Amnesty’s ambiguous take on torture
Sarah Baxter, a member of the human rights group, laments its anti-American stance in the face of Saddam’s terrible abuses
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For sheer cynicism it is hard to beat the current assertion on Amnesty International’s website that it has “not yet had time” to study the report issued by the Foreign Office detailing human rights abuses in Iraq. Not had time to form an opinion on the gouging of eyes, the electric shocks administered to penises, the rape of women or the amputation of tongues in Saddam Hussein’s jail of a country? No thoughts on the execution of dissidents and the torture of their families, even though the contents of Jack Straw’s dossier were drawn in large measure from Amnesty’s own reports? Yes, well, hmm, a spokesman explained, he was beginning to get some “early feedback” from his colleagues. “We think the dossier’s accurate, as far as we can judge it.” I particularly savoured the caveat.
Clearly, Amnesty would be happier if the government had never raised that pesky human rights business. We know this because Irene Khan, its secretary-general, believes that any mention by western leaders of Saddam’s well-documented reign of terror is “nothing but a cold and calculated manipulation of the work of human rights activists. Let us not forget that these same governments turned a blind eye to reports of widespread violations in Iraq before the Gulf war”.
I won’t dwell on her laughable comment beyond noting that Britain and America have held several democratic elections since the 1980s and the only leader still in place is the Iraqi tyrant. There has been some argy-bargy about the provenance of her remarks, which were quoted by newspapers last week. They came from an article she wrote in September rather than in response to Straw’s dossier, says Amnesty indignantly. It matters not a jot, however, because it stands by her comments.
“We are concerned about the apparent political opportunism,” said a spokesman. “When governments publish their own dossiers of human rights violations, you have to wonder at their motives.”
Forgive me, but I didn’t realise only Amnesty was allowed to complain about human rights abuses. Perhaps I should have known; I’ve been a member for some time. But I mistakenly thought my membership fee, small though it is, was helping Amnesty to make a loud noise and force the deafest of regimes, including our own, to listen.
Only last week, I received a seasonal request to increase my direct debit payments. “A victory for human rights doesn’t come overnight,” the begging letter said. “It usually happens after months and even years of sustained campaigning — like the drip, drip of water on a stone that eventually breaks it.” So why is Amnesty so furious that it was once ignored and even more put out that governments are finally paying attention? The conclusion is inescapable: it prefers to moan on aimlessly about human rights abuses rather than to prevent them.
It should have been obvious that Amnesty had taken a funny turn when it decided at its international get-together in Africa last year to add extra bits and bobs to its mission statement, such as protecting people’s “economic, social and cultural rights”. As one disgruntled member complained, one person’s “cultural right” can be another’s human rights abuse (clitorectomies, for instance).
I joined Amnesty because it valued human beings above realpolitik and prisoners of conscience were never considered too small fry to bother with. Today it seems to regard the war on “terrorism” — a word it never mentions without the inverted commas of scepticism — as worse than torture and the West as more oppressive than Saddam. His victims should be freed, obviously, but not by us. They’ll just have to wait until a more politically correct liberator comes along.
This has been dressed up as concern about the civilian casualties of a possible war, a respectable position for a human rights organisation. I worry about military action, too, but human rights will never be respected as long as Saddam is in power. Instead of pointing out the obvious, Amnesty has been soft-pedalling on his crimes and settled comfortably into a blame-the-West posture since the September 11 attacks. And the worst of it is, it really does know better.
Barely a month before America was struck, Amnesty published a harrowing document about abuses in Iraq. There was no mincing of words. It described the raping of female relatives in front of detainees; the mutilation and sexual abuse of prisoners; electric shocks, gougings and beatings. It even provided a handy bunch of recommendations, including bringing “to justice anyone responsible for committing acts of torture and other human rights violations”. Regime change, anyone? Far from it. No sooner had 3,000 people lost their lives in a morning than Amnesty switched gear. Since then, it has repeatedly accused the West of warmongering. Never mind that actual Iraqi human rights monitors — many of them the conduit for Amnesty’s sources of information — are among the biggest warmongers I know. One said to me she was against UN-supported weapons inspections because they might prevent an American invasion and prolong the agony of her people.
Instead of looking to the future, Amnesty has been banging on about the consequences of economic sanctions and blaming the West rather than Saddam for their existence. If you can’t even use sanctions to put pressure on an immoral regime, you really are just blathering.
Amnesty’s annual report is a masterpiece of “yes, but . . .” anti-Americanism. It duly notes in its opening sentence: “The year 2001 will be remembered by many for the events of 11 September, which dominated the international political agenda and posed new challenges to the human rights community,” before blithely carrying on, “Yet, as this report shows, there were countless other human tragedies during the year.” Was that offensive “yet” really necessary? It spent most of last year worked up about potential anti-Muslim hate crimes in America — which barely materialised — and the evils of racial profiling of Muslim suspects. Naturally, it is also apoplectic about the treatment of detainees in Guantanamo Bay. Fair enough, that’s its job. But does America really deserve more tickings-off than the Butcher of Baghdad or Al-Qaeda’s death squads?
