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We have not seen from them a more
detailed response to the concerns we have expressed in our report,"
Khan said.
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TOKYO, June 3, 2005 (IslamOnline.net & News
Agencies) - The row between Amnesty International and Washington has
escalated with the rights group hitting back at US outrage over labeling
Guantanamo Bay a "gulag" and challenging the globe's sole superpower to
open the notorious military detention center to outside
inspections.
US President George W. Bush and other government
figures have said they were shocked when the human rights group accused
the United States of running "a new gulag of prisons around the world
beyond the reach of the law and decency".
The secretary general of London-based Amnesty
International, Irene Khan, Thursday, June 2, defended the comment and said
the US response lacked substance and was "defensive and
dismissive".
"We have not seen from them a more detailed response
to the concerns we have expressed in our report," she told a news
conference on a visit to Tokyo, reported Agence France-Presse
(AFP).
"Our answer is simple: if that is so (that the
allegations are unfounded), open up these detention centers. Allow us and
others to visit them.
"What is interesting is that we are actually getting
response from the US government" for the first time in more than three
years, Khan said. "We welcome an opportunity to sit down and have a debate
with them on the issue."
Because the US military base in Guantanamo Bay for
prisoners from the "war on terror" is located in Cuba, the Bush
administration argues its inmates do not enjoy the same legal protections
as those held inside the United States.
Strong Message
"We are concerned about allegations of torture that
frequently emerge and are not independently and fully investigated," Khan
said.
She added the human rights watchdog had used the gulag
reference in its annual report to "send a strong message", not to set off
debate in itself about the analogy to the infamous Soviet prison
camps.
"Our concern is about the detention of individuals
outside of the limit of laws," she said. The United States should take a
number of steps at the Guantanamo Bay and other detention centers, she
said:
"End all secret and incommunicado detentions; grant
the International Red Cross fully access; ensure recourse to the law for
all detainees; bring to justice anyone responsible for authorizing or
committing human rights violations."
The Amnesty report came after allegations that
interrogators at Guantanamo had desecrated the Muslim holy book, the Noble
Qur'an, to pressure prisoners.
Angry Reactions
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"It is an absurd report. It just
is," Bush said. (Reuters)
|
Following the publication of Amnesty report, Bush told
a news conference Tuesday what he thought of Amnesty's findings: "It is an
absurd report. It just is."
"When there's accusations made about certain actions
by our people, they're fully investigated in a transparent way," Bush
said.
"It seemed like to me they based some of their
decisions on the word of and the allegations by people that were held in
detention, people who hate America, people that have been trained in some
instances to dissemble, that means not tell the truth," he
added.
But Khan said Thursday the report was compiled mostly
by American staff.
US Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld on Wednesday also
called the gulag reference "reprehensible".
"No force in the world has done more to liberate
people that they have never met than the men and women of the United
States military," Rumsfeld said.
"Most would define a gulag as where the Soviet Union
kept millions in forced-labor concentration camps or, I suppose some might
say, where Saddam Hussein mutilated and murdered untold numbers because
they held views unacceptable to his regime."
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