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June 08, 2005

Amnesty's Gulag

For what shall it profit an organization if it gains notoriety yet loses itself?

Given that Amnesty International is rolling in publicity and donations at the moment, their decision to describe the prisons where the United States is holding detainees from Iraq and Afghanistan may not look like a bad one. Their name is in the papers, they're making money, and people around the world who dislike the United States are cheering them on for attacking that demon Bush.

The question this all raises, however, is what Amnesty's purpose actually is. My understanding of Amnesty was that it was an organization dedicated to highlighting cases of human rights abuse around the world. That appears to be in line with their own perception of their mission. Yet the decision to highlight U.S. prisons as gulags suggests that either they are more interested in scoring political points than actually ending human rights abuses.

Amnesty's ability to effect change is, like all NGOs, limited by its inability to enforce its norms. Whatever AI believes should be human rights can only be put in place by convincing people and governments to enact laws to enshrine and protect those rights. AI's tool in this battle is publicity. They issue reports which detail where human rights are being violated, reports which they can brandish in the press to draw attention to cases of rights violations. If they garner sufficient publicity, they can gain government support which may lead to pressure on the offending party, pressure which might help those suffering from a denial of basic rights. Their ability to apply pressure is predicated on the assumption they are in fact as neutral as they claim to be; if they are highlighting a human rights abuse, the assumption is made that the abuses are real and significant, because AI has built a reputation for neutrality. This reputation is now at some risk with their gulag comments.

As Anne Applebaum explains today, the gulags were a horrible stain born of communism and Josef Stalin where millions of people died. Calling prisons gulags evokes images of labor camps where people are routinely worked to death and where people can be shot by the guards for no reason at all. Given the recent furor over the mishandling of a Quran at Guantanamo Bay several years ago, there is no justification for comparing the American prisons with gulags. Add to that the fact several of AI's directors were strong John Kerry supporters in the last election and it is not unreasonable to suggest that Amnesty's decision to hang the 'gulag' term on the U.S. was born more of political animus than of the facts on the ground. And if AI is issuing reports based on a political agenda rather than on human rights grounds, their moral legitimacy now rests on shaky ground at best.

This would be unfortunate in any case, as the world certainly does not lack for areas where human rights require protection. The tragedy is doubled when one considers that, while they are hardly gulags, there remains strong evidence that there are human rights concerns at American prisons. 108 deaths in our prisons, 27 of which appear to be murders by American personnel. That is a serious problem, and one that deserves more attention than it is getting. It is unclear whether the problem here is undisciplined personnel, a deliberate policy by the administration, interrogators breaking the rules because they are desperate to gain information to help their comrades, or something else. But I believe many Americans would prefer that our prisons, even for suspected terrorists, are working under the rule of law and are providing humane treatment, assumptions that do not appear warranted based on the numbers cited above.

From the standpoint of pure logic, AI's hyperbole shouldn't matter. It is certainly simple enough to separate the 'gulag' remark from the details of the American prisons and to come to a judgement that, while AI overspoke, there are problems which need to be addressed. Each of us must operate within the limits of the 24-hour day, however, and therefore we all discriminate in what we're willing to look into in greater detail and what we will simply set aside. For example, few of us will bother to look into claims that a UFO landed at the White House and is controlling the Bush administration because the claim is so preposterous on its face we judge it not worth the time to examine more closely.

Amnesty's gulag claim may not fall into quite the same category as my UFO hypothetical, but it has garnered a similar response. Many people see the claim not as an incentive to look more closely at the American prisons, but as a reason to simply dismiss AI from consideration no matter what they say in the future. Discussions of the topic have focused on the appropriateness of AI's verbiage rather than the substance of their claim, leaving the issue of real problems by the wayside in favor of the more sensationalist claims. The result may include a publicity windfall for Amnesty, but it comes at the cost of credibility and any hope of AI shining a light on the problems.

On the other hand, perhaps Amnesty is simply more cynical than I give them credit. Perhaps their concern was fiduciary rather than moral; they needed funds, and the best way to get them was via publicity. So they decided to sacrifice their own credibility and the chance to illuminate real human rights abuses in exchange for notoriety and a financial windfall. I find it difficult to believe they're that cynical, but I suppose I cannot entirely rule out the possibility.

Either way, the incident speaks poorly of AI and has done much harm and little good. Future investigations of human rights abuses will be undermined by reminders of Amnesty's hyperbole. A great deal of heat and very little light has been placed on how America is handling prisoners from Iraq and Afghanistan, allowing whatever problems exist to continue while the media focuses on the issue of the gulag. Words have meanings and consequences, and the consequences of Amnesty's words appear to have undermined the very result they claim to seek.