Gulag
Amnesty International has issued its annual report, which calls Guantanamo Bay "the gulag of our time".
That's right, a prison set up to hold hundreds of terrorists captured in combat against United States troops is the same as Soviet camps that housed millions of political dissidents.
A prison where inmates are given three squares a day that comply with Muslim practices is the same as Soviet camps that fed inmates meager rations that were one-third that of a healthy diet.
A prison where the death of inmates is virtually unheard of (sifting through four pages of Google results for "Guantanamo deaths" yielded one account by a released prisoner saying he witnessed the death of two people there) is the same as an extensive camp system that killed more than one million people.
The AP gives us one paragraph of background on the old Soviet gulags:
Oh wait, here's the Wikipedia entry on gulags:
The AP says Amnesty "accused the United States of shirking its responsibility to set the bar for human rights protections." Aparently, one camp housing 500 terrorists is the sole standard by which American human rights protection is to be judged.
Although Sudan and Haiti are given a passing mention in paragraph five of the AP story, it's not until paragraph 21 that we get any details of what happened there. Namely, 180,000 dead in Sudan's Darfur region. Including the early passing reference, Sudan gets three paragraphs.
That's right, a prison set up to hold hundreds of terrorists captured in combat against United States troops is the same as Soviet camps that housed millions of political dissidents.
A prison where inmates are given three squares a day that comply with Muslim practices is the same as Soviet camps that fed inmates meager rations that were one-third that of a healthy diet.
A prison where the death of inmates is virtually unheard of (sifting through four pages of Google results for "Guantanamo deaths" yielded one account by a released prisoner saying he witnessed the death of two people there) is the same as an extensive camp system that killed more than one million people.
The AP gives us one paragraph of background on the old Soviet gulags:
The use of the term gulag refers to the extensive system of prison camps in the former Soviet Union, many in remote regions of Siberia and specifically designed to hold political prisoners. The Soviets took over the system from the czarist government and expanded it after the 1917 Bolshevik Revolution. Untold thousands of prisoners of the so-called gulags died from hunger, cold, harsh treatment and overwork. (emphasis mine)Hmmm. I could've sworn the gulags killed more than "untold thousands".
Oh wait, here's the Wikipedia entry on gulags:
The total documentable deaths in the corrective-labour system from 1934 to 1953 amount to 1,054,000, including political and common prisoners; note that this does not include nearly 800,000 executions of "counterrevolutionaries", as they were generally conducted outside the camp system.It's really the outrageous hyperbole that bugs me. If Guantanamo Bay is a gulag, then what does Amnesty call, you know, an actual gulag?
The AP says Amnesty "accused the United States of shirking its responsibility to set the bar for human rights protections." Aparently, one camp housing 500 terrorists is the sole standard by which American human rights protection is to be judged.
Although Sudan and Haiti are given a passing mention in paragraph five of the AP story, it's not until paragraph 21 that we get any details of what happened there. Namely, 180,000 dead in Sudan's Darfur region. Including the early passing reference, Sudan gets three paragraphs.
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