Ask Amnesty

From Brandy:

If President Bush asked your advice on how to stop human rights violations in Iraq without war, what would you suggest?

Press Officer Alistair Hodgett responds. Alistair has just returned from an Amnesty International mission to Basra and Baghdad.

Amnesty International takes no position on the resort to force to resolve international disputes, but we urged President Bush to consider the potential cost of conflict for human rights in Iraq and beyond and to therefore exhaust all peaceful means. For decades, the US and UK had ignored Iraq's abysmal human rights record, just as the Bush Administration now chooses to ignore Amnesty International's reporting on violations in Colombia. The violations you cite were well known during those years, coming to light through AI's work as well as that of other NGOs and the media. If governments and people speak out against human rights abuses as they occur, and endeavor to prevent them through peaceful means, then there may be no need to resort to war with all of the attendant cost in human suffering.

For example, AI's 1983 Annual Report entry on Iraq documented rampant disappearances, executions and torture in Iraq. As the The National Security Archive at George Washington University revealed, during the 1980s the US decided to renew ties with Iraq and provide intelligence and aid, and sent a high-level presidential envoy named Donald Rumsfeld to shake hands with Saddam (20 December 1983).