After the Bush administration yesterday (June 1) lined up numerous officials, including Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and General Richard Myers, to attack Amnesty International for its report that criticizes the administration’s human rights record, the respected human rights organization fired back.
Donald Rumsfeld greets Saddam Hussein in 1983 to establish friendly relations with the dictator.
AI had criticized the human rights record of Iraq under Saddam Hussein in the early 1980s at the same time Donald Rumsfeld had been sent by the Reagan administration to establish friendly ties and trade relations with the dictator.
In a statement released yesterday, Amnesty International USA Director William Schulz said that this wasn’t their first report about the administration’s mistreatment of prisoners. "Donald Rumsfeld and the Bush administration ignored or dismissed Amnesty International’s reports on the abuse of detainees for years," says Schulz.
Amnesty International (AI) first communicated its concerns about the treatment of prisoners to Rumsfeld in January 2002 and continued to raise these concerns at the highest levels as allegations of abuse mounted from Afghanistan, Guantanamo and Iraq.
The administration, says Schulz, responded by preventing human rights workers from investigating or visiting the detention facilities in question. Schulz contrasted the administration’s actions in this regard to countries such as Libya and Syria that have allowed independent monitors to examine prison facilities.
Schulz also found it ironic that AI had criticized the human rights record of Iraq under Saddam Hussein in the early 1980s at the same time Donald Rumsfeld had been sent by the Reagan administration to establish friendly ties and trade relations with the dictator.
Schulz further emphasized the basic policies of the administration which his organization (and numerous other civil liberties and human rights organizations) has criticized. The deliberate policy of the Bush administration is to detain individuals without charge or trial in prisons at Guantanamo Bay (Cuba), Bagram Air Base (Afghanistan) and other locations, according to AI.
The treatment of these prisoners, AI reports, "has not conformed to international standards." Further, Donald Rumsfeld personally approved a December 2002 memorandum that permitted such unlawful interrogation techniques as stress positions, prolonged isolation, stripping, and the use of dogs at Guantanamo Bay.
Schulz states adamantly that Rumsfeld "should be held accountable, as should all those responsible for torture, no matter how senior."
There has yet to be a full independent investigation and the content of some of the government’s own reports on human rights violations in these prisons remain classified and unpublicized.
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"If this administration is committed to transparency," says Schulz, "it should immediately open the network of detention centers operated by the US around the world to scrutiny by independent human rights groups."
Schulz also pointed to the irony that the Bush administration eagerly cites AI research when that criticism happens to conform with the administration’s political and foreign policy goals.
An Amnesty International press statement cited numerous references by Donald Rumsfeld to AI’s work, including the following:
On March 27, 2003, Rumsfeld said:
We know that it’s a repressive regime? Anyone who has read Amnesty International or any of the human rights organizations about how the regime of Saddam Hussein treats his people?
The next day, Rumsfeld cited his "careful reading" of Amnesty:
[I]t 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.
And on April 1, 2003, Rumsfeld said once again:
[I]f you read the various human rights groups and Amnesty International’s description of what they know has gone on, it’s not a happy picture.
The Bush administration seems intent on attacking Amnesty International in order to shift focus from its deplorable record. But by refusing to call for an independent, open and thorough investigation, the administration proves that it has more to hide.
--Reach Joel Wendland at jwendland@politicalaffairs.net.
