Amnesty International slams US

Brand X wrote:

Like the Newsweek retraction...too late the damage is already done.

Amnesty International isn't given access to most of the places that they report on. They are left to use the stories of those that are no longer there. Certainly AI doesn't have access to Cuban or Saudi jails, but it doesn't stop them from reporting what they think is going on based on what they can learn from ex detainees and relatives.

I think AI has to accept stories as true in spite of any government denials or they would never report on anything since all govts deny they are abusing civil rights.

Group defends using 'gulag' to describe prison camp
By LIZETTE ALVAREZ
New York Times

LONDON - An official of Amnesty International said Friday that the choice of the term gulag in its annual report to describe the U.S. prison camp at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, was chosen deliberately, and she shrugged off harsh criticism of the report by the Bush administration.


The official, Kate Gilmore, the group's executive deputy secretary-general, said the administration's response was "typical of a government on the defensive."

The report, released April 26, placed the United States at the heart of its list of human rights offenders, citing indefinite detentions of prisoners at Guantanamo Bay, prisoner abuse at Abu Ghraib in Iraq and secret renditions of prisoners to countries that practice torture. But it is the use of the word gulag, a reference to the complex of labor camps where Stalin sent thousands of dissidents, that has drawn attention.

President Bush called the report "absurd" several times, and said it was the product of people who "hate America."

Amnesty has fired back, pointing out that the administration often cites its reports when that suits its purposes.

"If our reports are so 'absurd,' why did the admini-stration repeatedly cite our findings about Saddam Hussein before the Iraq war?" wrote William F. Schultz, executive director of the group's U.S. branch, in a letter to be published today in The New York Times.

Gilmore, the second-ranking official in Amnesty, said "gulag" was not meant as a literal description of Guantanamo but was emblematic of the sense of injustice and lack of due process surrounding the prison.

GULAG V. GITMO
Equivalency Test
by David Bosco
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In a recent report, Amnesty International referred to the U.S. detention center at Guantánamo as "the gulag of our time." The term--a Russian abbreviation for Glavnoe Upravlenie Lagerei, or Main Camp Administration--refers to the network of Soviet labor camps established during Stalin's rule that continued, in a different form, for much of the Soviet Union's history. During a press conference on Tuesday, President Bush rejected the charge as "absurd." Amnesty has defended its use of the term. Below, a comparison of the two prison systems, with the aid of Anne Applebaum's Pulitzer Prize-winning book, Gulag: A History.

Individuals Detained:

Gulag: Approximately 20 million passed through the Gulag. The population at any one time was generally around two million.

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Guantánamo: 750 prisoners have passed through the camp. The current population is about 520.

Number of Camps:

Gulag: 476 separate camp complexes comprising thousands of individual camps. By the end of the 1930s, camps were located in each of the Soviet Union's twelve time zones.

Guantánamo: Five small camps on the U.S. military base in Cuba.

Reasons for Imprisonment:

Gulag: Opposition to the Soviet regime's forced collectivization, including efforts to hide grain in cellars; owning too many cows; need for slave labor to complete massive industrialization and mining projects; political opposition to the Soviet system; being Jewish; being Finnish; being religious; being middle class; being in need of reeducation; having had contact with foreigners; refusing to sleep with the head of Soviet counterintelligence; telling a joke about Stalin.

Guantánamo: Fighting for the fundamentalist Taliban in Afghanistan; being suspected of links to Al Qaeda and other terrorist groups.

Judicial Review:

Gulag: None. "Trials" of those sent to the Gulag often lasted only a few minutes.

Guantánamo: The Bush administration has argued that detainees are unlawful combatants, not prisoners of war. The Supreme Court ruled in June 2004 that prisoners must receive hearings on their legal status. One hundred and fifty have decided to challenge their detention, and dozens of lawyers have been arriving at the base to represent them. Human rights groups and lawyers for detainees have argued that the military hearings are inadequate.

Red Cross Visits:

Gulag: None that I could find.

Guantánamo: Regular visits since January 2002. The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) has reportedly complained to the U.S. government about several aspects of prisoner treatment, including occasional beatings and other interrogation tactics. Per its standard practice, the ICRC does not make its complaints public.

Deaths as a Result of Poor Treatment:

Gulag: At least two to three million. Mass burials were often employed to keep death rates secret (camp commanders sometimes received permission to remove gold fillings before burial). In some particularly brutal periods, camp commanders simply executed thousands of prisoners. But deaths due to overwork were much more common. It is estimated that 25,000 gulag laborers died during the construction of the White Sea Canal in the early '30s. One convoy of "backward elements" destined for the Gulag in 1933 included about 6,000 prisoners; after three months, 4,000 were dead. "The survivors had lived because they ate the flesh of those who had died," according to an account cited by Applebaum.

Guantánamo: No reports of prisoner deaths.

Typical Treatment:

Gulag: For the most part, Gulag prisoners provided labor for the Soviet system. Treatment varied widely, but most prisoners lived in overcrowded barracks, and prisoners occasionally killed one another in an effort to find space to sleep. Deadly dysentery and typhus outbreaks were common. Prisoners often had inadequate clothing to protect themselves from the elements, and most camps lacked running water and heat.

Guantánamo: A recent Time magazine report found that "the best-behaved detainees are held in Camp 4, a medium-security, communal-living environment with as many as 10 beds in a room; prisoners can play soccer or volleyball outside up to nine hours a day, eat meals together and read Agatha Christie mysteries in Arabic. Less cooperative detainees typically live and eat in small, individual cells and get to exercise and shower only twice a week." Human Rights Watch and other watchdog groups have collected firsthand testimony from prisoners alleging abuses, including the use of dogs, extended solitary confinement, sexual humiliation, and "stress positions." An official investigation uncovered only minor abuses, and most detainee accusations have not been verified.

Religious Observance:

Gulag: Prisoners were occasionally able to smuggle bibles into the camps and hold religious observances, including Christmas and Easter, in secret. Being caught conducting services, however, could be grounds for further punishment. Applebaum records a prisoner's description of a priest creeping through a camp, trying to say mass without being detected.

Guantánamo: Prisoners are provided copies of the Koran and daily time for prayer. Arrows on the floor of each cell point to Mecca. Meals are made in accordance with Muslim religious restrictions. Several prisoners, however, reported delays in receiving their copies of the Koran and that guards mistreated the Koran on multiple occasions. For its part, the Pentagon has documented five instances of Koran mishandling though it denies that a Koran was ever flushed down the toilet, as one detainee alleged.

The detention center at Guantánamo is legally dubious and has been a public relations disaster for the United States. The treatment of certain prisoners in Iraq and Afghanistan has been far worse. Amnesty's president Irene Kahn says that these practices are "undermining human rights in a dramatic way." Her outrage is valuable and essential. If only she could express it without employing obscene moral parallels.

David Bosco is a senior editor at Foreign Policy.

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 did not know 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."

source

And yet we are expected tp view AI in the same vein as we view Mom and Apple Pie....totally devoid of personal bias. Ha!

Finn d'Abuzz wrote:

And yet we are expected tp view AI in the same vein as we view Mom and Apple Pie....totally devoid of personal bias. Ha!

You've nailed it here, Finn. No one expects that those who are so childishly wed to Mom and Apple Pie can ever apply the critical thinking skills necessary to look at this from a rational viewpoint.

And lo and behold, you blind wrong wingers scramble all over each other to offer up one ianity after another that shows this is so.

Thinking people realize that the word gulag has both figurative and literal meanings. No one has suggested that the intended meaning was literal.

But the spinmeisters go merrily on, pied piping their way across the landscape, with all the 'Mom and Apple Pie' children traipsing at their heels.

JTT wrote:

Finn d'Abuzz wrote:

And yet we are expected tp view AI in the same vein as we view Mom and Apple Pie....totally devoid of personal bias. Ha!

You've nailed it here, Finn. No one expects that those who are so childishly wed to Mom and Apple Pie can ever apply the critical thinking skills necessary to look at this from a rational viewpoint.

And lo and behold, you blind wrong wingers scramble all over each other to offer up one ianity after another that shows this is so.

Thinking people realize that the word gulag has both figurative and literal meanings. No one has suggested that the intended meaning was literal.

But the spinmeisters go merrily on, pied piping their way across the landscape, with all the 'Mom and Apple Pie' children traipsing at their heels.

In the words of Michael Corleone in the Godfather Part III: "They keep dragging me back in!"

Where doe this JTT come from? Within the last few weks, he/she has been a force furioso.

And why has he/she abandoned her connection to Oh Canada? There was a time when the JTT avatar was identified (proudly) as Canadian, but now?

JTT = Blah Blah Blah would be Gonzo without a hint of rhythm.

Keep on keepin on JTT.

Finn d'Abuzz wrote:

JTT wrote:

Finn d'Abuzz wrote:

And yet we are expected tp view AI in the same vein as we view Mom and Apple Pie....totally devoid of personal bias. Ha!

You've nailed it here, Finn. No one expects that those who are so childishly wed to Mom and Apple Pie can ever apply the critical thinking skills necessary to look at this from a rational viewpoint.

And lo and behold, you blind wrong wingers scramble all over each other to offer up one ianity after another that shows this is so.

Thinking people realize that the word gulag has both figurative and literal meanings. No one has suggested that the intended meaning was literal.

But the spinmeisters go merrily on, pied piping their way across the landscape, with all the 'Mom and Apple Pie' children traipsing at their heels.

In the words of Michael Corleone in the Godfather Part III: "They keep dragging me back in!"

Where doe this JTT come from? Within the last few weks, he/she has been a force furioso.

And why has he/she abandoned her connection to Oh Canada? There was a time when the JTT avatar was identified (proudly) as Canadian, but now?

JTT = Blah Blah Blah would be Gonzo without a hint of rhythm.

Keep on keepin on JTT.

This 'posting' of yours is hardly tangential at all, Finn. Are you losing your touch?

Is that really the best you can deliver? (Oh how can I respond to an eye rolling emoticon?!)

You're too easy.

You know it, and I know it.

Bush: Amnesty International Not Exactly Like Pravda
by Scott Ott

(2005-06-06) -- Despite Amnesty International's recent statement that the U.S. military detention facility at Guantánamo Bay is a 'gulag', President George Bush today said that Amnesty is "not exactly like" the Soviet-era newspaper Pravda.

Gulags were Soviet forced-labor prison camps where the communist government sent millions of its own citizens as political prisoners to be tortured, starved and ultimately murdered.

William Schulz, executive director of Amnesty International USA, acknowledged on Fox News Sunday that his group's previous statement branding the Guantánamo Bay facility 'the gulag of our time' may be a poor analogy since there is no forced labor, and nutritious meals are served regularly to the suspected terrorists and avowed enemies of the U.S. who are held there.

President Bush welcomed the near apology.

"Pravda was the official organ of the Soviet communist party," said Mr. Bush, "Masquerading as a legitimate news organization, Pravda made false and outlandish claims against America to advance the cause of global communism and to give aid and comfort to our enemies. Let's be clear: Amnesty International is not precisely like Pravda. There are some differences between Pravda and Amnesty that would likely come to mind if you sat down and thought about it for a spell."

In related news, the president announced he would comply with Senator Joseph Biden's call for the shutdown of 'Gitmo' by transferring the 540 detainees to the Democrat Senator's home state of Delaware.

In related news, the president announced he would comply with Senator Joseph Biden's call for the shutdown of 'Gitmo' by transferring the 540 detainees to the Democrat Senator's home state of Delaware.

Cg, if bush didn't have his lawyers get around the Geneva Convention, then no we really couldn't do anything we wanted to the Koran no matter what is claimed to have been done to the Bible.

Usually in wars there are rules and limits in place which have to be abided by in prisons. In those rules and regulations there is something in there about respecting the enemy's religion and rules about the limits of torture.

But we have an arbitrary President who just says, "Poof be gone", and it is gone.

Have you read any of the Geneva Conventions, revel?

Ticomaya wrote:

Have you read any of the Geneva Conventions, revel?

Yes, as a matter of fact I had just read some of it.

"We should treat them the same way, they treat us!"

revel wrote:

Ticomaya wrote:

Have you read any of the Geneva Conventions, revel?

Yes, as a matter of fact I had just read some of it.

Good ... now can you tell me the basis for your claim that Bush got "his" lawyers to get around the Geneva Convention?

With respect to Gonzales which should be obvious:

http://www.americanprogress.org/site/pp.asp?c=biJRJ8OVF&b=79532

Quote:

Gonzales says the "new paradigm" of the war on terrorism "renders obsolete Geneva's strict limitations on questioning of enemy prisoners and renders quaint some of its provisions."
Gonzales outlines the pros and cons of applying the Geneva Conventions to al Qaeda and Taliban detainees. He is prescient in his prediction that a failure to apply the Conventions across the board "could undermine U.S. military culture which emphasizes maintaining the highest standards of conduct in combat, and could introduce an element of uncertainty in the status of adversaries."
He rejects his own argument, concluding that "our military remains bound to apply the principles of GPW [Geneva Conventions on Prisoners of War] because that is what you have directed them to do."
Gonzales also notes that "It is difficult to predict the motives of prosecutors and independent counsels who may in the future decide to pursue unwarranted charges based on Section 2441 (of the US code, the War Crimes Act). Your determination [to bypass the Geneva Conventions] would create a reasonable basis in law that Section 2441 does not apply, which would provide a solid defense to any future prosecution."
The response from Secretary Powell - dispatched one day later - takes issue with Gonzales' arguments and conclusions. Highlights of the memo to Gonzales and Condoleezza Rice:

Powell and his legal adviser William H. Taft IV argue: "It [declaring Geneva does not apply] will reverse over a century of U.S. policy and practice in supporting the Geneva conventions and undermine the protections of the law of war for our troops, both in this specific conflict and in general."
The memo also says that removing the protections of the Geneva Conventions from certain detainees would undermine U.S. detention policies at Guantanamo Bay and weaken our ability to hold potential terrorists. "The Geneva Conventions are a more flexible and suitable legal framework than other laws that would arguable (sic) apply," the memo contends. "Determining GPW does not apply deprives us of a wining (sic) argument to oppose habeas corpus actions in U.S. courts."
The ABCNews.com report presents unusually stark condemnation by two former JAGs, who argue that their warnings were ignored.

"'If we - 'we' being the uniformed lawyers - had been listened to, and what we said put into practice, then these abuses would not have occurred,' said Rear Admiral Don Guter (ret.), the Navy Judge Advocate General from 2000 to 2002."
"'When you say something down the chain of command like, 'The Geneva conventions don't apply,' that sets the stage for the kind of chaos that we've seen,' said Rear Admiral John Hutson (ret.), who was the Navy Judge Advocate General from 1997 to 2000."

And, had the Geneva Conventions applied to these detainees, how would that have operated to prevent the 5 confirmed instances of Koran "mishandling," 3 of which were intentional?

With respect to how this would have worked had the Geneva Convention not been brushed aside:

http://www.ppu.org.uk/learn/texts/doc_geneva_con.html

GENEVA CONVENTION

[quote]Protected civilians MUST be:
- Treated humanely at all times and protected against acts or threats of violence, insults and public curiosity.
- Entitled to respect for their honour, family rights, religious convictions and practices, and their manners and customs.
- Specially protected, for example in safety zones, if wounded, sick, old, children under 15, expectant mothers or mothers of children under 7.
- Enabled to exchange family news of a personal kind. - Helped to secure news of family members dispersed by the conflict
- Allowed to practise their religion with ministers of their own faith. Civilians who are interned have the same rights as prisoners of war. They may also ask to have their children interned with them, and wherever possible families should be housed together and provided with the facilities to continue normal family life. Wounded or sick civilians, civilian hospitals and staff, and hospital transport by land, sea or air must be specially respected and may be placed under protection of the red cross/crescent emblem.