What Gulag?

Fire of Liberty

Of all the various articles and columns that I've read on the whole Gitmo/Koran affair, I'd have to say that Max Boot has written the best argument against the inane claims by Amnesty International and other "Human Rights" groups have made. Just look at what Boot had to say yesterday in The Los Angeles Times:

At Gitmo, personnel receive instructions: "Do not disrespect the Koran (let it touch the floor, kick it, step on it)." They must "handle the Koran as if it were a fragile piece of delicate art." This means ensuring "that the Koran is not placed in offensive areas such as the floor, near the toilet or sink, near the feet, or dirty/wet area." Only Muslim chaplains and interpreters are actually supposed to touch a Koran, and then only if wearing clean latex gloves. Moreover: "Two hands will be used at all times when handling the Koran in a manner signaling respect and reverence."

The Hood report suggests that, for the most part, this elaborate etiquette is obeyed. The worst lapse, splashed (so to speak) across front pages around the world, occurred March 25, when a guard urinated outside an air vent and some of his urine blew into a cell and onto an inmate and his Koran. Human rights absolutists should be relieved (sorry, can't help myself) to know that the detainee received a fresh uniform and a new Koran, and the guard was reprimanded and reassigned.

You'd think that Amnesty and the other groups should no be focusing more on nations who are known human rights violators rather a nation that pays a great deference to the rights of it's captured terrorists by providing them a Muslim diet, Korans, arrows pointing towards Mecca, prayer rugs and other accommodations. Why isn't Amnesty reporting more on the daily abuses in Iran, Syria, Zimbabwe, Libya, Vietnam, Cuba, Venezuela, North Korea and the countless hell-holes that provide no deference to their captives but prefer to beat, torture, rape and murder them instead. I guess that salacious headlines and getting Amnesty International's face out there on T.V. is more important than the truth.. Once again the liberal partisans have tarnished another good organization that once reported the true horrors of Soviet Russia and Communist China. As Edith and Archie say in the opening of All in The Family, "Those were the days."

Also, check out Anne Applebaum column from The Washington Post. As an learned journalist/historian on the Soviet "Gulag" system, Anne has spent an extensive time studying a true tyranny that deserved a gaze from Amnesty's investigative eyes. Take a peek at Applebaum's look at the Koran incidents:

A few years ago I spent several days sitting in the back of a library in London, reading through newsletters, pamphlets and other accounts of Soviet prison conditions published in the 1970s and '80s by Amnesty International. Sometimes these reports were remarkably detailed, testifying to the extraordinary ability of prisoners to smuggle out their stories. One included the memorable observation that on Sept. 13, 1979, the prisoner Zhukauskas "found a white worm" in his soup. A more harrowing 1987 news release told the story of the hunger strike and prison death of dissident writer Anatoly Marchenko. His widow, denied a death certificate or a proper funeral, wrote his name in ballpoint pen on his makeshift grave.

But Amnesty also published more general information about the Soviet political system, the whole of which — the state-run media, the courts, the secret police — was geared to the suppression of political dissent. This was important work, not least because most Soviet citizens were too frightened to do it. After all, during Joseph Stalin's lifetime, still a recent memory, some 25 million people had been arrested in the Soviet Union, mostly arbitrarily, and placed in thousands of forced-labor camps and exile villages all over the country. Millions died of starvation and overwork. This prison camp system, known as the gulag, cast such a horrific shadow that people were still afraid of it, 30 years after Stalin's death.

Amnesty, in other words, was an organization that once knew the meaning of the word "gulag." Amnesty also once knew the importance of political neutrality. On its Web site, the organization still describes itself as "independent of any government, political ideology, economic interest or religion." In the Cold War era, this neutrality was important, since it prevented the organization's publications, whether on prison food or prison deaths, from being seen as propaganda for one side or another.

I love writers/journalists who look at things with open eyes. Just wish Amnesty would do the same.