News-Info-Alerts

Re: Where Are The Human Rights Folks Now?

To: ALL

From: Andi Wolos & Bob Necci

(POW-MIA InterNetwork)

Date: March 18, 2002

A week has passed since the news of Speicher became public and the silence of some is deafening. As noted previously, during and after Vietnam, none of the human rights organizations would touch the POW-MIA issue. The men and their families were cast adrift and on their own.

30 years later, after the US started detaining folks from the Terror War down in Club Fed, the groups all started clamoring about POW status and human rights and how awful the US was.

A few to consider -

Amnesty International - http://www.amnesty.org/ - is worried about detainees in the post-September 11th attacks... but not about Iraq's detaining third-party personnel. (See SANCTIONS:KUWAITI & THIRD-NATIONALS STILL HELD IN IRAQ - U.N. RESOLUTION 1284 (1999) and UN COMMISSION ON HUMAN RIGHTS 26th FEBRUARY 1999 SITUATION OF HUMAN RIGHTS IN IRAQ and it's discussion of POWs and the Geneva Convention accords.) They even authored a 40-page report that was issued 15 MAR 02.

OAS/Inter-American Commission on Human Rights - has a lot to say about Guantanamo detainees, but nada about Speicher.

Human Rights Watch - http://www.hrw.org/ - has an ongoing project declaring the US response after September 11th as 'Crimes against Humanity' - but zip on Speicher and Iraq.

WHERE ARE THE HUMAN RIGHTS ORGANIZATIONS ON THE MICHAEL SCOTT SPEICHER ISSUE?

Silent and AWOL, as usual.