The New Gulag

Amnesty International to Cuba's Political Detainees (All 11 Million): You Don't Exist

Even the Washington Post thinks Amnesty International has gone too far.  Mind you, the WaPo thinks that they are right about the substance of the criticism, but they cavil at AI's use of the word gulag. to describe Guantanamo.

But we draw the line at the use of the word "gulag" or at the implication that the United States has somehow become the modern equivalent of Stalin's Soviet Union. Guantanamo Bay is an ad hoc creation, designed to contain captured enemy combatants in wartime. Abuses there -- including new evidence of desecrating the Koran -- have been investigated and discussed by the FBI, the press and, to a still limited extent, the military. The Soviet gulag, by contrast, was a massive forced labor complex consisting of thousands of concentration camps and hundreds of exile villages through which more than 20 million people passed during Stalin's lifetime and whose existence was not acknowledged until after his death. Its modern equivalent is not Guantanamo Bay, but the prisons of Cuba, where Amnesty itself says a new generation of prisoners of conscience reside; or the labor camps of North Korea, which were set up on Stalinist lines; or China's laogai , the true size of which isn't even known; or, until recently, the prisons of Saddam Hussein's Iraq.

Thank you, Washington Post, for  the reality check.  Read the AI report here.  Let's cut to the chase: Cuba is mentioned once to locate Guantanamo, as in: "President Bush’s refusal to apply the Geneva Conventions to those captured during the international armed conflict in Afghanistan and transferred to the US naval base at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, was challenged by a judicial decision in November." 
By the by, we think that AI should actually visit Cuba, which even they admit they haven't been allowed to do since 1988.  If you go the Amnesty International website you can go to the Cuba pull down and see that, by AI's definition, there are 70 prisoners of conscience in Cuba.  Hmmmm... what about all those people who have their travel restricted because, say they want to attend a political event that is critical of Fidel?  Doesn't that qualify as imprisonment?  Not according to AI.  The people of Cuba are not allowed to travel freely for any reason, they do not have access or means to acquire adequate food because of government restrictions.  Doesn't that qualify as inhumane treatment?  By contrast, prisoners at Guantanamo get three squares, prayer rugs, and, if their own allegations are to be believed, a constant stream of comely interrogators tempting them to think naughty thoughts. BUT their  "travel" is restricted to a cell. 
So, AI, it's just a matter of real estate. 

Loo with convenient bookshelf attachment Relevant aside:  And why does desecrating the Koran, even if it's happening, attain such exalted status as the ultimate abuse?  We're thinking that the girls who are subjected to late term abortions because they become pregnant because they were taken away from their families to work on state farms might have a different definition of abuse.  Just a thought.

Comments

[The Redhunter]

I would think that in a way everyone in Cuba is a political prisoner. Most of them would would oppose the government don't because of the obvious consequences. They are, as Natan Scharansky describes it, "double thinkers", and if he is to be believed, there are a lot more of them in totalitarian countries than one might believe by casual observation.

So AI has decided to go after the US for Guantanamo, eh? Big surprise. On the one hand we shouldn't be exempt, on the other one does wish they'd pay more attention to places like oh, say, Cuba.

[bbmoe]

Oh, Redhunter! Guantanamo IS Cuba. Didn't you get the memo?

[The Redhunter]

LOL !! Silly me, I forgot