Amnesty Takes Aim at 'Gulag' in Guantanamo
by PAISLEY DODDS, The Associated Press, Wednesday, May 25, 2005; 2:37 PM
LONDON -- Amnesty International branded the U.S. prison camp at Guantanamo Bay a human rights failure Wednesday, calling it "the gulag of our time" as it released a report that offers stinging criticism of the United States and its detention centers around the world.
The 308-page report accused the United States of shirking its responsibility to set the bar for human rights protections and said Washington has instead created a new lexicon for abuse and torture.
In the harshest rebuke yet of U.S. detention policies, Amnesty International called for the camp to be closed.
"Attempts to dilute the absolute ban on torture through new policies and quasi-management speak, such as 'environmental manipulation, stress positions and sensory manipulation,' was one of the most damaging assaults on global values," the annual report said.
White House spokesman Scott McClellan said abuse reports were investigated and the criticism of the U.S. human rights record was "ridiculous and unsupported by the facts."
"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," he told reporters in Washington.
Some 540 prisoners from about 40 countries are being held at the U.S. detention center in Cuba. More than 200 others have been released, though some have been jailed in their countries; many have been held for three years without charge.
"Guantanamo has become the gulag of our time," Amnesty Secretary General Irene Khan said.
The report also warned other governments from Sudan to Congo that victims in other conflicts around the world were being forgotten in the fight against terrorism.
At least 10 cases of abuse or mistreatment have been documented and investigated at Guantanamo. Several other cases are pending.
"During the year, released detainees alleged that they had been tortured or ill-treated while in U.S. custody in Afghanistan and Guantanamo. Evidence also emerged that others, including Federal Bureau of Investigation agents and the International Committee of the Red Cross, had found that such abuses had been committed against detainees," the report said.
The Geneva-based ICRC is the only independent group to have access to the Guantanamo detainees. Amnesty has been refused access to the prison camp, although it was allowed to watch the pretrial hearings for the military commissions. The commissions, which could try 15 prisoners facing charges, were stalled by a U.S. court's decision that is under appeal.
"There's a myth going around that there's some kind of rule of law being applied," said Rob Freer, an Amnesty official who specializes in detention issues.
The U.S. Department of Defense said it was continuing to evaluate whether detainees should be sent home, adding that review tribunals also "provided an appropriate venue for detainees to meaningfully challenge their enemy combatant designation."
Amnesty acknowledged the human rights deficiencies came with a rash of terrorist actions, including the televised beheadings of captives in Iraq.
Khan also singled out Sudan as one of the worst human rights violations of last year, saying that not only had the Sudanese government turned its back on its own people, but that the United Nations and the African Union acted too late to help.
She also said the African Union needed to do more about speaking out against human rights abuses in Africa, singling out Zimbabwe. She talked about human rights failures being compounded by big business' complicity.
Amnesty's report also pointed to Haiti, saying human rights violators were allowed to regain positions of power after armed rebels and former soldiers ousted former President Jean-Bertrand Aristide last year.
Amnesty said Congo's government offered no effective response to the systematic rape of tens of thousands of women and children and warned of a downward spiral of lawlessness and instability in Afghanistan.
In Asia, the report said violence and discrimination against women was rampant last year, ranging from acid attacks for unpaid dowries in Bangladesh to forced abortion in China, rape by soldiers in Nepal and domestic beatings in Australia.
Amnesty also said the ouster of the conservative Islamic Taliban regime in 2001 by U.S.-led forces did little to bring relief to women.
In the western Herat region, Amnesty reported that hundreds of women had set fire to themselves to escape violence in the home or forced marriage.
"Fear of abductions by armed groups forced women to restrict their movements outside the home," Amnesty said. Even within families, "extreme restrictions" on women's behavior and high levels of violence persisted, it said.
While criticizing the detention mission at Guantanamo, Amnesty said one sign of hope was the U.S. Supreme Court's decision in June that let prisoners challenge the basis of their detention. It also said it was encouraging that Britain's high court lords ruled on the indefinite detention without charge or trial of "terrorist suspects."
"The challenge for the human rights movement is to harness the power of civil society and push governments to deliver on their human rights promises," Khan said.
Amnesty International: amnesty.org
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