Amnesty annual report

Chris wrote:

“Human rights are indivisible,”

I would agree that human rights are (tautologically) those rights possessed (or that ought to be possessed) by all people, regardless of the country in which they live. When it comes to AI, there’s another sort of indivisibility involved, in that they have a broad view of human rights, a view with which some arguably reasonable people might disagree. AI believes that every human has a right not to be executed, including, for example, those who were responsible for the Holocaust. Because of that stance, some persons who might otherwise be fully supportive of AI are not. It’s not clear to me whether in the near future those who don’t believe that there is a human right to same-sex marriage will be able to be fully supportive of AI either.

“ in my view, the burden of proof is on those whom Amnesty condemns to show their innocence.”

Do you have an argument why your view is correct?

//
(Chris)“ in my view, the burden of proof is on those whom Amnesty condemns to show their innocence.”

(mr Nat Whilk)Do you have an argument why your view is correct?
//

He is wrong, as long as the verb is condemn, but if he rather thought denounce, then he would be right. Let’s not forget that AI targets only organisations, not individuals , that have the obligation to do no harm.

By the way, are you aware that the USA wage a war against Iraq on the basis that Iraqi government has not proved they have no WMD? I’d think that killing thousands of people on a lack of proof is not right.

DSW

Pepi wrote:

“nat: that’s true, supporters of the death penalty who would otherwise support AI on everything else will not support it. So what?”

So their coffers are smaller than they otherwise would be, they have fewer people available to participate in their letter-writing campaigns, etc. I joined, sent money to, and mailed letters for Amnesty 20 years ago when I was an idealistic undergrad. Then I read WFB’s letter of resignation from Amnesty’s Board of Directors(?) over the death penalty issue and I decided that I felt likewise. Maybe Amnesty is glad to be rid of us and our money; I don’t know.

Nat: well, if it’s just a question of money… They might as well stop doing their job and become a marketing agency.

Seriously – I understand your point of view there, but I don’t know what to say, I’ve never even considered that issue. I’m not in the US and Amnesty outside of the US does get a lot of support also because of its campaigning against the death penalty. For better or worse – the fact that there tends to be too much of an association between anti-dp and AI can obscure other areas of their work. Or just even the cases that don’t make it to celebrity level.

I have trouble seeing it only as a financial issue, though.

I have always thought of ‘condemn’ as containing the nuance of action as opposed to ‘denounce’ which is exclusively verbal (or written I suppose). A judge might condemn someone to a life sentence–sending him off to prison. An activist might denounce corporate greed but be unable to anything about it without political help from others. That is why I have always been bothered by politicians who are said to ‘condemn’ the actions of someone or other but they choose not to do anything about it. I don’t really know where I picked up the distinction, so it might be in my head.

My general complaint with AI is that it rarely (at least publically) makes distinctions that I would find useful. I’m against torture as commonly understood, but AI has a definition of torture which is quite broad and allows it say things which look silly to me. As a result I find it difficult to decide how to apply its statistics. It can be similar to the gun control advocates who suggest that a gun is more likely to kill friends and acquaintances than a criminal but they count drug dealer-client relations in that catagory. They aren’t lying, but their definitions are so far from the normal usage of words that it can be difficult to deal with them.

But I also respect AI when it actually does try to minimize torture in the normal sense of the word, so I’m ambivalent about it as a whole.

“[…]
Sigh, and she believes that regimes ruled by actual tyrants listen to her call for global justice without the force of the US military behind it?
[…]”

What I believe is that when tyrants hear people like her in their country, they relax because the US Army will back them.

DSW

Chris, you criticise those who make ‘what-aboutery’ responses to Amnesty International’s reports, and say that the onus is on those condemned by AI to demonstrate their innocence. But surely the second of your points is irrelevant to the first? Groups or individuals who condemn others can be faulted in two quite separate ways: if they condemn the innocent, or if they use double standards. If the press in this country publicises the crimes and misdemeanours only of immigrants, or of blacks, or of the working-class, they are properly to be criticised even if every crime they complain about has really been perpetrated by the people they condemn. Double standards are morally objectionable in quite serious ways, and ‘what-aboutery’ objections to AI can’t be dismissed by irrelevant claims that those whom Amnesty condemns should be regarded as guilty until proved innocent. If the watchdog is using double standards, isn’t that something we all need to know about?

At the risk of link-whoring here’s an example of a condemnation of AI and here’s my response.

Here’s another example and here’s my response to that example.

I have no problem addressing the substance of a disagreement, but the taking to task of AI in the two examples I cited really didn’t address the substance.

nat whilk: honestly I don’t know a thing about the state of AI’s finances, but it doesn’t seem to me they’re that ineffective or resourceless an organization. Their websites seem rather well maintained too. They have offices all over the world. I don’t think they need to compromise their own agenda just to look for more funding.

Also, even if you support the death penalty, you make a very bad mistake in labelling the anti-dp stance as “protecting the lives of mass murderers”.

If it sounds like that to you, then it seems you haven’t understood much of the positions of opponents of the death penalty, or in general, of human rights organizations. It’s about the whole principle of justice and punishment, not about the single individuals who are sentenced to death and what they might have done – and, by the way, they are not all “mass murderers”; and even in death penalty cases there might always be room for error (if I don’t recall wrong, that’s the main reason given in recent amnesties). It’s a matter of principles about what inspires law enforcement. For those against, capital punishment is a huge contradiction of the authority on which a modern legal system can enforce punishment.

Of course you don’t have to agree with that and change your own mind, but you should at least not project your own assumptions about the reasons why organisations oppose the death penalty, or reduce those reasons to something so absurd as “caring for mass murderers more than political opponents”.

Also, don’t forget in many cases, outside the US, the distinction between who gets executed and who gets arrested for political reasons does not exist at all.

Pepi wrote:

“Their websites seem rather well maintained too.”

We’ll have to agree to disagree on that. I started trying to download their report 6 hours ago and was only finally able to access it a few minutes ago.

“I don’t think they need to compromise their own agenda just to look for more funding.”

The agenda item in question wasn’t on their agenda until 1977. Were they unprincipled before that time?

“Also, even if you support the death penalty, you make a very bad mistake in labelling the anti-dp stance as “protecting the lives of mass murderers”.”

Certainly that’s not the only thing implied by abolition of the death penalty, but it is also certainly one of them.

“and, by the way, they are not all “mass murderers”;”

I never said that they all are. But certainly some of them are.

“but you should at least not project your own assumptions about the reasons why organisations oppose the death penalty, or reduce those reasons to something so absurd as “caring for mass murderers more than political opponents”.”

Why did you put “caring for mass murderers more than political opponents” in quotation marks? I never said that.

“Also, don’t forget in many cases, outside the US, the distinction between who gets executed and who gets arrested for political reasons does not exist at all.”

If that were in fact true, then in those cases AI’s adoption of an abolitionist stance with respect to the death penalty would be irrelevant, since they’ve always been opposed to incarceration for political reasons.

“Is anyone really named Sebastian?”

That means a lot, coming from someone named “Chun”.

“The U.S. has a deplorable human rights record.”

Unless it’s worse than, say, North Korea’s, that doesn’t justify AI’s statement.

“Every boot in the face from Kazahkstan to Kashmir is justified as a battle in the war on terror, and will be.”

How did central Asians justify their boots in the face before the war on terror?

We’ll have to agree to disagree on that. I started trying to download their report 6 hours ago and was only finally able to access it a few minutes ago.

Oh, please. What do you think happens when many people try to access a server at once? Do you not remember how hard it was to access the Starr Report?

As for the death penalty issues, worldwide trends are leaning toward abolition. Turkey recently abolished the DP, the EU requires their membership to oppose the DP.

As for the notion that an anti-dp stance is “protecting the lives of mass murderers,” why not say that to Bud Welch. His daughter was killed in the OK City bombing and he opposed the dp for Tim McVeigh and Terry Nichols. My wife’s brother was murdered and her family opposes the death penalty As a matter of fact there is an organization who are survivors of murder victims and oppose the death penalty. Elie Wiesel and Coretta Scott King both oppose the death penalty. Are you going to accuse them of protecting the lives of mass murderers? What arrogance.

Randy Paul wrote:

“Oh, please. What do you think happens when many people try to access a server at once?”

Um, it depends on the specs of the webservers and Internet connections involved. More money spent on those items, means fewer access problems.

“Do you not remember how hard it was to access the Starr Report?”

Demand for which was, what, 3 or 4 orders of magnitude higher than for the AI report? Six years after its release, the bound version of the Starr report still ranks about 5,000 at Amazon; on the day of its release, the bound version of the 2004 AI report ranks around 2,000,000.

“As for the death penalty issues, worldwide trends are leaning toward abolition.”

And the moral implication of worldwide trends is what? (Keep in mind what AI’s own report says about the terrible worldwide trends they observed in the past year.)

“As for the notion that an anti-dp stance is “protecting the lives of mass murderers,” why not say that to Bud Welch. His daughter was killed in the OK City bombing and he opposed the dp for Tim McVeigh and Terry Nichols. My wife’s brother was murdered and her family opposes the death penalty As a matter of fact there is an organization who are survivors of murder victims and oppose the death penalty. Elie Wiesel and Coretta Scott King both oppose the death penalty. Are you going to accuse them of protecting the lives of mass murderers? What arrogance.”

I’d gladly say it to all these people, since it’s simple logic: If the death penalty is abolished then mass murderers lives will be protected. Of course, that is not the only thing that abolition would entail, but it is certainly one of the things. I don’t know what Wiesel thinks, but I think that execution of Eichmann was a moral thing to do. (And if Himmler hadn’t killed himself and if Heydrich hadn’t been killed by the Czech underground, I would have considered their executions moral as well.) As for MVFR, I’d be greatly surprised if its members don’t constitute only a tiny minority of relatives of murder victims, and I’d also be surprised if relatives of murder victims don’t support the death penalty to at least as high an extent as the general public. Do you have evidence to the contrary?

I prefer to believe an agency like Amnesty (or HRW) over the testimony of either alleged perpetrators or victims.

i prefer to believe that kashmir is not kanyakumari. it’s a mistake to think that only victims and perpetrators have agendas, a mistake easier to make at a metropolitan distance.

as for sebastian h’s point — i’d suggest norman finkelstein on hrw/gulf war.

Ah, but on looking at the report and the pubicity surrounding it I am reminded why AI troubles me.

“The U.S.-led war on terror has produced the most sustained attack on human rights and international law in 50 years, Amnesty International said in its annual report Wednesday.“

Sebastian quotes a newspaper account of the AI report.

Another report of the report offers quite a different take on the same matter:

Amnesty International Secretary-General Irene Khan said violence by terrorists and violations by governments had combined to produce the most sustained attack on human rights and humanitarian law in 50
years.

Quite a difference.

chun = best CT parody poster ever.

nat whilk: I accessed Amnesty’s website and report as fast as I access any other website. That might be because I’m using broadband? I don’t know, I’ve never had a problem with the websites even when I was using a crappy modem.

But even if they had problems on their servers, this suggestion of yours that they should consider changing one of the central items on their agenda because of that is rather puzzling really. I would almost think you’re joking.

As for the anti-dp agenda not being on their menu before 1977. I don’t see how adding another human-rights related concern 16 years into your activity is “unprincipled”. And sticking to the US, since that seems to be your main concern here, hasn’t it occurred to you that maybe facts and contexts changed on the ground as well?

See for instance the brief recap on this page – and I quote:

The first execution under the new death penalty laws took place on January 17, 1977, when convicted murdered Gary Gilmore was executed by firing squad in Utah. Gilmore’s was the first execution in the United States since 1967.

Since the 1976 Gregg decision upholding the constitutionality of Georgia’s death penalty law, numerous states have reinstated capital punishment in their statutes.

As for the “protecting the rights of mass-murderers” – no, that’s not implied at all. I second what Randy Paul wrote. Your statement is not just arrogant though, it’s completely ignorant. I don’t know what you bothered with a human rights organization for, if you characterise their activity as “protecting” criminals. If that’s your reasoning, why not apply it to all other crimes? Not all prisoners are mass murderers, not all are political prisoners either. Why should we bother about prison conditions at all, for those prisoners who are not political but have indeed committed awful crimes? Why should anyone work to prevent prison abuses that occur also against criminals who may include rapists, paedophiles, and even _murderers who did not get the death penalty_?

Honestly, if you don’t get that, then I guess you’ve taken the right decision in no longer bothering with a human rights organization. You don’t seem to be getting what the protection of human rights itself means.

Anyway, I’m not a spokesman for AI, I’m not even involved with them, and I think they explain their anti-dp stance much better themselves. I don’t see any logical fault in their response to the “aren’t you caring more for murderers than victims” question. If the logic is that of human rights legislation, at least, not straw men like yours.

Like I said, I don’t have a problem with people supporting the death penalty, not everyone has to agree. What I have a problem with is the reduction of the whole issue to that rhetorical populist “don’t you care for the victims” or the equivalent “why do you want to protect mass murderers” level that ignores the context of legal principles in which that anti-dp position is taken.

Oh, and I did put that “caring for mass murderers more than political prisoners” in quotes as a short paraphrase of your point. You wrote about the people like you who were “driven away because they didn’t feel the same way about protecting the lives of mass murderers that they did about freeing political prisoners”. So how is my paraphrasing it in one line that inaccurate? Wasn’t the whole point you were making about how the anti-dp work is alienating people who otherwise would support the work for political prisoners?

–“Also, don’t forget in many cases, outside the US, the distinction between who gets executed and who gets arrested for political reasons does not exist at all.”–
If that were in fact true, then in those cases AI’s adoption of an abolitionist stance with respect to the death penalty would be irrelevant, since they’ve always been opposed to incarceration for political reasons.

First – yes, that in fact is true, in many countries – I’m surprised you should use that “if” as if it was hypothetical. You said you’re so familiar with AI reports already?

Secondly, again, being opposed to incarceration for political reasons is not the be all and end all of AI’s work. The work for prison conditions and respect of human rights also (not only, obviously) within prisons covers all kinds of prisoners. Including murderers sentenced to life. If you have a problem with the “protecting murderers” bit, then you do have a problem with the very basis for human rights work, not just the abolitionist stance. So your criticism on that seems rather contradictory, no?

Pepi, I’m happy to agree with much of what you say. It’s certainly the case that if country X is regularly torturing its prisoners, then that’s wrong, and its wrongness isn’t affected by whether country Y is doing the the same, nor by whether Amnesty has reported on country Y. However I’m not sure that the reports and the politics can be kept as separate as you suggest. Since most of those who read the reports aren’t in a position to do much about the events reported, the main effect they have is on the formation of our political views. Presumably Amnesty’s own political statements are based on what they take their own reports to imply. This is why I was raising a question about Chris’s dismissal of ‘what about’ questions concerning double standards, since it’s at this (political) level that they kick in.

This is the introduction to the section on Israel and the Occupied Territories

Israel and the Occupied Territories

The Israeli army killed around 600 Palestinians, including more than 100 children. Most were killed unlawfully – in reckless shooting, shelling and bombing in civilian residential areas, in extrajudicial executions and through excessive use of force. Palestinian armed groups killed around 200 Israelis, at least 130 of them civilians and including 21 children, in suicide bombings and other deliberate attacks. Increasing restrictions on the movement of Palestinians imposed by the Israeli army throughout the Occupied Territories caused unprecedented poverty, unemployment and health problems. The Israeli army demolished several hundred Palestinian homes and destroyed large areas of cultivated land and hundreds of commercial and other properties. Israel stepped up the construction of a fence/wall, most of which cut deep into the West Bank. As a result, hundreds of thousands of Palestinians were confined in enclaves and cut off from their land and essential services in nearby towns and villages. Israel’s expansion of illegal settlements in the Occupied Territories continued, further depriving Palestinians of natural resources such as land and water. Thousands of Palestinians were detained by the Israeli army. Most were released without charge, hundreds were charged with security offences against Israel and at least 1,500 were held in administrative detention without charge or trial. Trials before military courts did not meet international standards. Allegations of torture and ill-treatment of Palestinian detainees were widespread and Israeli soldiers used Palestinians as “human shields” during military operations. Certain abuses committed by the Israeli army constituted war crimes, including unlawful killings, obstruction of medical assistance and targeting of medical personnel, extensive and wanton destruction of property, torture and the use of “human shields”. The deliberate targeting of civilians by Palestinian armed groups constituted crimes against humanity. Scores of Israeli conscientious objectors who refused to perform military service were imprisoned and some were court-martialled.

Pepi, yet again I have to say I agree with much of what you say. But I wasn’t implying that nothing AI does is valuable, or that absolutely everything it does is tainted by its political stance. But precisely because it does do, and is thought to do, valuable work, so far is its political stuff likely to be influential, and so much more is it important to worry about double standards. You are absolutely right in pointing out the ubiquity of bias. That gives us a general reason for not just assuming that AI is entirely impartial. And the extract from AI’s report provided by q, in the post just after your last, is a very good example of the difficulty of keeping the factual reporting and the loaded politics apart.

Eve – Pepi, yet again I have to say I agree with much of what you say. But I wasn’t implying that nothing AI does is valuable, or that absolutely everything it does is tainted by its political stance.

But a lot of people do imply that. That was the point of Chris’s post, in short. I was referring to that kind of position, not yours.

I do not really disagree with you either. I can see your view is reasonable.

I don’t think anyone, ever, can be “impartial” though. I mean, you can only try and be the least biased as possible, if you really try hard. But there’s no such thing as totally unbiased.

And the extract from AI’s report provided by q, in the post just after your last, is a very good example of the difficulty of keeping the factual reporting and the loaded politics apart.

In part, yes, but you can still make that distinction especially if you keep in mind the wider work that the organisation does – it doesn’t just focus on Israel.

I don’t actually subscribe to condemning the targeted killings of Hamas leaders and the like, but it’s a fact those killings are unlawful. I don’t see them as the biggest of crimes, but they’re not legal. I do not fully agree with condemnations of the fence/wall either, but it’s a fact that its legality (and its usefulness, for that matter) is disputed and that it cuts off people on the other side. I mean, that’s why it was built after all. It’s not like you need to be vehemently anti-Israel to point it out.

Of course, if you’re going to draw political conclusions, you have to consider why it was built and what prompted such an extreme measure so, you have to take the full context in, and you may agree with the purpose and motive of its construction, but it still has effects that are controversial. To name another instance from that passage, describing settlements as illegal, well they are, it’s not just AI saying that, it’s the current Israeli PM who is probably not an AI supporter. You don’t need to despise the settlers, or blame them for the attacks against them, to acknowledge that.

In the end, I do believe there’s still specific facts to be pointed out even in the most controversial of issues, and _regardless of one’s wider views on the whole situation_, ie. regardless of who you’re going to hold more responsible for the whole conflict and terrorism and so on.

The biggest problem in reports for an area like that is that of course, you’ve got to assess how reliable the allegations of abuses are and who makes them and why. The whole conflict is a big propaganda feast. So that’s one thing to keep in mind.

But, the level where I’d have really serious problems with any organisation is if they reported only one side of the story. If they highlighted only the allegations against one party. Which they don’t, no matter how often that’s the classic accusation, it’s not really true. They’re not patting the PA on the back and saying everything is fine and the only abuses are commited by Israelis. Yet that’s the kind of vision those chatterers Chris refers to have.

_If the watchdog is using double standards, isn’t that something we all need to know about?_

Eve-
Please can you demonstrate examples of the double standards of AI.

Nat Whilk, you write this…

I’m not asking them to change their agenda. I’m saying I’d prefer for them not to have changed their agenda in 1977.

I didn’t say it was “unprinicpled”. I asked if AI was unprincipled before 1977. Surely, you can see the difference.

… and then you tell me that I’m the one engaging in semantic equivocation? That’s so funny.

And I think even genuine criminals should be protected in the sense that they shouldn’t be tortured, and they should be protected from being raped by their fellow criminals, etc. Believe it or not, it’s possible to feel that way and still think the death penalty is appropriate in certain circumstances.

Ok, if you say so. It’s not that I don’t believe you feel that way. It just doesn’t sound logical. But I’m not going to argue about the death penalty. My point is simply that you may be willing to at least consider that, for those opposed to it, it does belong to the same category as prisoner abuse and torture. Or more generally, that, like abuse, it too contradicts the premises on which the law is enforced.

I’m not asking you to agree with that. Just saying that you could perhaps try and see that reasoning is indeed the basis for anti-dp campaigners, not a concern for “protecting mass murderers”.

Caring as much about protecting the lives of mass murderers as about freeing political prisoners, is not the same thing as caring more about protecting the lives of mass murderers than about freeing political prisoners.

Yes, yes, ok. Point taken. My phrasing was not mathematically perfect. Your own point about being alienated by the fact you see AI as “caring for mass murderers” still stands, right? well that’s what I was addressing. Whether it’s “same or”, or “more than”, you were outlining a juxtaposition of different goals that does not look like a contradiction at all to me. Even if AI does campaign for abolition of the dp, it hasn’t detracted from the rest of the work. It doesn’t diminish it either. You can’t see how the abolitionist position fits into the whole, I do.

Give me an example of a country in which the set of people who get executed is identical with the set of people who are arrested for political reasons.

My phrase was: “in many countries the distinction between who gets executed and who gets arrested for political reasons does not exist at all.” Meaning: countries where there’s many cases of people getting executed for political reasons (China, Iran, Cuba, to name only three). Not that ALL political prisoners are executed, or ALL who get executed are political prisoners. I wasn’t writing a mathematical expression. The point is about how the death penalty, except for the US, exists mostly in regimes that do use it _also_ for repression of dissidents, so both of AI’s goals there can often overlap. You seem to me to be focused only on the application of the death penalty in a legal system like the US, where at least you do still get a legal trial and all. You’re only focused on application of the dp to proven murderers. That’s not so in other countries that have executions, and I think it’s something to consider, even if you’re a supporter of the death penalty. You can’t deny that capital punishment used for the purpose of eliminating dissidents does equal the highest form of torture and abuse. Abolition makes even more sense in that context.

Is that clearer now?

One can be opposed to protecting the lives of mass murderers by abolishing the death penalty, while being in favor of protecting murderers from torture and rape. I believe that, in fact, tens of millions of Americans hold to that position (including, my hero, William Jefferson Clinton).

Politics are a lovely thing, aren’t they.

I don’t care how many million people support something. Doesn’t make it necessarily more valid. That said, the US are a democracy, so it’s up to American citizens and representatives to decide if they want to change something in their legal system or not. But America is not the world. I am more interested in the pressures human rights organisations put on non-democratic countries to abolish the death penalty, seen as it doesn’t come with the sort of legal framework and guarantees the US has, and I would hope that even people who share your views on this could perhaps try and imagine a context different from their own, in which abolition could be seen as even more urgent.

Eve – but the issue is indeed truth or falsity of reports. When you say “double standards”, I would expect them to cover up the abuses that go on under the PA. They don’t.

So, there don’t seem to be double standards strictly speaking.

Just political views as are sometimes expressed even more clearly in statements to the press, views you may not agree with. That does not invalidate the reporting. You said yourself you don’t think it does. So I don’t see how you think Chris was dismissing anything.

From what I gather, he was dismissing the _biased_ readings and exploitations of AI reports to prove one point or the other without actual attention to what the reports contain and highlight _all round_.

Eve-
“If George Bush has weekly sex sessions with children, then we ought to know about this” can be true, and accepted as such, even if we don’t know whether George Bush has weekly sex sessions with children.
However it is only INTERESTING if it is a real POSSIBILITY that George Bush has weekly sex sessions with children.
So then we need EVIDENCE of this possibility, otherwise we might as well speculate on the number of Angels sitting in Heaven.
So at this point, you ought to explain why you think AI has double-standards, because everyone knows it is POSSIBLE, we just need some EVIDENCE.

I was HELPFUL enough to print out the content of the section on Israel, which you seemed to think was evidence of some kind of problem. So please stop prevaricating and don’t leave yourself open to the criticism that you are simply engaged in making baseless insinuations, which on the current EVIDENCE seems a POSSIBILITY. Once you have identified some good evidence, then the issue becomes INTERESTING.
Definition of insinuation: “an artfully indirect, often derogatory suggestion.”

Here is the introduction to the Sudan section.

Sudan

A cease-fire was in force between the government and the Sudan People’s Liberation Army (SPLA) throughout the year. However, in January and February government-sponsored militias attacked and burned villages and killed scores of civilians in oil-rich areas. In Darfur, western Sudan, militias allied to the government killed hundreds of civilians and government aircraft bombed villages. Up to 600,000 people in Darfur were displaced within the region, and tens of thousands fled to Chad. Hundreds of thousands of refugees and internally displaced persons (IDPs) from the south and other areas affected by the fighting remained in camps around the borders with Sudan and in the north. In Darfur the security forces detained hundreds of people incommunicado without charge. Torture was widespread, particularly in Darfur. At least 10 people were reported to have been executed and more than 100 death sentences were imposed. Floggings were imposed for numerous offences, including public order offences, and were usually carried out immediately. Amputations, including cross-amputations, were also imposed but none was known to have been carried out. Trials of ordinary criminal offenders were frequently unfair and summary. In the states of North, South and West Darfur, special courts continued to hold summary and unfair trials. Freedom of expression continued to be restricted in the areas controlled by the government and by the SPLA.

Also, from Amnesty’s website, click on the “Report 2004: facts & figures” link for the popup window with a nice big map and sections specifically about each issue. You’ll see the highlighted area are most often _outside_ of the west.

Of course, the very concept that bias or double standards have to be measured in terms of how often AI highlights issues in the west as opposed to outside the west is a very awkward one. But there you go.

Pepi wrote:

“[Nat:] I’m not asking them to change their agenda. I’m saying I’d prefer for them not to have changed their agenda in 1977.

[Nat:]I didn’t say it was “unprinicpled”. I asked if AI was unprincipled before 1977. Surely, you can see the difference.

… and then you tell me that I’m the one engaging in semantic equivocation? That’s so funny.”

To misquote Inigo Montoya: I do not think semantic equivocation means what you think it means. Semantic equivocation means using a word “in two or more senses within a single argument, so that a conclusion appears to follow when in fact it does not” (David Fischer). In the statements of mine that you quoted, which word do you think I’ve done that with?

“My point is simply that you may be willing to at least consider that, for those opposed to it, it does belong to the same category as prisoner abuse and torture.”

I have no problem believing that.

“Whether it’s “same or”, or “more than”, you were outlining a juxtaposition of different goals that does not look like a contradiction at all to me.”

I never said it was a contradiction to want to free political prisoners from imprisonment, to want to protect all prisoners from torture, and to want to protect all prisoners (including mass murderers) from execution. In fact, I don’t believe that it is anywhere near to being a contradiction. I also, however, don’t see a contradiction in wanting to free politicial prisoners from imprisonment, wanting to protect all prisoners from torture, but still wanting the death penalty to be available for those guilty of heinous crimes. I, therefore, think it is reasonable for people to hold that latter combination of beliefs. Depending on the strength of those beliefs, AI has, for better or worse, lost out on some of the people who hold them.

“I wasn’t writing a mathematical expression.”

I know. Therefore, I wasn’t sure about the precision with which you were writing. You’ve now explained that you didn’t mean for your statement to be interpreted completely literally. That’s fine, but you can hardly blame a person for saying “If P is in fact true, . . .” when you’re not writing precisely enough for someone to be absolutely sure what you mean by P.

“You can’t deny that capital punishment used for the purpose of eliminating dissidents does equal the highest form of torture and abuse.”

I absolutely deny that. I think it’s far worse to subject dissidents to horrific (but nonlethal) torture than to execute them. Which happens more often: People who are being tortured beg to be killed and put out of their misery, or people who are about to be executed beg just to be tortured?

Pepi wrote:

“I can’t believe you wrote that. That’s just so dumb.”

Nice comeback.

“Is that what’s relevant to the death penalty debate now, the desperation of people under torture begging for it to stop?

It’s one piece of evidence that people consider horrific nonlethal torture as worse than execution, which would mean that capital punishment is not, in fact, the highest form of torture and abuse.

“Scrap the whole legal discussion”

When did this stop becoming a moral discussion and become a legal one? If AI is all about legal issues, they should hire more lawyers and stop wasting their time carrying out letter-writing campaigns that attempt to appeal to people’s sense of decency.

“ and just bring up extreme hypothetical comparisons?”

Unfortunately, the situation I described (torture so horrific that the subject would prefer to be executed) is neither hypothetical nor rare. If you’d like me to prepare a reading list for your edification on this topic, let me know, and I’ll try to put something together.

“Besides, aren’t you confusing execution with euthanasia?”

Horrific nonlethal torture can indeed make being executed look merciful.

“Better to execute dissidents than torture them. Dear god.”

Another cogent rejoinder.

“AS IF anyone ever had a choice on that kind of thing!”

Perpretrators certainly have a choice. Whether or not the victims have a choice doesn’t seem relevant to the question of whether capital punishment is the highest form of torture and abuse, but, if you’d like, I’ll give you historical examples of when some have had that choice. (Of course if this is yet another example of you not really meaning what you say, then you probably don’t really care about the examples.)

pepi, q: You are rightly criticising a possible argument, but unfortunately it’s not the one I’m putting. I didn’t say, because I don’t believe, that AI ignores what’s going on in Sudan and the Congo, etc etc. I don’t know why you’re attributing that view to me. The passage from the AI report which I quoted claims that there is an unprecedented attack on the framework of international law etc, coming from governments engaged in the ‘war on terror'(their scare-quotes) eroding human rights, principles, standards and values. I do not believe that AI means by this anything that the Arab governments are currently doing, mainly because I’m not aware of anything those governments are doing which is markedly different and worse from what they’ve done in the past (please correct me about this if I’m wrong) and the Report talks of something new. (Please note that that does *not* mean that I say, or think, that Amnesty fails to criticise what Arab governments are currently doing.) The point is about something new. and the principal new thing that’s been happening in the war on terror is the war in Iraq. It is reasonable to infer that that’s what AI meant. (If it really meant the disgraceful violation of human rights in Andorra where the government is putting an extra tax on postage stamps to deter international terrorism, it should have said so.) What I want to know is why the action in Iraq is supposed to count as a sustained attack on international frameworks and human rights, worse than any that’s happened in the last 50 years, when we have the examples of Sudan, the Congo, Cambodia, Rwanda et al to consider. Don’t the violated human rights of their victims count when we’re trying to work out which has been the most sustained attack on international frameworks etc etc? I think it’s reasonable to wonder if double standards are in play here. I repeat: please note that I’m *not* saying that AI hasn’t reported on Sudan etc etc. It would be unnecessary for my argument even if I were saying it, WHICH I’M NOT. I’m commenting on what AI is counting as the worst attack on the international framework etc etc, and on the standards it uses to come to that conclusion.

These constant explications and corrections must be getting a bit boring for other readers, so I’m done now.

Eve, for gosh’s sake, go back and read the passage you quoted again:

The current framework of international law and multilateral action is undergoing the most sustained attack since its establishment half a century ago

That’s: international law + multilateral action.

That’s not: all laws and human rights protection and legislation ever.

It’s about international law and action. Since its establishment. Half a century ago. ie. The UN, Geneva Conventions, etc. The frameworks for solving international disputes that may or not lead to wars.

You disagree that’s been put under attack with the war on terror? Fine. But it’s got nothing to do with Sudan because AI is _not_ saying “no violation of ALL law worse than this has ever occurred”.

It’s exactly like q said, that passage is from the section specific to the war on terror and its relation to international law. There has undeniably been a debate on how those laws, devised in the context of post-war, can apply to anti-terrorism strategies today. some say those laws are not suited for current issues, some say they still are. In any case, it’s a specific reference to specific framework which does not affect Sudan and Congo. Like q said, better than I could.

Now go to the Middle East section. Read here:

War on terror’

The so-called “war on terror” continued to erode fundamental human rights in the region. Members of the League of Arab States continued to implement the Arab Convention on the Suppression of Terrorism which contained few human rights safeguards. This, as well as a range of bilateral security arrangements, facilitated the transfer of individuals between states in and outside the region without judicial proceedings, legal counsel or recourse to asylum procedures. While some states, such as Egypt and Syria, had long-standing states of emergency in place, *the “war on terror” was used as a pretext to legitimize existing practices*, such as long-term administrative detention and unfair trials by special courts whose procedures fall far short of international standards. Other states, such as Morocco and Tunisia, introduced new “anti-terrorism” laws during the year, which posed a further threat to basic human rights.

So it is addressing the way anti-terrorism has been used by some Arab and Northern African governments to further violate human rights and legality.

If you still want to see the criticism of that use of the war on terror, scare quotes included, as yet another mindless anti-American attack just for the sake of it, go ahead, but please don’t say it’s justified by what AI itself writes.

Here’s a suggestion. why don’t you familiarise yourself a bit more with the reports, and the methods with which they’re written, before trying to second-guess what was implied or not in one bit extrapolated out of its specific context, ok?

Pepi wrote:

“I have no idea why you got involved with AI in the first place.”

Because I believe political prisoners should be freed and I believe torture should be opposed.

“AI has tons of lawyers,”

And you didn’t think AI could use some more money! ;-)

“I don’t understand what you mean with the appealing to people’s decency etc.? Is that all AI does? asking people to write letters?”

It’s not all, but the Freedom Writers was one of the most prominent aspects of AI 20 years ago when I was a member. As I recall, they’d send us out packets periodically with names of “prisoners of conscience” and names and addresses of people who could maybe do something about it, and we’d send them our appeals. I don’t recall making any legal arguments in those letters, but it’s been a while.

“It’s just a bit rich for someone labelling anti-dp campaigners as protectors of mass murderers”

Which is tautologically true.

“to get on a high horse about an “oh dear”.

I don’t remember an “oh dear”. I remember a “That’s just so dumb” and a “dear g_d”, though. Perhaps it’s your rapier wit that is “the highest form of torture and abuse”. ;-)

“Oh, and your hypothetical extreme instance I was referring to was the situation in which one would be asked to choose between torture and death,”

Sorry, choosing between torture and death is also neither hypothetical nor rare. Would that it were.

_What I want to know is why the action in Iraq is supposed to count as a sustained attack on international frameworks and human rights, worse than any that’s happened in the last 50 years, when we have the examples of Sudan, the Congo, Cambodia, Rwanda et al to consider._

Eve-
Thanks for the sharp clarification.

Human Rights: I suppose you could value human rights in themselves on a per unit basis – such that 60 million miserable Brazilians is 30 times worse than 2 million miserable Peruvians. On that basis, you could probably produce league tables of abuses, tortures, deaths, rapes, beatings. Thus I suppose it would be very hard to find the misery of 2003 of the the “war on terror” in the top 20 of many tables that catalogued abuses since 1945.

Frameworks: Amnesty and the international community use political frameworks to put some semblance of order on things to avoid another World War 1. Here the calculation is more difficult. Some people in Amnesty probably worry that the USA currently is a bit like the strongest boy in the school suddenly deciding to go around and punch anyone he doesn’t like, leading to a breakdown and to anarchy, with everyone doing it. In a sense, the USA is in the priviliged position that it can act unilaterally to an extent than noone else can.

Events after World War 1 are very complex and it is a little difficult to generalise, but it does seem that the unravelling of the work of the League of Nations in controlling competing rivalries of countries like Germany, Japan, Italy and China was one of the factors that led to World War 2.

So given this plus the pivotal role of France, Britain, Russia and the USA in setting up the new world order with the UN after 1945, anything that impinges upon these institutional frameworks will be viewed with caution.

From a “framework” point of view, the tally of events will be interpreted differently. For example, the decision of countries to opt out of UN processes would be regarded suspiciously. I imagine South Africa, Israel, China, Russia, US have all had their difficulties with the UN! If we produce a league table of attacks on “frameworks” some of the abuses in Third World countries would not make the top 20, simply because it does not change the institutional structures. US unilateralism in 2003 also comes under that category. There are for example grounds for insisting that the cold war, or US Middle East policy in general is also a candidate for the “worst sustained attack”.

I can’t speak for Amnesty. One explanation of where Amnesty is coming from relates to the history and the unilateralism as outlined above, another is simply that Amnesty “hates America”, and a third one is that they have made a mistake in their conclusion.

A good option now would be to compile an ordered list of attacks on human right institutions, check Amnesty’s report for more details, and maybe even write to Amnesty for a fuller justification of what they are saying.

Eve: no, we’re not even communicating here, eh…

It’s not a matter of logic. Or what you or I or anyone reads into the report and infers about what AI supposedly meant. It’s about reading it for what it is and what it says.

It is a report. From a Human Rights organisation. Human Rights belong to international law. International law is a vast field. OF COURSE if they’re making the point that the framework for resolving international disputes (that’s the wording of the UN Chapter) is being used by governments also to erode human rights, they’re talking about huamn rights too. Yeah. That’s absolutely obvious.

But the phrase you took issue with – that qualification of “worst attack on”, which in your view seems to be saying that the war on terror is worse than genocide in Sudan (!) – that phrase, is so clear and specific I don’t know why you have to discuss its meaning at all. You’re intent on finding a judgement that is not even there!

Try again:

The current framework of international law and multilateral action is undergoing the most sustained attack since its establishment half a century ago. International human rights and humanitarian law is being directly challenged as ineffective in responding to the security issues of the present and future. In the name of the “war on terror” governments are eroding human rights principles, standards and values. The international community appears unable or unwilling to halt this trend. Armed groups, meanwhile, continue to flout their responsibilities under international humanitarian law.

It even specifies the debate is also about how to legally define terrorism, which influences the legal framework you use to fight it – AI says that terrorist actions are:

“…actions by armed political groups or individuals which are already prohibited by national and international law”

ie. the legal framework is already there, so it needs to be respected – that’s their view.

Then, read on, because the whole page expands the concept and makes it *unequivocally* clear.

For instance this phrase makes it also a lot clearer: All governments have an obligation to protect the security of those under their jurisdiction. Since 11 September 2001, many have adopted draconian new “anti-terrorism” measures, arguing that the existing legal framework is inadequate for combating such threats.

That’s what the whole debate on how to fight terrorism is about! Whether the _current_ legal framework for multilateral action and international law is still valid and effective today.

As an aside, the Red Cross spokesman, when interviewed recently about Abu Ghraib, and asked that very question – ie. if perhaps current laws like the Geneva conventions, since they were made right after the world wars, are perhaps to be modified to be more suitable to anti-terrorism intervention today, which is different from wars of hte past – replied, we’re always very open to discussing etc. but as long as those laws are in place they need to be respected by ALL signatories.

So I don’t know how you could read a reference to that debate as blaming the US-led war on terror as the worst crime against human rights ever.

You are projecting a ton of bias in there. Even if you do NOT think that the war on terror is disrupting international law, even if you do not think that even non-democratic Arab governments using anti-terrorism to pursue their own internal political agendas is a big deal in terms of violating international laws AND human rights, you cannot turn a simple comment on the whole problem of how anti-terrorism relates to international law into an indictment of the US as the worst criminal ever and a dismissal of genocide in Sudan!

There is no such blanket judgement and no such gigantically impossible comparison there.

You’ve been projecting a whole ton of bias into the reading. By doing that, you just proved Chris’s point, again.

As a last point – the debate on whether anti-terrorism laws are being used by governments to repressive ends or to expand their powers and violate certain legal frameworks exists even among those who supported the war in Iraq and/or do support the wider purpose of the war on terror.

All those discussions on the Patriot Act etc. Or the UK anti-terrorism laws. And the section on the war on terror from the AI report specifically makes instances like Colombia and the Philippines and Cuba and Morocco.

The issue is not war in Iraq, but governments – of democracies and non-democracies alike – passing anti-terrorism laws that have raised questions about compliance with human rights. Those questions have been raised and debated not just by AI! They’ve been raised by other organisations and groups, by political parties within parliaments, by lawyers and scholars, by media and think tanks, you name it. Of all kinds of political leanings.

You don’t have to be against intervention in Iraq to appreciate the extent of that problem of defining exactly how anti-terrorism should be framed legally, and what are its interaction with human rights. And that, not a judgement on who is the worst human rights offender of the past 50 years, is the scope of that report section.

It’s interesting how Volokh criticises AI for the opposite reason – because for him it’s too impartial.

It’s funny really. Governments and political parties and systems that do have power over people, in democracies as in regimes, can get away with anything, from disregard of conventions to genocide and all that’s in between. A monitoring organisation with no power to enforce a thing is accused of being either too much or too little political and, in either case, of having no moral authority to speak on human rights at all. What a wonderful world.

pepi wrote:

It’s interesting how Volokh criticises AI for the opposite reason – because for him it’s too impartial.

Actually it’s more that he (or rather Jacob T. Levy who wrote the post) considers them morally obtuse and lacking moral credibility by failing to judge the political systems which he believes results in an incomplete and distorted picture:

This impartiality is in part a necessary pose, in part justified, and in part moral obtuseness. It seems to me necessary to remember simultaneously that torture is torture, and is reprehensible under whatever regime it takes place and that some political regimes and systems are built on and centrally dedicated to the violation of human rights and some aren’t. Not to oppose “any government or political system”– not Nazi Germany, Stalin’s USSR, apartheid South Africa, Mao’s China, Pol Pot’s Cambodia, Pinochet’s Chile, or insert-your-least-favorite-example-here– isn’t being an honest impartial assessor of human rights violations. It’s radically misunderstanding where human rights violations come from, and how they’re stopped. AI does great work embarrassing governments into releasing what the organization terms “prisoners of conscience.” But some political systems rely on, and endorse as a matter of principle, punishing people for their religious and political views. Others don’t. The one-prisoner-at-a-time, don’t-judge-the-system approach maintains the organization’s credibility with some governments. But it damages the organization’s moral credibility.

. . .

None of this is to say that AI shouldn’t draw attention to human rights abuses committed by democracies. It is to say that a human rights agenda that doesn’t notice the difference between liberal democracy as a system and theocracy, military dicattorship, or totalitarianism as systems is so incomplete as to be distorting.

But I suppose you can simply dismiss this to be an attack on “impartiality” if you are unwilling or unable to answer the concerns he raised.

To clarify – Levy also says he does have problem with the universal declaration of human rights itself, with the definition of rights that it is based on. He doesn’t say what kind of problems he has with it, only that it’s not the best or truest definition.

But he cannot ignore that that declaration is signed on and accepted _as is_ by all democratic nations of the world. Whose governments have no problem in dealing with human rights orgs on that very shared definition of human rights.

And yes I did spot the paragraphs where he praises AI’s reporting work. I wasn’t implying he said the contrary.

But when he writes “a human rights agenda that doesn’t notice the difference between liberal democracy as a system and theocracy, military dicattorship, or totalitarianism as systems is so incomplete as to be distorting” – he’s addressing AI as if it was a nation’s government or a political party that is not actually enforcing any policies or taking any stance in crucial matters. He’s projecting onto AI expectations about something AI or any other such organisation was never meant to be.

He’s also ignoring that the very reports about non-democratic countries and regimes and dictatorships do point it out very clearly where there is systematic abuse and lack of democracy and whole systems operating _completely_ outside of international law.

They sure “notice the difference” between a democracy and a dictatorship. Otherwise they wouldn’t be in teh business of human rights at all.

Besides, it’s not as if people didn’t know about that distinction in the first place that we need AI to tell us that Cuba is not as free as the United States. But that kind of top secret information is also evident in reports! How can anyone pretend it’s not?

That’s also why I find it paradoxical that anyone would consider morally obtuse the lack of condemnation for something… that is already implicitely “condemned” by the very fact it’s reported as functioning essentially outside of that legal democratic framework AI refers to as a standard. That’s such a giant straw man he’s addressing.

It’s like when people ask AI to “explicitely condemn terrorism”. As if killing of civilians by armed groups was ever condoned by a _human rights_ organisation.

Thorley, sorry to have to be such a pain in the neck here, but what exactly is wrong with outlining that human rights issues have gone unaddressed? or that there’s too little spending and commitment put on social issues?

Yes, those are opinions, conclusions, complaints and criticism. Of course one can address what you describe as the “root causes” of human rights violations and lack of democracy, in making reports thereof. Doh. Doesn’t mean there’s “vote for xyz” sticker in there.

Every opinion is political, more or less overtly. That’s still a long way from being political as a political party is, and even the most overt political statements – condemnation of x action by y government – still doesn’t detract from the facts and figures outlined in reports.

You might also keep in mind the area of interest for an international organisation is the entire world.

So there’s no need to filter everything through American political discourse for which it would seem sometimes that even a simple mention of “social and economic justice” is an endorsement of socialism.