Amnesty International; Who Said Gulag?

Amnesty International further embarrassed itself today by appearing to back track on much of their inflammatory remarked they had made this past week comparing US prisons in Guantanamo Bay as Gulags. Nor did the head of the Amnesty International USA defend most of his irresponsible statements from this past week.

Despite highly publicized charges of U.S. mistreatment of prisoners at Guantanamo, the head of the Amnesty International USA said on Sunday the group doesn’t “know for sure” that the military is running a “gulag.”

Executive Director William Schulz said Amnesty, often cited worldwide for documenting human rights abuses, also did not know whether Secretary Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld approved severe torture methods such as beatings and starvation.

Schulz recently dubbed Rumsfeld an “apparent high-level architect of torture” in asserting he approved interrogation methods that violated international law.

“It would be fascinating to find out. I have no idea,” Schulz told “Fox News Sunday.”

A dispute has raged since Amnesty last month compared the prison for foreign terrorism suspects at the U.S. naval base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, to the vast, brutal Soviet gulag system of forced labor camps in which millions of prisoners died.

A leading Democratic U.S. senator on Sunday repeated his call for a full investigation and said the detention center should be closed.

The fascinating aspect of this interview is that Amnesty International released a report about human rights violations committed by the US and that its prisons were “gulags” then AI USA Executive Director William Schulz went on to say:

Schulz recently dubbed Rumsfeld an “apparent high-level architect of torture” in asserting he approved interrogation methods that violated international law.

“It would be fascinating to find out. I have no idea,” Schulz told “Fox News Sunday.”

Schulz said, “We don’t know for sure what all is happening at Guantanamo and our whole point is that the United States ought to allow independent human rights organizations to investigate.”

He also said he had “absolutely no idea” whether the International Red Cross had been given access to all prisoners and said the group feared others were being held at secret facilities or locations.

If Amnesty International has no idea about the allegations they made and want to find out and have no idea for sure what is going on inside of Guantanamo; how do they make a report not based on any facts?

Then Schultz was asked about the “gulag” comment and further lost credibility.

Asked about the comparison, Schulz said, “Clearly this is not an exact or a literal analogy.” (You certainly meant it to be until the heat got too much.)
“… But there are some similarities. The United States is maintaining an archipelago of prisons around the world, many of them secret prisons into which people are being literally disappeared … And in some cases, at least, we know that they are being mistreated, abused, tortured and even killed.”

He then went on to say,

The American head of Amnesty International admits his group did not pick the best analogy when it compared detainee conditions at Guantanamo Bay to the Soviet-era “gulag” forced-labor system.

“There are only about 70,000 in U.S. detention facilities, and to the best of our knowledge, they are not in forced labor, they are not being denied food.

Gee Mr. Schultz wouldn’t that by definition not be a gulag? One of the most telling comments by Chris Wallace during the interview was when he asked Schultz whether making such irresponsible comments that are so over the top actually hurt Amnesty International and their cause. Chris, you would be correct.

The Captain’s Quarters does a great job of shredding the intellectual honesty of AI:

No wonder the American media loves Amnesty International — they use the same editorial thresholds for publication. Just like Newsweek, AI apparently feels that any rumor that matches the preconceived notion of its publisher merits reporting as fact to its readers.

Chris Wallace of Fox News Sunday pretty much hammered Schulz most of the interview pointing out the irresponsible rhetoric used by AI and the hypocrisy. Chris Wallace even went so far as to ask whether it was a practice of AI to make irresponsible statements for media reaction? By the looks of these numbers and reaction of the left, I guess it is.

But Schulz isn’t protesting too much. In the past week, traffic on Amnesty’s Web site has gone up sixfold, donations have quintupled and new memberships have doubled.

What’s a little irresponsible rhetoric with world wide implications in the Muslim world when it gets AI some PR and donations? That’s responsible.

Then there was the conflict of interest. The Hedgehog Report nails it head on.

The head of Amnesty International USA, William Schulz, admitted on Fox News Sunday that he is a heavy Democratic supporter.

WALLACE: Mr. Schulz, if I can get a couple of final questions in. Last year, didn’t you contribute $2,000, the maximum, to John Kerry’s presidential campaign?

SCHULZ: I did indeed, yes.

WALLACE: Isn’t it a fact that you have already contributed $1,000 to Ted Kennedy’s next campaign?

SCHULZ: I have contributed, yes.

(Full Transcript from Fox News Sunday can be seen here)

Chicago Sun Times adds,

Amnesty International, which set off a storm by calling the U.S. prison at Guantanamo Bay “the gulag of our times,” backed away from the label Sunday.

Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld had ripped as “reprehensible” the description, made last month when the human rights group’s secretary general, Irene Khan, issued its annual report.

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