Digital Whittler

I’ve been following the recent controversy regarding Amnesty International’s recent report on human rights abuses around the world, and in particular the report’s comparison of the Guantanamo Bay prison to the Soviet gulags.

My take: the “gulag” comparison was out of place, but at the same time I can’t help but feel that some of the things that we’re doing in the name of the “War on Terror” are in violation of some principles that we’ve always held dear, and that saddens me.

However, I found something else in the AI report that really got me going: the insinuation that the U.S. is in some way responsible for Cuban human rights abuses.

In the report on Cuba, AI includes a two paragraph summary of the human rights situation on the island. Here’s the first paragraph:

By the end of 2004 there were at least 70 prisoners of conscience, most of them held since the 2003 crackdown on the dissident movement. However, 18 prisoners of conscience were released and many were moved to prisons nearer their homes.

Pretty standard stuff, I suppose, though one might say that it seems to minimize the fact that there are likely more than 70 prisoners of conscience in Cuba.

The next paragraph, however, got my attention:

Dissidents and their relatives continued to be threatened and harassed. The US embargo and related measures continued to have a negative effect on the enjoyment of the full range of human rights in Cuba. (emphasis added)

What? So, AI is saying that the U.S. is partially responsible for the human rights abuses in Cuba? How does that work? Are they deflecting some of the blame for the abuses from the Cuban government itself due to mitigating circumstances such as the U.S. economic sanctions?

Curious, I clicked over to the summary page in the AI report for the United States. Perhaps they make mention of the fact that the U.S. prison at Guantanamo Bay, which they strongly criticize, was the direct result of terrorist attacks against the United States by Al Quaeda? Surely that could be considered a mitigating circumstance worthy of mention.

Nope. In fact, the only time the word “terror” is mentioned on the U.S. summary page is as part of the phrase “war on terror.” No mention of terrorists or terrorist attacks. Hmm.

So I clicked back to the summary page for Cuba and read the whole thing. Surely, they must have some explanation for their claim that the U.S. is responsible for Cuban human rights abuses.

There are two paragraphs (three sentences) in the Cuban summary that relate to the U.S.:

In November, for the 13th consecutive year, the UN General Assembly passed a resolution calling on the USA to end its embargo on Cuba.

In June tough new sanctions by the US government on Cuba were introduced, restricting Cuban-Americans’ cash remittances to relatives on the island and limiting family visits between the USA and Cuba to 14 days once every three years. On 8 November US dollars ceased circulation in Cuba and were replaced by Cuban convertible pesos, following a decree by the Cuban Central Bank.

Um, that’s it? How does that make the U.S. responsible for having a “negative effect on the enjoyment of the full range of human rights in Cuba?” If the U.S. hadn’t taken this action, would there be any less prisoners of conscience in Cuba? If the embargo was lifted tomorrow, would the human rights situation in Cuba improve at all?

I am no supporter of the U.S. embargo on Cuba. In fact, I’ve long thought that it should be lifted immediately because it is counterproductive. And, I believe that the embargo violates my human rights to travel wherever I please. But I don’t have any fantasies that lifting the embargo would make Cuba any less of a human rights abuser. If anything, it would make the Cuban population a little less poor, but that’s about it.

So, to me the fact that AI tries to blame the U.S. for Cuba’s human rights abuses is far more egregious than their mischaracterization of Guantanamo as a gulag, and in my opinion it does far more damage to their reputation as even-handed observers. An even-handed observer would clearly put blame for human rights abuses in Cuba solely on Fidel and the Cuban government.

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