a gulag before changing the subject?
I mean once we have to discuss how the applicability of International Law should apply in a situation where our enemy is no particular nation, but a host of Islamic extremists among facilitating countries who flaunt such law willingly, we're far beyond the context of this AI acussation of running a 'gulag'. Personally, I could care less for the rights of those combatants who target civilians as a group and are caught on the battlefield, of course out of uniform and refusing to disclose their rank and serial number or how they gutted that American journalist last night. They have violated not just Geneva, but the sacred right of sanctuary which this Western law of war is based upon.
So psha! :nine:
IControlThePast said:If we stoop to the level of our enemies that will make us just as bad as they are. We're fighting for America, Freedom, just a set of principles, so what are we fighting for if we decide to break those principles?
IControlThePast said:Now you're saying the exact same thing I did. I said no it isn't actually a gulag, and it's less harsh than a gulag. Read my first post.
No, Amnesty actually mentions the International Law and court decision in their report and makes the gulag comment within that context.
You can't say the people in Gitmo have done anything wrong, because they have not been convicted of anything. None have had a trial. While I'm sure some of them are Terrorists, why won't the Government give a trial unless it's holding people it can't convict?
If we stoop to the level of our enemies that will make us just as bad as they are. We're fighting for America, Freedom, just a set of principles, so what are we fighting for if we decide to break those principles?
no1tovote4 said:This ignores the fact that they are considered POWs and thus do not need trials. Enemy combatants can be taken and held until the war is over or until there is an exchange, and that is fully consistent with "International Law" (I would call them Treaty agreements rather than International Law as there really is no such thing as there is no Legal Controlling Authority to enforce such "laws"). There are specific ways that they are to be treated and the Red Cross has been overseeing the treatment at GITMO to insure that the rules have been followed.
Since the only charge that they make is that they were not tried and a book was mistreated, AI is simply attempting to make political points while ignoring true abuses in other countries. They are becoming less effective with every dot of ink printed about stories like this. Attempting to relate "Gulag" with what is actually happening...
That is like trying to apologize for somebody saying that Bush is the "Hitler of our Time" by saying, "Well, they did say 'of our time', clearly he isn't as bad as Hitler..."
IControlThePast said:The Geneva convention gives the rights to be "treated with humanity and...shall not be deprived of the rights of fair and regular trial" to Unlawful Combatants, which is what we are holding prisoners as at Gitmo.
I agree that even calling it a Gulag of our times is hyperbolic, even though the there are some similarities, but they're not saying that it actually has the same conditions of a gulag.
IControlThePast said:The Geneva convention gives the rights to be "treated with humanity and...shall not be deprived of the rights of fair and regular trial" to Unlawful Combatants, which is what we are holding prisoners as at Gitmo.
I agree that even calling it a Gulag of our times is hyperbolic, even though the there are some similarities, but they're not saying that it actually has the same conditions of a gulag.
