Don Murray (Canadian Broadcasting): Harsher Words from Amnesty Intern'l

[Jack Rabbit]

From the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation
Dated Thursday May 26

Harsher words
By Don Murray

"Guantanamo has become the gulag of our times," "when the most powerful country in the world thumbs its nose at the rule of law and human rights, it grants a licence to others to commit abuse with impunity."

These were the words of Irene Khan, the secretary general of Amnesty. They referred to the holding of detainees in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, for more than three years without charge and without access to lawyers.

They referred to the abuses in Iraq's Abu Ghraib prison and the so-called rendition of prisoners to countries where torture is practised. Amnesty called this "contracting out torture."

Taking on the Bush administration with those combative words certainly got the attention of journalists. Khan said, in answer to a question, that the goal was not "to create an anti-American diatribe but actually to point out to the U.S. the role it can play, as the world's most powerful country, to create a positive model."

The U.S. didn't seem to grasp the positive nature of the criticism.

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