Shamnesty International
Jamie Weinstein, writing for the American Spectator, delivers a comprehensive article about how Amnesty International, which is supposed to be monitoring human rights abuses around the world, seems to take great notice of the United States and basically ignores most of the foulest countries on the planet.
Nothing illustrates this better than the numbers. According to the figures included in its 2007 report, Amnesty says it has released 13 country reports on the United States in 2006. This includes one document entitled “Stonewalled — still demanding respect: Police abuses against lesbian, gay, bi-sexual and transgender people in the USA” and one entitled “Amnesty International’s continuing concerns about taser use.”
While Amnesty was busily writing these reports about taser use in the U.S., Kim Jong-il in North Korea continued his sadistic rule. Despite the systematic human rights abuses which are daily fare in that country, the group wrote precisely zero country reports on North Korea in 2006. South Korea, by contrast, was the subject of two. Perhaps too many people were assigned to the taser issue to take notice.
In fact, Amnesty produced more country reports on the United States than on Cuba, Syria, North Korea, the Palestinian Authority, China, Iran, and Saudi Arabia combined. Sudan, which stands accused of perpetrating genocide, was criticized in five fewer reports than the U.S.
My first thought as I read this was something fairly obvious - because the United States is an open society, it’s pretty easy to find its perceived foibles, and thus there would be far more reports done. It would take some real effort to get into North Korea to investigate what it’s up to. But really, if that is all Amnesty is going to do - pick on the countries that are easier to investigate (because they are in fact freer countries) then what’s the point? If the point is to make the entire world a better place and free of human rights abuses, then Amnesty needs to do the hard work and report on countries we all know are human rights abusers.
Amnesty’s selective indignation is nothing new. In his book Law Without Nations? Why Constitutional Government Requires Sovereign States, the legal scholar Jeremy Rabkin wrote that while Pol Pot committed mass murder in Cambodia, “Amnesty International, the most prominent human rights advocacy organization in the mid-1970s, remained silent.” How come? “The organization did not want to give retroactive sanction to the American war in the region.” It was at this time that Amnesty launched its campaign against capital punishments in the U.S. It did so, Rabkin argues, at least partly out of a misguided commitment to neutrality. In this case, Amnesty demonstrated its neutrality by criticizing the United States.
Little has changed in recent years. In 2005, Kahn outlandishly called U.S terrorist detention facilities in Guantanamo Bay “the gulag of our times.” Yet, when the Soviet Gulag was up and running and political prisoners were being sent — often to their deaths — to labor camps in Siberia, Amnesty “averted its gaze from Soviet repression,” according to Rabkin.
Really, what’s the point of Amnesty International if they are willing to let bad countries committing genocide off the hook, while at the same time criticizing free democracies for things like tasers? Further, what’s the point of the media publishing the latest America-bashing report from Shamnesty - other than to appease the “blame America first” crowd?
Category :
liberals 
Tags :
Amnesty International, China, Darfur, Iran, Israel, North Korea, Palestinian Authority, Saudi Arabia, Soviet Union, Sudan, Syria, United Nations, United States 
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The number of human rights violations reported by AI is inversely proportional to the actual violations. They skipped the countries that did the most. Besides, it’s “in” to hate America, you know.