Amnesty International in its latest human rights report put the spotlight on the United States. “The global security agenda promulgated by the US administration is bankrupt of vision and bereft of principle,” Amnesty’s secretary general wrote. “Sacrificing human rights in the name of security at home, turning a blind eye to abuses abroad and using pre-emptive military force where and when it chooses have neither increased security nor ensured liberty.”
When the report was released she added for good measure that the US “has lost its moral high ground and its ability to lead on peace and human rights elsewhere.” China agrees. It has repeatedly expressed shock at the abuse of Iraqi prisoners at Abu Ghraib and told Washington it must abide by international conventions. “We are shocked by the fact that Iraqi prisoners have been ill-treated and condemn this kind of activity in violation of international conventions,” it told the press earlier this month, demanding a “complete investigation into the abuses.
Amnesty International has carried out a little investigation of its own, and discovered a curious fact: that the US may have learnt some of its interrogation techniques — from China.
A Chinese delegation visited the US military installation at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, in the autumn of 2002 and there is said to have told its hosts how to get the detainees to talk. During that visit, the Chinese took a particular interest in Uighur prisoners — mostly Muslims from China’s northwestern Xinjiang region — and reportedly suggested such “stress and duress” techniques as forced sitting for many hours and sleep deprivation, together with “environmental manipulation”. While Amnesty believes that the Uighurs are now held in one of the less unpleasant wings at Guantanamo, it fears for their lives if they return home to China, where an even worse fate may well await them because China’s assurances to the contrary “cannot be trusted”, the report said.
One of the ostensible reasons the US went to Iraq in the first place, of course, was concern over Saddam Hussein’s human rights record, and in response to Amnesty’s allegations the White House was quick to insist its wars protected “the human rights of some 25 million people in Afghanistan and some 25 million people in Iraq” — though these were presumably 25 million people other than the residents of Najaf, Fallujah, Baghdad and above all the inmates of Abu Ghraib.
It is easy to scoff. In our region too, the pictures from Abu Ghraib and the Amnesty report have been welcomed by the champions of human rights. The Arab press has seen endless column inches filled with condemnations of US abuses. But are we, like the Chinese and the Americans themselves, sitting in a glass house?
