Re: Indonesia detains democracy activist after post to mailing list (fwd)

[Rich Graves <rich@c2.org>]

On Tue, 20 Aug 1996, James A. Donald wrote:

> At 03:18 PM 8/19/96 -0700, Rich Graves wrote:
> > You know, Amnesty
> > has some outstanding policies regarding accuracy, objectivity, and
> > universality.
> 
> Such as their policy that disappearances in Cuba are only mentioned in 
> a vague and euphemistic way somewhere in the fine print of the middle
> of their Cuban reports, whereas similar disappearances are shouted from
> the rooftops when they happen in right wing South American dictatorships?

In a word, no. I wasn't talking about their policy to oppress the Easter
Bunny, either. 

I meant their policy of not taking sides, which in Latin America has often
meant that they have less of a left-wing bias than Human Rights Watch. They
do not describe people with loaded terms like "pro-democracy," "worker's
rights advocate," "freedom fighter," or "social justice activist." They say
"this person is in prison for political reasons," and leave it at that.
Usually, they don't even identify the reasons -- just the abuse of state
power.

I've always favored a carefully tailored formalistic approach to human
rights and free speech issues, without taking sides on the underlying issues
of political controversy. Amnesty and the ACLU generally follow this
approach. When they have deviated from that approach to make sweeping
statements not tied to *individual* human rights, as Amnesty's general
opposition to apartheid and the ACLU's guarded support for majority-minority
gerrymandering, I have opposed them.

Happily, most of the time, they stay above the fray, which I believe is the
only appropriate role for a "human rights organization." I have no objection
to anti-communist, anti-fascist, or whatever organizations, but I don't
think they should bill themselves as human rights organizations. The
Wiesenthal Center to be a "human rights organization"; it's an anti-fascist
organization, which does some good, some bad, but always focused on one
issue. Human Rights Watch didn't start out as a "human rights organization"; 
it started out as an anti-communist organization. They have since broadened
their scope and international coverage considerably, but their history of
making substantitive statements on larger political questions remains.
Ironically, now they tend to show a leftist bias.

-rich