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American 'gulag'?

Amnesty International's impertinent remark about the U.S. military prison at Guantanamo Bay diminishes the organization's credibility.

For decades, the Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin shipped off political opponents and dissidents along with common criminals to brutal forced-labor camps called gulags. At least 25-million people were imprisoned in these concentration camps, where they were subjected to backbreaking labor, physical abuse, starvation and brutal winters without adequate clothing. Millions died and millions more were summarily executed.

It is important to remember that history in light of the flippant comparison made by Irene Khan, Amnesty International's secretary-general. She called the U.S. military prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, the "gulag of our times." Such vitriol diminishes Amnesty International's credibility and drowns out legitimate concerns about our government's behavior in detaining terrorism suspects.

Amnesty International used to be a respected defender of human rights that effectively brought attention to the plight of individual political prisoners. It was awarded a Nobel Peace Prize in 1977 for its work. But the organization's claims of nonpartisanship and independence have come under increasing attack.

Khan's introduction to Amnesty International's latest annual report reveals an ideological bias that magnifies the faults of the United States while essentially ignoring those responsible for far more grievous abuses. Blaming the ethnic slaughter in Darfur, Sudan, on "indifference, erosion and impunity that marks the human rights landscape today," Khan zeros in on her target. "The USA, as the unrivalled political, military and economic hyper-power, sets the tone for governmental behaviour worldwide."

And we thought the genocide in Darfur was being committed by militia groups supported by the Sudanese government, mainly against non-Arab inhabitants based on centuries-old grievances. The United Nations has been impotent to act on behalf of the victims, but Khan fabricates a different villain: U.S. foreign policy that "grants a license to others to commit abuse with impunity and audacity." Even the humiliations of Abu Ghraib, as distasteful as they were, are hardly the equivalent of the Iraqi terrorists' beheadings of innocent bystanders.

Only those whose political agenda blinds them to the complexities of this world would see Guantanamo as a gulag. We have criticized the Bush administration for its treatment of prisoners at the base and its overall disregard for the rules of detention and interrogation. But a gulag? That is an insult to the truly innocent individuals who suffered and died at the hands of brutal dictators.

It is a shame that Amnesty International has poisoned its mission with anti-American venom. The millions of victims in places such as North Korea and Sudan cannot be protected by an organization that has lost its way.

[Last modified May 27, 2005, 00:40:18]