“Eve Garrard has responded”:http://normblog.typepad.com/normblog/2004/06/amnesty_revisit.html to “my post”:https://www.crookedtimber.org/archives/001962.html suggesting that she had misunderstood some recent statements by Amnesty International. I should like to note, for the record, that my post didn’t amount to an endorsement of the claim that I took Amnesty to be making, namely, that the current attack on principles of human rights is the worst for the last fifty years. Nevertheless, I have some bones to pick with Eve’s latest. The scope of the claim that Eve attributes to Amnesty varies somewhat through her piece. Sometimes Eve seems to be suggesting that Amnesty is restricting blame to America or to the liberal democracies. There may indeed by statements by Amnesty officials with this character, but the “most relevant report”:http://web.amnesty.org/report2004/hragenda-1-eng does refer explicitly to “governments around the world” and explicitly mentions a number of countries not best described as “liberal democracies” (Russia, China, Yemen, to name but three). Additionally, Eve singles out the Patriot Act as being at the centre of any charge that human rights principles are being undermined. No doubt it forms part of any such case, but I’d have thought that such matters as the legal limbo of Guantanamo, the export of a detainee for torture by Syria, and the recent legal advice on the admissibility of torture and the (non) applicability of the Geneva conventions, make up a significant part of the picture. Finally — and I’m picking nits now — Eve writes that “the idea that the force of an argument should be materially altered by an (allegedly) misplaced comma is … delightful and charming.” It may be, but my complaint focused not on the _force_ of the argument but on its _meaning_ , and it is pretty commonplace that commas can and do alter the meaning of sentences: “Eats, Shoots & Leaves”:http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/1592400876/junius-20 .
{ 18 comments }
pepi 06.09.04 at 12:13 pm
She simply must not have read the original if she doesn’t think the comma is relevant to the meaning.
It does make me wonder how can anyone not acknowledge that principles matter a whole lot in terms of laws and respect of the same… I wonder if it was about, say, gun control, if cops in the US started arresting people for mere possession of any weapons in spite of what the 2nd amendment says. I’m sure we wouldn’t hear much of that “but there’s genocide in Sudan, surely that’s worse”.
J. Johnson 06.09.04 at 12:26 pm
the export of a detainee for torture by Syria
Seeing as this is one of three examples you offer to bolster your case that human rights principles are being undermined by the U.S., would you kindly explain how exactly the Maher Arar case (being Canadian I have followed this with some interest) is supposed to have worked. Do the Americans and Syrians have a formal agreement to this effect (i.e., do the U.S. authorities know in advance that by sending a detainee to Syria he will be tortured… and American hands will remain “clean”)? And just how do the recently imposed U.S. trade sanctions against Syria figure in all this?
Chris Bertram 06.09.04 at 12:53 pm
… your case that human rights principles are being undermined by the U.S
No, not _my_ case, it was one element of a list of cases which I conjectured would form part of such a case (alongside the Patriot Act).
Do the Americans and Syrians have a formal agreement to this effect (i.e., do the U.S. authorities know in advance that by sending a detainee to Syria he will be tortured… and American hands will remain “cleanâ€)?
First, why would it have to be a _formal_ agreement? Second, no, I don’t have access to confidential correspondence between the governments of the United States and Syria. Third, why on earth should the burden of proof fall upon indviduals criticizing governments rather than governments whose actions have led to someone being tortured?
q 06.09.04 at 12:54 pm
Eve’s first post was 1,050 words, this second post is 2,100 words to argue the same point.
“Argument By Repetition (Argument Ad Nauseam)” = if you say something often enough, some people will begin to believe it,
“Argument By Fast Talking” = if you go from one idea to the next quickly enough, the audience won’t have time to think,
“Argument By Prestigious Jargon” = using big complicated words so that you will seem to be an expert,
I predict 3,150 words attacking Amnesty International next time. Maybe the famous Dr Lobo could put his stamp of approval on it.
J. Johnson 06.09.04 at 1:24 pm
Chris,
Your first formulation was the export of a detainee for torture by Syria.
This is far more definitive than whose actions have led to someone being tortured. But the question remains, were those “actions” the deportation of Maher Arar to Syria, and precisely what violation of human rights principles did they entail (that was serious enough to be picked for your top three examples)?
pepi 06.09.04 at 1:45 pm
“…your case that human rights principles are being undermined by the U.S”
Nope, the wording is not “the US” but “governments” and “in the name of the war on terror” – as quoted in Chris’s first post:
(from the intro to the specific report on compliance with international law in the context of the ‘war on terror’)
Sorry to be such a pedant as to actually expect that when criticising a case made by Amnesty (not Chris) one would refer to the actual case being made by Amnesty in its own words.
More reading aid while I’m at it – List of governments named in the same page as passing laws or taking actions that have “raised human rights concerns”, in order of appearance:
– Colombia
– Russia (actions in Chechen Republic)
– Philippines
– Germany
– Mauritius
– Cuba
– Morocco
– Russian Federation, again
– South Korea
– Tunisia
…and at number 11, finally!, aren’t you happy?, the US – for – Guantanamo
– Yemen (…in 2002 the Yemeni authorities informed AI that the government had “no option” but to break its own laws and its human rights obligations in order to “fight terrorism” and contain the risk of a US military attack against Yemen… well at least Yemen admits to breaking laws, aren’t they generous)
– Pakistan
– China
– Uzbekistan
– United Kingdom
– Guyana
– India
– Jordan
– Morocco
– the USA (oi, twice! that is so antiamerican)
– Zimbabwe
– China (twice for them too, could it be antichinism?)
– Indonesia
– Australia
That’s a long list. 20-ish different countries. In all corners of the globe. Yet it’s all got to be about the US. With a little bit of effort, it even becomes anti-american or anti-western propaganda (or western-hating, or whatever she called it). This time, wordcounts are happily ignored.
J. Johnson 06.09.04 at 1:56 pm
Pepi, thanks for your impassioned defence of points I (at least) wasn’t questioning. My question — I promise not to count the words of anyone’s reply — involves the Maher Arar case and why it figures, next to the Patriot Act, among Chris’ top three examples of American (Western?) violations of human rights principles.
pepi 06.09.04 at 2:25 pm
J.Johson – oh, I thought with that phrase you were referring to the wider “case” in point in this discussion, ie. Amnesty’s statements. I quoted your phrase, but was responding generally to how Garrard was qualifying the “bias” in the reports.
Randy Paul 06.09.04 at 2:27 pm
J. Johnson:
Aticle 3 of the Convention Against Torture:
1. No State Party shall expel, return (“refouler”) or extradite a person to another State where there are substantial grounds for believing that he would be in danger of being subjected to torture.
2. For the purpose of determining whether there are such grounds, the competent authorities shall take into account all relevant considerations including, where applicable, the existence in the State concerned of a consistent pattern of gross, flagrant or mass violations of human rights.
Here is a link to the USDOS’s HR Report on Syria for 2002. In that report they state that “there was credible evidence that security forces continued to use torture, although to a lesser extent than in previous years.”
If security forces continued to use torture and the USDOS makes that contention in their report, then it certainly seems that the DOJ could have consulted the State Department on Syria’s use of torture or gone to their website as I did and found a strong and “consistent pattern of gross violation of human rights.”
Scott Martens 06.09.04 at 2:41 pm
Johnson, pop quiz: A Cuban boat person who has lived in Miami for 20 years and who has not been involved in Cuban exile politics takes a trip to Toronto to visit his sister. When he arrives at the airport in Toronto to go home at the end of his trip, the RCMP grabs him and detains him, accusing him of being a member of some Miami-based anti-Castro terrorist movement, on the grounds that he used to work with Orlando Bosch’s brother-in-law and got him to loan him a few bucks back in the mid-90’s. Our hypothetical Miami Cuban is then denied his right to an attorney and his right to contact the US consulate. His family is not notified of his detention, and it remains unclear whether the RCMP has notified any American authorities about him, although it seems that they might have called the FBI and asked for his file. (Which he has because all immigrants to the US have an FBI record.) He is interrogated in secret and then deported to Cuba. Eventually, Cuba releases him to the US chargé d’affaires in Havana and he returns home via Mexico City.
Canada has no agreement with Cuba under which Cuba agrees to torture suspects for the RCMP. Has a major human rights violation taken place? Is it a serious matter? I should think the answer to be yes and I am certain that the American columnists and bloggers so intent on defending the US from charges of attacking human rights would do the same.
In this hypothetical case, Canada has disregarded the rights of suspects under the Canadian Charter of Rights and under the Vienna Convention. It would have also violated far more prosaic moral codes by deporting a suspect to a nation well known to regularly violate customary standards in detention, interogation and trial. Furthermore, by deporting someone with dual citizenship not to the nation in which they ordinarily reside but to a nation almost universally regarded as having a lower standard of human rights is suspicious. Furthermore, to do all this without any sort of extradition hearing, in secret and out of the public eye, is a serious breech of the principles of open and responsible government.
Were this to happen, I would certainly regard it as a major human rights violation by Canada and a serious blow to any Canadian claim to support human rights internationally. Furthermore, I would regard such a blantant disregard for human rights and international law by the Canadian government to be a very serious blow to the international rule of law altogether. Canada has been a very important sponsor of increasingly codified international laws and standards for human rights, and a Canadian retreat from those principles would be a serious matter. Under such circumstances, I would gladly march with the most retrograde elements of the Miami Cuban community, even the ones who have blood on their own hands, in protest against my government.
However, Canada doesn’t do these things, they are what the US did to Maher Arar. As I have recently discovered – not entriely to my surprise – I hold Canada to a higher standard of human rights than the US.
So, you may be right. America’s recent behaviour may not represent such a new threat to international human rights, but if so, it is only because America’s claim to support such rights has been a farce for a long time.
J. Johnson 06.09.04 at 2:53 pm
Randy,
Thanks for the clarification, but (having following the Maher Arar case fairly closely — I am practically a neighbour of the Arars) I am still mystified (and this is my main point) as to how this (still murky) incident got included on Chris’ top three list of American (for they are all clearly American) violations of human rights principles. What about this case does Chris know that I, or the Canadian press, don’t?
Chris Bertram 06.09.04 at 3:18 pm
J.Johnson:
You are not entitled to conclude from my post that I consider this to be among the “top three” American violations of human rights. It formed part of a list of specimen cases where American committment to principles of human rights seemed weakened or abandoned. Had I carried out a comprehensive survey of such cases and thought about how to rank them, it is possible that my “top three” would be very different. The phrase “top three” is yours, not mine, and is not even weakly conversationally implied by my post.
J. Johnson 06.09.04 at 3:24 pm
America’s recent behaviour may not represent such a new threat to international human rights, but if so, it is only because America’s claim to support such rights has been a farce for a long time.
Are you then disputing Ms. Khan, Scott?
Your analogy doesn’t tell us anything that we don’t already know about the Maher Arar case, save perhaps that you are suggesting that the U.S. knew that Syria considered Arar a political enemy and was trying to curry favour with Assad. And, despite your ardent prose, it certainly doesn’t tell us why this incident ended up on Chris’ top three list. Oh, wait, I forgot your concluding sentence (above); by this reasoning I guess any case would do.
J. Johnson 06.09.04 at 3:45 pm
Had I carried out a comprehensive survey of such cases and thought about how to rank them, it is possible that my “top three†would be very different.
Chris,
Accepted (my previous post probably missed your reply because I hadn’t refreshed the page). And if you detect any snarkiness in my previous post, it was entirely inspired by the tone of Scott Martens’ “parable”, not anything you wrote.
Personally, I am still puzzled by the Maher Arar case (a journalist friend is currently working on an investigative report and I have seen some of his research) and I consider it a dubious stick with which to beat the U.S. over human rights. This hardly ranks with Guantanamo and leaves you open to the familiar charge: “If this is all he can come up with…”
Randy Paul 06.09.04 at 4:11 pm
J. Johnson:
The refoulement of Maher Arar is not isolated. According to this article from the Washington Post illegal renditions are not a rare occurrence.
Maher Arar is a microcosm example of this crime.
pepi 06.09.04 at 5:19 pm
j.johnson – but even considering only that case, even if you may have your reasons to be puzzled about the case – once it’s demonstrably clear that the procedures followed went against a convention protecting human rights to which the US is signatory, well, would that not qualify as violation of international law and human rights? What is there to be puzzled about, in that respect? We don’t have to know all the behind the scenes intelligence details that we’ll never know anyway, to assess wether there was a violation or not. If what we know already shows there was a series of illegalities, then it is serious, even if it’s just about one person and not hundreds of detainees. The concern is about the principles, not just the numbers affected.
In other words, there are known unknowns, and unknown unknowns, but, er, once you got a known known…
J. Johnson 06.09.04 at 5:58 pm
Pepi,
I agree with you that “refoulement” to places like Syria violates human rights conventions. What I cannot agree with is your contention that it “is about principles not just the numbers affected”. There are (unwritten) scales to measure human rights violations by which genocide rightly gets ranked as a more urgent matter than others (and that is a “universal” norm). Principles are theoretical; “numbers affected” are empirical. A key point of Ms. Khan’s letter was that that human rights violations committed in the name of the “war on terror” had quantifiable consequences.
nick 06.09.04 at 9:14 pm
Eve really doesn’t know when to stop digging, does she?
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