Talk Nation Radio’s Dori Smith interviews Joshua Rubenstein, an expert on the Soviet Gulag Archipeligo about Amnesty International’s comparison of America’s behavior in Guantanamo and elsewhere with the old Soviet gulag.

“Amnesty International will not be backing down,” says Soviet historian Joshua Rubenstein. Rubenstein is the Northeast Regional Director for Amnesty International.

Intro: Welcome to Talk Nation Radio produced in New England at WHUS Storrs
Talk Nation.orgfor news and discussion on politics, human rights, and the environment. I’m Dori Smith

Our guest this time is Joshua Rubenstein, Northeast Regional Director of Amnesty International. The group has become internationally renowned for providing human rights reports on the world’s most forgotten and oppressed people.

Our topic is Guantanamo Prison, where more than 500 people are currently in detention, held as “enemy combatants” under new rules the White House imposed after 9/11. Within these rules prisoners have waited long months in detention with no access to their attorneys and without normal judicial process under U.S. law. Amnesty International and other groups say they find reports of abuse and even torture at Guantanamo credible.

“Let’s see the evidence. Were these people simply picked up at random? Were they picked up in a sweep? Were they brought in by bounty hunters? Were they people targeted by the Northern Alliance? Let’s find out.”

From Talk Nation Radio interview on WHUS Storrs, June 29, 2005

I asked Joshua Rubenstein, Northeast Regional Director of Amnesty International, to comment first on the ongoing debate about semantics the White House started in response to his group’s use of the term, “Gulag”.

Josh Rubenstein: Sure, well back on May 24th earlier this spring we issued our Annual Report that covers a hundred forty nine different countries, and, of course, the US is among them. And in the forward to that report and in a Press Conference in London, our Secretary General referred to Guantanamo Bay as the “Gulag of our time.” What she was saying was basically that the fact that people are held there without trial, without charge, without access to families or lawyers, is a very worrisome thing, and she then referred to “the Gulag of our time” which is a reference to the very extensive colonies of forced labor of slave labor under Stalin, that engulfed millions of people.

Now, obviously, we are not saying that by using the phrase Gulag that we are implying that what is going on at Guantanamo is in any way shape or form a symbol of an extent or in magnitude of what went on under Stalin, not at all, but we think it is an apt metaphor, because by the way what’s going on at Guantanamo is only one part of a very extensive archipelago of detention centers in Iraq, in Afghanistan, perhaps on U.S. ships, and other secret detention centers, as well as the 500 or more prisoners at Guantanamo Bay. So that’s what we were referring to, the fact that in this war on terror the U.S. is adopting measures that run counter to its obligations under international law.

Smith: Now Mr. Rubenstein, we know the President has responded by calling your report about Guantanamo “absurd”. We also know that among those calling for the closure of Guantanamo now are two former Presidents, Jimmy Carter and Bill Clinton.

These are very serious charges, there is a lot of documentation for what is going on at Guantanamo, and some of the people that have read the FBI report, government officials too, have been shocked and have said so, and we’ve heard shocking testimony on the floor of the U.S. Senate. And I think it’s fair to say that the Bush Administration’s capability to present kind of removed from reality perceptions of the war in Iraq and Guantanamo, the war on terror, other aspects of their policies, is starting to wane. It seems that the lies are wearing thin, the PR is getting stale, and even someone like Karl Rove isn’t able to get away with it. Comment on the way the world seems now to you in terms of the Bush Administration and these kinds of challenges in the coming months.

Rubenstein: Well keep in mind Amnesty is not a political organization, and some of the issues you raise will have to be sorted out within the Congress and our courts, but Amnesty’s job is first to document human rights abuses where they take place. That’s why in our Annual Report we did chose to highlight the abuses by the U.S. Government. -Not because they are the worst abuses but because when the U.S. is we believe guilty of these kinds of (abuses) and responsible for these kinds of abuses, the fact is the U.S. is the most influential violator and so it serves as an example to countries around the world who can say well it’s the US which prides itself on being the model for all nations in how it protects civil liberties and human rights. If the US can justify the use of torture then we the Chinese can, we the government of Zimbabwe can.

So, that’s why we chose to highlight what’s going on, that in the wake of 9/11, which was this horrific attack, and the US has every right to investigate what happened and find those responsible, it then began to cross red lines, to hold people without charge and to mistreat and torture prisoners and that’s where groups like Amnesty must be outspoken in uncovering these kinds of abuses.

Smith: When Sudanese forces practice torture, arbitrary arrest, secret detention, murder, Amnesty International responds with various kinds of urgent action alerts. Talk about how this process has worked traditionally and how it has served those forgotten people in prisons.

Rubenstein: Well that’s a very good question, you know when Amnesty was founded now over forty years ago, Peter Benenson who just died last year wrote an article called, “The Forgotten Prisoner” in which he described obscure people being held for their religious beliefs or their political beliefs. You don’t need Amnesty International for famous prisoners whose cases will be highlighted in the New York Times or at the United Nations. You need Amnesty International and other human rights groups to do research on what happens to little known activists, the people from the wrong ethnic group or religious minority who get into trouble. And so we then often turn this information into urgent action appeals where hundreds if not thousands of Amnesty activists around the world can write letters, send telegrams, send faxes, send emails, send all kinds of communications to the government involved expressing their concern over the medical treatment someone needs or the isolation they face, the possibility of disappearing, or in the face of an impending execution, it could be any one of these situations that we deem as so urgent that it really requires the intervention of hundreds of not thousands of people.

Now you mention Sudan, of course there have been two major crises with Sudan first in the South in the conflict with the Dinka and other tribes, that was a long standing war that went on for over twenty years, there has been a settlement recently and we will see how much that holds. Then in the last two or three years we have a second, even more terrifying series of events in Darfur, which is the Western part of Sudan, where well over a million people have become refugees on both sides of the border with Chad, where rape has been used as a weapon of war, of course against women, many people have been widowed, and the U.S. Government has decided that this is a case of genocide, and yet the world’s response has been rather muted. And this is one of the things that we speak about in this report as well.

Smith: So the Amnesty International card we get in the mail, those of us who have followed the course of this organization, usually has a note. Sign this and send a letter to someone, and it’s a very striking thing you do because we picture that person sitting in absolute despair not thinking anyone will be there.

Rubenstein: Right, well this is, of course, a very important part of our effort. We connect prisoners of conscience with what’s called people of conscience, activists, who are willing to send that post card and make that phone call, go to a demonstration, in response to an episode of torture, in response to a series of disappearances, or in defense of an individual prisoner who we can identify, we can often tell what jail they are in, and having letters go to that jail really makes a difference in the moral of that prisoner, how they are being treated, and possibly leading to their release.

Smith: Now before we get off of the subject of Darfur I want to talk with you a little bit about war crimes trials going on there, scheduled. Your organization has said that these are not going to be effective, you feel, because even as they go on the crimes will be continuing in the background. Talk a little bit about how governments use things that seem to be addressing war crimes, crimes against humanity as a way to protect themselves.

Rubenstein: Well the case of Sudan is a little unique. On the one hand there is no question that the scale of the suffering deserves international scrutiny. And we would like to see this newly established International Criminal Court be given the support and information it needs to investigate and prosecute people responsible for the mass killings in Darfur. Now the government of Sudan is saying well wait a minute we’ll prosecute them. And of course, if there is a genuine prosecution within a country that precludes the international criminal court from moving further because the ICC was established in order to prosecute people who will not or cannot be prosecuted at the domestic level within the country itself. So we are afraid that the government of Sudan is pursuing a very cynical policy, being willing on the face of it to investigate and prosecute people responsible for these atrocities in Darfur, but not really to do it in a serious consistent way but just as a way to defer and preclude an investigation by the ICC and that’s what we are concerned about.

Smith: I think people, when they consider the disaster known as Darfur today and the horrific nature of crimes being committed there get a sense of powerlessness. Talk a little bit about what kinds of things Amnesty International does to reduce that feeling of being dis-empowered, that is an international problem and how you bring to bear international forces of the people.

Rubenstein: Well keep in mind Amnesty is the largest grass roots human rights group in the world but we are not alone. We have other groups similar to ours like Human Rights Watch or Human Rights First or here in the Boston area we have the national office Physicians Human Rights. So there are many organizations based in the west that are human rights organizations looking at problems around the world, but even more importantly there is now a network of indigenous human rights groups in Africa, in Asia, in Latin America. So part of our job is not just to investigate and appeal on behalf of prisoners and uncover episodes of torture but a good part of our effort is to give support to the individual activists themselves, the groups themselves that operate in Latin America, in Africa, in Asia, helping to give them support so they have room to maneuver in their society. So we are just not talking about Amnesty now. We are talking about a really wide network of activists. So when you join Amnesty and you go to an Amnesty chapter meeting in the Boston area, the Hartford area, or somewhere in Sidney Australia or Tokyo Japan, you should feel yourself being part of a broader network so that your voice, your letters, your activism, is just one voice in a broader movement. And we think that’s what gives resonance and power to what we are trying to do.

Smith: Now I want to talk again about the United States and reactions here to criticism about US human rights practices. When the US director, William Shultz, was interviewed about the remarks made by Secretary Khan, it was striking I felt that he mentioned that U.S. Administrations are happy to use Amnesty International reports when they want to criticize other countries and defend their policies, but those same kinds of criticisms are discounted when leveled against America.

Rubenstein: Yeah well that’s typical. You know governments often, not just the US, invoke our work, our research, our campaigning, when we deal with countries that are their political opponents. The US administration off and on will welcome our criticism of China, certainly of North Korea, of Cuba, of Iran, but then when we hold the mirror up to US practices they get very defensive, they call us names, everything to deflect that criticism. You know this is the same kind of way in which many governments behave, not just the US.

Smith: I want to say too that your organization has a lot of references to the problems that prisoners face and so obviously you discuss the legal nature of these problems and you must have legal consultants on board right?

Rubenstein: Yes, we do, in our London office looking at the laws within different countries and regions and, of course, international law. But by and large Amnesty International does not appeal through the courts. Our work is more directed to appealing through public opinion, through embarrassing governments, through putting kind of moral pressure on governments. We really don’t have the capacity to mobilize lawyers from different countries or send lawyers to different countries who then try to help a prisoner through the courts. It’s more through letter writing, demonstrations, and nurturing a sense of embarrassment in that government however difficult that can be.

Smith: And certainly the kinds of embarrassment that you are trying to apply here are to make change and to protect people, it’s not that you are looking for one party or another to be in office in the White House.

Rubenstein: No not at all, I mean our job is to be critical of everyone so for example during the eight years when Bill Clinton was president we had a democratic administration Amnesty took him to task on several issues, the way he expanded the use of the death penalty at the federal level, the way his government failed to respond to the genocide in Rwanda, in the spring and summer of 1994, aspects of the bombing campaign in Kosovo. These are major episodes where Amnesty and other groups were outspoken in criticizing the Clinton Administration. So now we have another Republican Administration, a more conservative Administration in the Bush Administration. But our job is to be critical of human rights abuses when we see them and in that sense I think we are studiously non partisan.

Smith: You also are part of an organization that comments on breaking news and I want to ask for your initial response, not one obviously as an official one for Amnesty, but today Attorney General Gonzales was on NPR and responding to various kinds of criticisms about how prisoners have been detained in the war on terror. And today’s story is that Gonzales was explaining how the use of protective forms of custody are justifying holding prisoners in the war on terror. I want to know to what extent to do you the communications going on right now between the White House, Attorney General Antonio Gonzalez, and others, to what extent is this mostly PR rather than real legitimate responses that would explain policy?

Rubenstein: Well I think he is referring to a report that was just issued by the American Civil Liberties Union and Human Rights Watch, organizations we have deep respect for, about how the statute covering material witnesses has been used, extensively used, since 9/11. This fits in with a pattern of holding people without trials, of bringing in people from Middle Eastern countries and Southeast Asia for registration in 2001 and 2002, many of whom were then expelled from the country or held without trial, their families not informed of where they were, over really minor issues and without any substantial connection of terrorism or even minor connection. I think that’s what the report is getting at, the material witness status is a very dubious status under law where you are holding people, you are claiming that they are not the subject of investigation, that they are not being suspected of criminal activity but you treat them as if they were and in some ways very harshly. And I think that’s what the report is getting at, and OK, the Attorney General responded, we are in a democracy, the press has the right to ask questions, and from time to time even the Attorney General one of the leading figures in the cabinet has to respond. Whether he is really answering the questions time will tell.

Smith: I found myself thinking about your web page as I listened to that news broadcast this morning. There is a woman, (see video) a mother, on the web page who’s son is in Guantanamo. She talks about the fact that she feels so helpless, she doesn’t know what to do, her son happened to go to Pakistan and he was in a school there as I understand it. She’s claiming he is absolutely innocent. He is claiming he is absolutely innocent and there is a grotesque story of how he was tortured. What I want to ask you about is this. Let’s hypothetically say that the same kind of thing happened where he was arrested simply for being in proximity with people under investigation, the U.S. Military security forces working in the war on terror wanted to know what he knew, they shipped him off to Guantanamo where he’s been for a very long time. Talk about just the possibility for individuals like him, and the idea that this is a mother who in years past might have turned to America for help with a case like this had Pakistan arrested this man and held him, and disappeared him really.

Rubenstein: Well this is the kind of case that exemplifies our concern. OK, the mother believes he is innocent, he is claiming he is innocent. That’s not proof of anything in and of itself, that’s why you need some kind of legitimate proceeding, whether it’s a military tribunal, a tribunal under the Geneva Conventions, whether it’s a trial within Guantanamo or on the mainland of the United States. Over a year ago the Supreme Court said that detainees at Guantanamo should have access to U.S. courts.

And if there’s evidence linking this young man to Al Quida or other acts of terrorism the U.S. would be legitimate in holding him but they can’t just do it based on their own say so. They have to present some kind of evidence before an impartial panel, impartial set of judges. And that’s what we are insisting on.

If among the 500 or more people in Guantanamo there are detainees who are genuinely involved in violence, in the insurgency in Iraq, or tied to Al Quida, the US would have the right to hold them. But let’s see the evidence. Were these people simply picked up at random? Were they picked up in a sweep? Were they brought in by bounty hunters? Were they people targeted by the Northern Alliance? Let’s find out. And the best way to find that out is in some kind of proceeding where evidence is presented and they are represented by counsel and they can challenge that evidence. Otherwise, you really don’t know what happened.

Smith: We’re here talking with Joshua Rubenstein, he is Northeast Regional Director of Amnesty International, and he’s talking about their 2005 (Annual) report. That report contains information about Darfur, about Guantanamo, and other countries and other problems. Joshua Rubenstein is also co-author, with Vladimir P. Naumov of Stalin’s Secret Pogrom, published by Yale University Press. Activist, holocaust survivor, and historian, Elie Wiesel is one of those who has endorsed this book. He says he rarely felt so strongly about a book on contemporary history.

Joshua Rubenstein talk a little bit about that book and how it describes fascism and tactics against humanity.

Rubenstein: Sure, well aside from my work with Amnesty International I am a student of Russian history, 20th Century Russian History, which is basically, of course, Soviet History. And many years ago I wrote a book called, Tangled Loyalties, which is a biography of the Soviet writer Elya Ehrenburg. Ehrenburg became very famous during World War II for being a leading spokesman against Nazism and writing in the Soviet Press.

During the war he was part of a group called the Jewish Anti-Fascist Committee, which Stalin helped to set up, obviously ordered set up, in order to send propaganda to the West to support this unusual alliance between the Western democracies and the Soviet regime against Nazi Germany and Italy and imperial Japan. Now the Jewish Anti-Fascist Committee was one of five anti-fascist committees. One for scientists, for women, for young people, for Slavs, there was a large Slavic minority, ethnic community in Canada and America, and Stalin was appealing to all of these different groups to support this war effort, this alliance.

My book, Stalin’s Secret Pogram refers to the fact that after the war the Jewish Anti-Fascist Committee was singled out and it’s members were arrested, some were outright killed, and there was actually a secret trial in the spring and summer of 1952 where 15 of the members of the Jewish Anti-Fascist Committee, including five famous Yiddish writers and poets, and then after the trial 13 were secretly executed, a 14th died in jail, and only a very famous scientist name Lina Shtern was sentenced to a term of exile and she then survived. So my book contains the trial transcript of the secret trial and I’m pleased to say will be coming out later this fall in a paper back edition.

Smith: Talk about your more recent book that you anticipate seeing released in a month?

Rubenstein: That’s right; my most recent book is the KGB File of Andre Sakharov. I’ve done a lot of writing on the Soviet dissident movement, the Soviet human rights movement, and its leading figure was Andre Sakharov.

Sakharov was a leading physicist in the Soviet Union who helped to design the Soviet hydrogen bomb in the late 1940s and early 1950s. And he was a principle weapons researcher in the Soviet Union, and in 1968 he began his dissident career by circulating a very long memorandum. It’s really a long essay about intellectual freedom and the need for peace and coexistence with the West.

This essay was so famous, was such a bombshell, that the New York Times actually published the entire essay on three full pages in the Times back in July of 1968.

Sakharov was summoned and he was deprived of his top secret clearance and he was no longer able to do research at his laboratory. So he was essentially marginalized within the scientific community. But his activism, his human rights activities deepened and broadened and he would attend trials, he would try to visit prisoners, he would eventually in the 1970s he began to meet with journalists and diplomats and go to demonstrations. And just 30 years ago in the fall of 1975 he was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize and then in January of 1980 in the wake of the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan which he protested he was sent to Gorky illegally, essentially banished to Gorky without a trial, where he stayed for six years until Mikhail Gorbachev permitted him to come back to Moscow and that was a major signal by Gorbachev that he intended on pursuing a program of reform.

So my book, “The KGB File of Andrei Sakharov,” (Sakharov, Andrei Dmitriyevich) contains a hundred forty six memos from the head of the KGB, mostly to Uri Andropov to the government, particularly when Leonid Brezhnev was the head of the government and head of the Communist Party. It’s a very revealing set of documents about how the Soviet Government and the KGB regarded Sakharov, regarded the human rights movement in the Soviet Union, in Moscow itself, and how they distorted what the dissident activists were really doing in their reports to the government.

Smith: In light of this expertise that you have on this part of the country and this part of the world, I feel I have to ask, we’ve seen some criticism that has mentioned that era of the Second World War and has referred even to Nazism, it’s been very controversial to see the White House criticized in these kinds of terms. Talk a little bit about what that says to you though about the times we live in.

Rubenstein: Well again, I think, you know the New York Times called our use of the word “Gulag” an “apt metaphor” basically because our principle focus is the fact that hundreds of people are being held without trial, and without charges, without adequate access to their families and lawyers. And the fact that the administration went absolutely over the top in criticizing us I think shows that we really did strike a nerve with them. And since we issued that report back on May 25th, many other people, including Republicans in Congress, have been calling for the closing of Guantanamo Bay, because it has become such a symbol of injustice in the context of this war on terror. That the US in it’s legitimately seeking to investigate Al Qaeda and bring people responsible for 9/11 to justice and protect us, has gone past it’s obligations under the Constitution and under international law. And so I think we see an administration that is increasingly defensive and does not like it when the Press and when other public figures question their activities.

So Senator Durbin for example had to back down when he referred to both Nazi Germany and Soviet Russia in trying to describe what he was learning about U.S. practices at Guantanamo. And Newsweek had to apologize when it said that the Koran was being desecrated, although subsequently we learned that in fact it had been at Guantanamo. So Amnesty International will not be backing down. People may feel our use of the word Gulag was out of place, but I think they should realize and look at the statement as a whole and see what we are referring to, and I think the New York Times really struck it right. It’s an apt metaphor.

Smith: Let’s end here by talking about the March 13th editorial in the Washington Post. It refers to 70,000 prisoners, none yet tried, many tortured or ill treated, who have endured years of detention, interrogation, a lack of access to attorneys…Talk about again the numbers and what this implies as we go forward with the second term of George Bush?

Rubenstein: Yes well you see, I think this is where Americans really just aren’t informed. There is a very wide network, an archipelago of detention centers stretching from Afghanistan into Iraq to Guantanamo Bay. We believe prisoners are also held in some secret detention centers and perhaps even on U.S. ships. And that it’s astonishing that we are talking about tens of thousands of prisoners, not just the 500 or so at Guantanamo, not just the prisoners at Abu Ghraib whose treatment was so appalling that we learned about over a year ago.

So the Washington Post, which by the way, has been very critical of Amnesty International for our use of the word Gulag itself was critical of the U.S. Government for its detention policies, not only at Guantanamo Bay but elsewhere. And it was the Washington Post that used the figure of 70,000 prisoners.

So I think we really have to understand the full context in which Amnesty is speaking and using the word Gulag.

Smith: Joshua Rubenstein, thank you so much for joining us.
Rubenstein: Thank you Dori, good to speak with you.

Smith: Joshua Rubenstein is Northeast Regional Director of Amnesty International. He is author of many books including Stalin’s Secret Pogrom and the KGB File of Andre Sakharov due in July.

For Talk Nation Radio, I’m Dori Smith. This program was produced in the studios of WHUS Storrs, Radio for the People, at the University of Connecticut. Talk Nation.org for news and discussion on politics, human rights, and the environment.

This interview was taped on June 27, 2005 at Storrs.

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