US influence and gross human rights disasters have a well-established and gruesome relationship in Latin America.
The now rightwing-controlled National Assembly in Venezuela will try to pass an “amnesty law” aimed at freeing politician Leopoldo Lopez and others it views as “political prisoners.” Many people are likely to rely on Amnesty International to judge if this law is something that should be applauded. That’s unfortunate because well-funded NGOs like Amnesty have shown that they are all too willing to serve Washington’s foreign policy objectives at the expense of human rights. A few days ago a statement by Amnesty essentially called on the new National Assembly to pass an amnesty law.
Unlike Leopoldo Lopez, Chelsea Manning never participated in a military coup against her own democratically elected government. Unlike Leopoldo Lopez, she never kidnapped a government official. What she did was expose grave human rights abuses perpetrated by the U.S. military in Iraq. She did so because her conscience would not allow her to stay silent. She never had any reason to believe that her whistleblowing would lead to fame, fortune or political power – quite the contrary. She has been sentenced to a thirty-five year prison term for her noble and selfless acts. The conditions of her very lengthy pre-trial detention were so appallingly cruel that a U.S. spokesperson, PJ Crowley, resigned in protest. In short, Chelsea Manning is about as genuine an example of a “prisoner of conscience” as there can be. But Amnesty has not had the political courage to name Chelsea Manning a prisoner of conscience. Amnesty has, however, given that designation to Leopoldo Lopez.
In 2011, an Amnesty USA official told me that they were not sure enough about Manning’s motives to name her a prisoner of conscience. Two years later, after conferring with “experts”, another official told me Manning had not been named a prisoner of conscience because there were two things Amnesty was still not sure about:
- That Manning released information in a “responsible manner”
- That the U.S. government has been punishing her in order to prevent public knowledge of human rights abuses
I explained here why those are pitiful excuses. Manning did not dump classified information into the public domain. She passed it along to Wikileaks, a journalistic organization which has requested the Obama administration’s help to ensure that leaks do not harm innocent people, and she deliberately refrained from releasing all the sensitive information to which she had access. It’s risible of Amnesty to feign uncertainty as to why the U.S. government has chosen to make a grim example of Manning. Amnesty is clearly unwilling to alienate U.S. government officials or major donors. Amnesty has been strongly supportive of clemency for Manning, but it is not willing to denounce the criminalization of what she did even though there is absolutely no evidence that her actions did harm to any innocent people.
The contrast with the Lopez case could hardly be more striking. Amnesty expresses no concern about the purity of his motives despite Lopez being a known coup supporter. In Manning’s case, Amnesty doubted her motives and played dumb about why she was being punished.
You don’t have to believe Leopoldo Lopez received a fair trial to see a link between his public remarks in 2014 and the killing of government supporters, community members, and police. Given his direct participation in one coup, it is also quite plausible that Lopez engaged in criminal conspiracy as a Venezuelan court ruled. People I respect have expressed alarm over the lack of transparency regarding the Lopez trial and the ruling against him. That’s a valid concern. It has led to less than reliable sources like Lopez’s lawyers, OAS bureaucrats, and the even more flagrantly biased Human Rights Watch, to fill a void about what is “known” about the details of his trial.
Amnesty has blamed heated rhetoric by government officials for inciting attacks on government critics. Amnesty’s stated reasons for denying Chelsea Manning the “prisoner of conscience” designation, however absurd in her case, are based on the valid general observation that public speech can have dangerous consequences. Of course, it doesn’t follow that criminalizing political speech is therefore justified. If it did, a great many Western editors and journalists would be facing prison for facilitating the Iraq war. However, you don’t have to support criminalizing speech to denounce remarks that could incite violence, but Amnesty has not expressed the same level of concern about the opposition’s vehement anti-government rhetoric.
During violent protests in 2014, a blog post by Amnesty did say (vaguely but still to its credit considering how seldom the Venezuelan right-wing is held accountable for anything) that the “opposition also has a responsibility to show, through words and actions, their respect for the rule of law.” Unfortunately, that same blog post recycled the opposition’s spin about “colectivos” which Amnesty defined as “groups of armed civilians close to the government”. Colectivos – as explained in this piece – are any political, cultural, work based, or community organizations. In a country long plagued by violent crime, a very very small portion of them are armed for self-defence and have been long before the rise of “Chavismo” in 1999, but that is certainly not their defining feature. Amnesty simply recycled a smear spread in Venezuela’s private media (which contrary to much fantasy has always given fierce government opponents ample voice) during violent protests in 2014 – a smear that was repeated by much of the international press. It could be used to justify repression of political organizations among the poor. In 2014, it was certainly linked to the killing of some government supporters and other violence against them.
Amnesty has done this kind of thing before, specifically after the U.S.-perpetrated coup in Haiti in 2004 ousted its democratically elected government. Amnesty used the term “chimere” to refer to loyalists of the deposed government among the poor. It was a derogatory term coined by elite supporters of the coup who soon launched an extremely murderous assault on the poor.
U.S. influence and gross human rights disasters have a well-established and gruesome relationship in Latin America. The shambolic elections in Haiti are an excellent recent example. Credible human rights groups would make denouncing U.S. interference anywhere a very high priority. The big human rights groups – especially in countries with left governments like Ecuador and Venezuela – do the opposite. They reflexively adopt the assumptions of U.S backed opponents and ignore recent history: the 2004 coop in Haiti and the 2009 coup in Honduras for example, never mind decades of propping up brutal dictatorships.
NGOs like Amnesty end up providing a kind of “idea laundering” for the U.S. government and its allies. Many years ago, that’s how Canadian writer Linda McQuaig described the function of corporate funded think tanks in debates about domestic policy. Not everybody will be happy to believe what the U.S. government or corporate journalists say. It’s useful to have “independent”, and preferably liberal, organizations like Amnesty promote the required assumptions and deceit.
Originally published: Joe Emersberger (teleSUR)
Joe Emersberger was born in 1966 in Windsor, Ontario, Canada where he currently lives and works. He is an engineer and a member of the Canadian Auto Workers (CAW) union.
Commenting only about the criticism of Amnesty not supporting Manning, searches indicate Amnesty has asked the US government to free Manning since 2013. They renewed their call to the US to free her immediately in 2014. Am I missing something re their stance on Manning? Or perhaps they did manage to review their position, as they said they would, since 2011?