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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)
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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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