VOLUME 1, ISSUE 2 — SPRING 2007

With the United States as the only remaining superpower at the beginning of the twenty-first century, the burgeoning transnational civil society has given a voice to the powerless. During the Cold War, America could look to the other side of the Iron Curtain and see what a world without personal liberty, freedom of expression, or jurisprudence looked like. The American government did not torture its prisoners, hold suspects indefinitely, and did not operate secret prisons like the gulags that the Soviet Union did. When our liberal democratic values were questioned, we could point to the opposition and say truthfully, “at least we’re better than the Soviets.” As communism has slipped silently into history, democracy and capitalism offers the only viable option for political structure. The question we must ask is who will keep us accountable to the values we champion so strongly?

This job of keeping the world’s only remaining superpower accountable has fallen to ranks of transnational civil society often referred to as non-governmental organizations (NGOs). Two of the groups most responsible for this monumental task are Amnesty International (AI) and Human Rights Watch (HRW). These two organizations were created in the twentieth century to provide a voice for those who could not speak for themselves and monitor governments’ use of power. NGOs speak for those who have no voice in their country’s government all over the world. These groups kept an eye on Saddam Hussein’s reign of terror, and America’s prison camp in Guantanamo Bay amongst many other unlawful regimes and atrocities. Amnesty International and HRW pose a serious challenge to governments the world over because they wield a sword of truth. Protection of universal human rights may be used as a justification for war by governments seeking to spread freedom and democracy. These groups keep those governments accountable by ensuring that freedom is not simply used as a rhetorical tool. The Bush administration has had a strange relationship with these two human rights organizations. The administration used their reports of Saddam Hussein’s human rights abuses as part of their justification for invading Iraq. At the same time, these organizations have been maligned by the administration for their interest in America’s detention of foreign combatants and their attempts to speak truth to power.

Amnesty International was officially formed in 1962 to campaign for the rights of political prisoners in one of Europe’s last bastions of fascism. As the organization grew, Amnesty International opened branches in dozens of countries and was even awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1977.1 AI continues to fight for the rights of political prisoners and now has more than 1.8 million members in 150 countries.2 It has become the largest, and most respected, human rights organization in the world. The organization’s mandate has expanded far beyond simply advocating for the rights of political prisoners, focusing on ending violence against women, protecting environmental dissidents, combating the use of child soldiers, “war on terror” related abuses, the protection of refugee rights,3 as well as championing the United Nations’ Universal Declaration of Human Rights and essentially, became advocates for all humanity.4

Human Rights Watch is another NGO committed to advocating for the oppressed. Human Rights Watch started out as Helsinki Watch in 1978, as part of an effort to keep the Soviet Bloc countries accountable to the human rights declarations in the Helsinki Accords.5 The group works to publicize human rights abuses in an effort to shame the governments of those countries into reforming their practices. HRW also advocates for the withdrawal of military and economic support for human rights abusing countries, and produces documentation to prove its claims.6 For HRW, it is important to remain independent from government funding. The organization believes that this type of support would hinder their efforts to provide truly fair coverage of human rights abuses. Human Rights Watch issue campaigns include, women’s rights, child soldiers, torture, and prison conditions.7 Through the use of a dedicated staff of lawyers, academics, researchers, and country specialists, HRW has made a tremendous impact in many of the most important cases of rights abuses in the past twenty years.

The annual reports of these organizations can be used as powerful tools in the hands of politicians who are committed to the American ideals of freedom, equality, and justice for all mankind. Their work can also be used as justification for defending the rights of people living under repressive and dictatorial regimes. From the 1980’s through the turn of the century, Amnesty International peered into the murky underpinnings of Saddam Hussein’s Iraq and all but begged the world to stop one of the greatest human rights abusing regimes in history. In 1994, AI published a report on human rights abuses occurring in Iraq, stating:

“[The abuses] include the arbitrary arrest of suspected or actual political opponents, among them prisoners of conscience; prolonged detention without trial or imprisonment following manifestly unfair trials; the torture and ill-treatment of detainees resulting in countless deaths in custody; the use of the death penalty for a wide range of political and criminal offences after unfair trials and in violation of internationally established safeguards; and the "disappearance" or extrajudicial execution of hundreds of thousands of people.”8

AI was not alone in condemning the acts of this brutal regime; their counterparts at Human Rights Watch were also making pleas to the international community in the 1990s.

After the Iran-Iraq war, Saddam Hussein turned his murderous intent upon the Kurdish minority in the northern regions of Iraq. Although the Western world had heard rumors of the atrocities committed against the Kurds, it was not until after the first Gulf War that Human Rights Watch was able to put people on the ground to confirm the level of destruction that had been unleashed upon the Kurdish region. As the following excerpt from the 1993 Human Rights Watch report titled, “Genocide In Iraq: The Anfal Campaign Against the Kurds” indicates, the scale of human rights violations in Iraq was not limited to abuse of political prisoners:

“By our estimate, in Anfal at least 50,000 and possibly as many as 100,000 persons, many of them women and children, were killed out of hand between February and September 1988. Their deaths did not come in the heat of battle -- "collateral damage" in the military euphemism. Nor were they acts of aberration by individual commanders whose excesses passed unnoticed, or unpunished, by their superiors. Rather, these Kurds were systematically put to death in large numbers on the orders of the central government in Baghdad -- days, sometimes weeks, after being rounded-up in villages marked for destruction or else while fleeing from army assaults in "prohibited areas."”9

The organization was able to challenge the power of this despotic regime and eventually convince Western powers of the need to protect the Kurdish minority after the first Gulf War. It was these annual reports that top Bush administration officials used in the weeks following the 2003 invasion of Iraq to bolster their claims of being democratic liberators.

On Thursday, March 27, 2003, during a Defense Department press briefing, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld was asked about the forces known as the Saddam Fedayeen and the vicious tactics employed by Iraqi troops. One week into the Iraq war, Rumsfeld’s response to the question was this, “We know that it's a repressive regime. Everyone in the world knows that. It's been that way for decades. Anyone who has read Amnesty International or any of the human rights organizations about how the regime of Saddam Hussein treats his people, heck he used chemicals on his own people as well as on his neighbors.”10 This comment serves as a ringing endorsement of the work conducted by NGO’s like Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch. For the Secretary of Defense to cite these groups in a press briefing must imply a certain amount of validity to their conclusions. In fact, the very next day Mr. Rumsfeld once again brought up Amnesty International in a press briefing stating, “Yeah, well, as far as I'm concerned, it seems to me a careful reading of Amnesty International or the record of Saddam Hussein, having used chemical weapons on his own people as well as his neighbors, and the viciousness of that regime, which is well known and documented by human rights organizations, ought not to be surprised.”11 A few weeks later in another press briefing, on April 1, 2003, Rumsfeld once again used AI as an example of a trusted source on human rights abuses.12

As the “War On Terror” continued, the Bush administration’s view of these human rights organizations shifted dramatically. By 2005, the Administration’s relationship with Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch had changed, with Vice President Dick Cheney stating that he, “just didn’t take them seriously.”13 What could have caused such a precipitous change in this relationship?

On May 25, 2005 Amnesty International released its massive annual report, and criticized America as one of the most egregious violators of human rights. AI’s condemnation of American policies was due to the conditions at the Abu Ghraib prison and the Guantanamo Bay detention facility. AI loudly condemned the United States in its report asserting that, “when the most powerful country in the world thumbs its nose at the rule of law and human rights, it grants a license to others to commit abuse with impunity and audacity.”14 Irene Khan, the Secretary-General of Amnesty International, also included the following statement in the introduction to the report, “the detention facility at Guantanamo Bay has become the gulag of our times, entrenching the practice of arbitrary and indefinite detention in violation of international law.”15

Condemnation of the report came swiftly from Bush administration officials. In a press briefing on May 25, 2005, White House Press Secretary Scott McClellan made the following statement in regards to the AI report,

“Ithink the allegations are ridiculous and unsupported by the facts. The United States is leading the way when it comes to protecting human rights and promoting human dignity. We have liberated 50 million people in Iraq and Afghanistan. We have worked to advance freedom and democracy in the world so that people are governed under a rule of law and that there are protection—that there are protections in place for minority rights, that women's rights are advanced so that women can fully participate in societies where now they cannot.”16

These sentiments were echoed by the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs, General Richard Myers, who called the report, “absolutely irresponsible”17 and Donald Rumsfeld labeled the report by AI as “reprehensible.”18 Finally, Vice President Dick Cheney stated on “Larry King Live” that, “for Amnesty International to suggest that somehow the United States is a violator of human rights, I frankly just don't take them seriously.”19

This media offensive by the Bush Administration never addressed any of the specific issues mentioned in the AI report. It was instead directed at the wording of the introduction and the use of the term “gulag” by Irene Khan. In as much as the detention center in Guantanamo Bay is not a forced labor camp, their criticism is correct; AI would probably have been better served by not using such hyperbolic rhetoric. On the other hand, when one considers that there are individuals in the camp being held incommunicado, without access to legal representation, and without being officially charged with a crime, the comparison seems apt.

Human Rights Watch released a report the same week as Amnesty International which garnered less attention from the administration but painted a similar picture of abuse. The HRW report highlighted the case of “Zain Afzal, 23, and his brother Kashan, 25, who were detained in a raid on their Karachi home on August 13, 2004. The two were freed on April 22, 2005.”20 The Asia director of Human Rights Watch, Brad Adams, told the Associated Press that, “it is outrageous that Pakistan abducts people from their homes in the middle of the night and tortures them in secret prisons to extract confessions […] The United States should be condemning this, but instead, it either directed this activity or turned a blind eye in the hopes of gaining information in the war on terror.”21 HRW is committed to making sure that due process is followed in the case of foreign detainees, and it is dedicated to exposing the use of coercive interrogation techniques possibly employed by the Bush administration.

Just as with previous cases in the Eastern Bloc and Latin America, where human rights abuses were suspected, HRW has tried to bring these issues to the attention of the public through advocacy. To this end, Human Rights Watch provided the New York Times with the names of 14 men suspected of being secretly detained by the Bush administration.22 According to a recent New York Times article on this subject,

“One of the men, Ibn al-Shaykh al-Libi, is believed to have given false information about links between Iraq and Al Qaeda after C.I.A. officials transferred him to Egyptian custody in 2002. Mr. al-Libi's statements were used by the Bush administration as the foundation for its claims that Iraq trained Qaeda members to use biological and chemical weapons. It emerged later that Mr. al-Libi had fabricated these stories while in captivity to avoid harsh treatment by his Egyptian captors.”23

Human Rights Watch’s concern for the treatment of foreign detainees in CIA custody may be well founded. According to a Justice Department document, which was written in 2002 and leaked to the press in 2004, the CIA could use interrogation techniques which caused pain comparable to, “organ failure, impairment of bodily function or even death”24 Given that the Bush administration is willing to walk the fine line between how much pain constitutes torture, is it any wonder that they have caught the attention of such organizations as Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch?

The job of government is to protect its citizens from harm. However, when national security is threatened, we often trade personal liberties for a greater sense of security. But it is also important to remember that protecting our citizens goes well beyond ensuring their physical safety. Government is also responsible for protecting the values that its citizens hold dear. As the most powerful country in the world, it is important that America stands for something more than the security of its own citizens. We must be a country that is so strong in our commitment to the principles of freedom, equality, and justice, that we are willing to sacrifice any amount of safety in order to maintain those ideals. How can we ever expect the rest of the world to value human rights if we do not serve as an example? Non governmental organizations such as Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch provide us with the tools to ensure that we maintain the courage of our convictions. It takes courage to afford your enemies the same basic human rights that you provide for your own citizens. Even though AI and HRW have been criticized by the current administration for naming the United States as a human rights violator, the two organizations are serving the American public as they challenge the actions of the administration. They speak truth to power in the hope that we will be strong enough to accept their criticism and work towards living up to the ideals we have set for ourselves.


Notes
1. “Amnesty’s History” http://www.amnestyusa.org/activist_toolkit/about amnesty/amnestyhistory.html (accessed 11/20/2006).

2. “Amnesty Fact Sheet” http://www.amnestyusa.org/activist_toolkit/about_amnesty/factsheet.html(accessed 11/20/2006).

3. ibid.

4. “Universal Declaration of Human Rights” http://www.amnestyusa.org/activist_toolit/aboutamnesty/udhr.html (accessed 11/20/2006).

5. “About HRW” http://www.hrw.org/about/whoweare.html (accessed 11/20/2006).

6. ibid.

7. “Global Issues” http://www.hrw.org/advocacy/index.htm (accessed 11/20/2006).

8. “IRAQ: Human rights abuses in Iraqi Hurdistan since 1991” page 4. http://www.amnestyusa.org/children/document.do?id= 487C2D0CAF7141C4802569A500714DC6 (accessed 11/20/2006).

9. “Genocide in Iraq: The Anfal campaign against the Kurds” A Middle East Watch Report, Human Rights Watch. new York 1993. http://www.hrw.org/reports/1993/irawanfal/ (accessed 11/20/2006).

10. “Stakeout at Senate - Secretary Rumsfeld and Gen. Myers.” Department of Defense Press Transcript. Thursday, March 27th, 2003. http://www.defenselink.mil/transcripts/2003/t03282003_t0327sdcjcs.html (accessed on 11/20/2006).

11. “DoD News Briefing - Secretary Rumsfeld and Gen. Myers” Department of Defense Press Transcript. Thursday, March 28th, 2003. http://www.defenselink.mil/transcripts/2003/t03282003_t0328sd.html (accessed on 11/20/2006).

12. “DoD News Briefing - Secretary Rumsfeld and Gen. Myers” Department of Defense Press Transcript. Tuesday, April 1st, 2003. http://www.defenselink.mil/transcripts/2003/t04012003_t0401sd.html

13. “Cheney Offended By Amnesty Criticism.” Tuesday, May 31, 2005. http://www.cnn.com/2005/US/05/30/cheney.amnestyintl/index.html (accessed on 11/20/2006).

14. Amnesty International Report 2005. Foreword by Irene Khan, Secretary General. http://web.amnesty.org/library/index/engPOL100012005 . Page 2

15. ibid. page 2

16. Press Briefing by Scott McClellan. Office of the Press Secretary May 25, 2005. http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2005/05/20050525-3.html (accessed on 11/20/2006).

17. “General Slams Amnesty Report” By Audrey Hudson. The Washington Times. May 30th, 2005. http://www.washingtontimes.com/national/20050530-124306-4730r.htm (accessed on 11/20/2006).

18. “Rumsfeld Rejects Amnesty’s Gulag Label” CNN News. Wednesday, June 1, 2005. http://www.cnn.com/2005/US/06/01/us.gitmo/ (accessed on 11/20/2006).

19. “Cheney Offended By Amnesty Criticism.” Tuesday, May 31, 2005. http://www.cnn.com/2005/US/05/30/cheney.amnestyintl/index.html (accessed on 11/20/2006).

20. “U.S. Singled Out in New Reports on Rights Abuse.” By Benny Avni. Copyright 2005 The New York Sun, One SL, LLC. May 26, 2005 Thursday Page 1

21. ibid.

22. “Questions Raised About Bush‘s Primary Claims in Defense of Secret Detention System” By Mark Mazzetti. The New York Times. September 8th, 2006. Section A. Column 1.

23. ibid.

24. ibid.


About the author
Jeremy Hastings is a second year graduate student at the Center for Global Affairs, with a concentration in International Relations. He has a Bachelor's degree in European History from California State University Long Beach. Mr. Hastings is a founding member of the Full Circle Theatre Company in San Diego, California. He is also the vice president of Terra Firma Financial Services, a real estate investment company.