Amnesty Takes Aim at ‘Gulag’ in Guantanamo
By PAISLEY DODDS
.c The Associated Press
LONDON (AP) – Amnesty International castigated the U.S. prison camp in
Guantanamo Bay as a failure Wednesday, calling it “the gulag of our
time” in the human rights group’s harshest rebuke yet of American
detention policies.
Amnesty urged Washington to shut down the prison at the U.S. Navy’s
base in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, where some 540 men are held on suspicion
of links to Afghanistan’s ousted Taliban regime or the al-Qaida terror
network. Some have been jailed for more than three years without
charge.
White House spokesman Scott McClellan said Amnesty’s complaints were
“ridiculous and unsupported by the facts.” He said allegations of
prisoner mistreatment are investigated.
“We hold people accountable when there’s abuse. We take steps to
prevent it from happening again. And we do so in a very public way for
the world to see that we lead by example and that we do have values
that we hold very dearly and believe in,” McClellan told reporters.
In its annual report, Amnesty accused governments around the world of
abandoning human rights protections. It said Sudan failed to protect
its people from one of the world’s worst humanitarian crises and
charged Haiti promoted human rights abusers.
But one of the biggest disappointments in the human rights arena was
with the United States, Amnesty said, “after evidence came to light
that the U.S. administration had sanctioned interrogation techniques
that violated the U.N. Convention against Torture.”
“Guantanamo has become the gulag of our time,” Amnesty Secretary
General Irene Khan said as the London-based group issued a 308-page
annual report that accused the United States of shirking its
responsibility to set the bar for human rights protections.
The use of the term gulag refers to the extensive system of prison
camps in the former Soviet Union, many in remote regions of Siberia
and specifically designed to hold political prisoners. The Soviets
took over the system from the czarist government and expanded it after
the 1917 Bolshevik Revolution. Untold thousands of prisoners of the
so-called gulags died from hunger, cold, harsh treatment and overwork.
The prison camp at Guantanamo has been in the spotlight over the past
year since the FBI cited cases of aggressive interrogation techniques
and detainee mistreatment. The U.S. government has also been
criticized for not charging or trying prisoners who are classified as
enemy combatants, a vague distinction with fewer legal protections
than prisoners of war get under the Geneva Conventions.
Some prisoners have challenged their detentions in U.S. courts but
their cases are stalled by appeals filed by the U.S. government and
subsequent arguments.
“Not a single case from some 500 men has reached the courts,” Khan
said.
In a statement, the Defense Department said that “the detention of
enemy combatants is not criminal in nature, but to prevent them from
continuing to fight against the United States in the War on
Terrorism.”
It also said that it continued to evaluate whether detainees should be
sent home and that review tribunals “provided an appropriate venue
for detainees to meaningfully challenge their enemy combatant
designation.”
“This is an unprecedented level of process being provided to our
enemies in a time of war,” the statement said.
The Geneva-based International Committee of the Red Cross, which has
also been critical of practices at Guantanamo, is the only independent
group to have access to the detainees. Amnesty has been refused access
to the prison, although it was allowed to watch pretrial hearings for
15 detainees who have been charged.
Amnesty has frequently criticized U.S. detention policies instituted
after the Sept. 11 terror attacks, but its latest report takes a
harsher tone. It accuses Washington of trying to “sanitize” abuse of
detainees and failing to give prisoners legal recourse to challenge
their detentions.
The report also takes aim at recent abuse allegations that have
surfaced in FBI documents as well as prisoner testimonies, echoing
concerns from the International Committee of the Red Cross.
The Red Cross said last week it had told U.S. authorities of detainee
allegations that Qurans had been desecrated. It also offered a rare
public rebuke in late 2003, calling the prisoners’ prolonged
detentions “worrying.”
Declassified FBI records released Wednesday showed that prisoners at
Guantanamo Bay told U.S. interrogators as early as April 2002, just
four months after the first detainees arrived from Afghanistan, that
U.S. military guards abused them and desecrated the Quran.
Another detainee stated he had been beaten unconscious at Guantanamo
Bay early in 2002, a period in which U.S. interrogators were pressing
hard for information on al-Qaida.
Amnesty singled out Sudan as one of the worst violators of human
rights last year for the devastation caused by conflict in its Darfur
region. At least 180,000 people have died – many from hunger and
disease – and about 2 million have fled their homes to escape fighting
among rebels, militias and government troops.
Sudan’s government not only turned its back on its people, but the
United Nations and African Union took too long to try to help those
suffering in Darfur, Amnesty said.
Amnesty also criticized the African Union and the international
community for not taking action on Zimbabwe, where President Robert
Mugabe’s party has been accused of rigging elections, repressing
opponents and driving agriculture to the brink of collapse.
In Haiti, human rights violators who led the rebellion that ousted
President Jean-Bertrand Aristide last year were able to retake key
positions, while the government struggled to maintain control from
armed groups, Amnesty said.
The group accused Israeli soldiers of operating outside international
law by using torture, destroying property and obstructing medical
assistance in the West Bank and Gaza. It also condemned the deliberate
targeting of Israeli civilians by Palestinian militants.
In Asia, people were jailed indefinitely without trial in Malaysia and
Singapore, religious minorities were persecuted in China and Vietnam
and security forces committed extra-judicial killings in Nepal,
Thailand and Indonesia, Amnesty said.
On the Net:
Amnesty International:
Defense Department:
05/25/05 20:23 EDT
From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress
www.amnesty.org
www.defenselink.mil/news/detainees.html