AMNESTY INTERNATIONAL, HUMAN RIGHTS & U.S. POLICY Maria Baldwin A Dissertation Submitted to the Graduate College of Bowling Green State University in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY December 2006 Committee: Gary R. Hess, Advisor Franklin W. Goza Graduate Faculty Representative Robert Buffington Douglas Forsyth ii ABSTRACT Gary R. Hess, Advisor This dissertation assesses Amnesty International’s ability to influence U.S. foreign policy through an examination of its human rights campaigns in three different nations—Guatemala, the United States and the People’s Republic of China. While these nations are quite different from one another, according to Amnesty International they share an important characteristic; each nation has violated their citizens’ human rights. Sometimes the human rights violations, which provoked Amnesty International’s involvement occurred on a large scale; such as the “disappearances” connected with Guatemala’s long civil war or the imprisonment of political dissidents in the PRC. Other times the human rights violations that spurred Amnesty International’s involvement occurred on a smaller-scale but still undermined the Universal Declaration of Human Rights; such as the United States use of capital punishment. During the Guatemalan and Chinese campaigns Amnesty International attempted to influence the United States relations with these countries by pressuring U.S. policymakers to construct foreign policies that reflected a grave concern for institutionalized human rights abuse and demanded its end. Similarly during its campaign against the United States use of the death penalty Amnesty International attempted to make it a foreign policy liability for the United States. How effective Amnesty International has been in achieving these goals is the subject of this dissertation. This dissertation argues that Amnesty International has played an important, if often overlooked, role in shaping the environment in which foreign policy was made in the United States. While it would be difficult to argue that it was directly responsible for specific pieces of iii legislation this dissertation asserts that Amnesty International was instrumental in increasing U.S. policymakers’ sensitivity to human rights issues during the last quarter of the twentieth century. While this increased sensitivity did not always translate into domestic or foreign policies that fully respected the provisions of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights the ability of Amnesty International, a non-governmental organization, to pressure U.S. policymakers and to change the policymaking environment needs to be studied. iv For Mike v ACKNOWLEDGMENTS Completion of this project was greatly assisted by a number of very generous people who provided helpful suggestions and encouragement. For this I thank them and acknowledge that any shortcomings of this project lay solely with the author. I also thank my dissertation committee which as a whole cared about this project much more than I expected and who individually provided mentoring and specific assistance within their areas of specialty. Special thanks to Dr. Gary R. Hess who provided much guidance throughout the entire writing process as well as throughout my graduate studies. I am also indebted to the millions of members that have built Amnesty International over the past forty-five years. The tireless work of these human rights advocates have provided more than just a fertile area of study for academics but also an understanding that we must balance geopolitical and economic considerations with concern for human dignity and social justice if we are to create a better world. Perhaps most of all I am indebted to my husband who endured months of a physically present partner who was mentally in the trenches of human rights campaigns that spanned the last several decades; for that alone he richly deserves the dedication extended to him from the start. vi TABLE OF CONTENTS Page CHAPTER I. INTRODUCTION TO AMNESTY INTERNATIONAL’S DETERMINED PROTEST FOR HUMAN RIGHTS PROTECTION………………………........................ 1 CHAPTER II. THE GUATEMALAN CIVIL WAR, HUMAN RIGHTS ABUSE AND THE UNITED STATES…………………………......................................................................... 52 CHAPTER III. AMNESTY INTERNATIONAL’S CAMPAIGN AGAINST THE GOVERNMENT PROGRAM OF POLITICAL KILLINGS IN GUATEMALA……….... 95 CHAPTER IV. EVOLVING STANDARDS OF DECENCY AND THE DEATH PENALTY IN THE UNITED STATES…............................................................................ 138 CHAPTER V. AMNESTY INTERNATIONAL v. THE MACHINERY OF DEATH IN THE UNITED STATES…............................................................................................................. 185 CHAPTER VI. THE ROAD TO TIANANMEN SQUARE: HUMAN RIGHTS IN THE PEOPLE’S REPUBLIC OF CHINA………………………….. ........................................... 231 CHAPTER VII. AMNESTY INTERNATIONAL AND THE FORGOTTEN PRISONERS OF THE PEOPLE’S REPUBLIC OF CHINA…………………………………………..……… 267 CHAPTER VIII. CONCLUSION: EVALUATION OF AMNESTY INTERNATIONAL’S HUMAN RIGHTS CAMPAIGNS……………………………………………………………307 REFERENCES ...................................................................................................................... 323 1 CHAPTER I: INTRODUCTION TO AMNESTY INTERNATIONAL’S DETERMINED PROTEST FOR HUMAN RIGHTS PROTECTION While many in the United States acknowledge the positive attributes of human rights in general, the appropriate role that they should play in the construction of foreign policy has been heavily debated. Part of the problem stems from the ease with which the origin of human rights has been explained; a person has human rights simply because they are human. The planet has six billion people, even with sufficient political will to protect human rights, how does one ensure the human rights of over six billion people? Which human rights should be prioritized: political, civil, social, economic, or cultural? These questions are argued within governments but also within the human rights community, proving that these categories of human rights do not fit seamlessly together. The global acceptance of human rights ideology by the turn of the century stemmed from the struggle to define and develop the concept of human rights, which took place over the course of hundreds of years, and by the dramatic events of World War II. The modern human rights era is anchored to this long term development as well as the outrage connected to the events of the war. The gross human rights violations committed during the war gave tremendous impetus to the human rights movement as governments looked for ways to ensure that human rights would be protected in the post-war era. To that end they chartered the United Nations (UN) and created the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR) a non-binding human rights document that charged governments with the responsibility to ensure that human rights were protected. The ratification of that document while non-binding strongly suggests that human rights had became a global common in the aftermath of World War II. Progress, however, in the area of human rights has not always been consistent. For instance, the universality of human rights was challenged by the Chinese Communist government through the 1990s, which asserted that 2 Confucian-based societies observed something it called “Asian Values” rather than human rights. But the PRC’s arguments did not make much headway internationally and it had largely abandoned the Asian values concept by the late 1990s. There were however other, more pervasive problems, including governmental failures to create policies that reflected a concern for human rights and the inclination to treat human rights as aspirational pursuits rather than legally-binding obligations. As a result, some human rights advocates took up the task of explaining to and insisting that policymakers constructed foreign policies that protected human rights. It would be easy to suggest that foreign policy and human rights do not intersect and that human rights considerations should take a back seat to more important matters that strike at the heart of a nation’s vital interests. But such a statement ignores hundreds of years of global history and the significant impact some human rights movements have had internationally. Many of the early human rights movements were international in scope, because they occurred within vast empires that dominated several cultures and territories. Such was the case with a sixteenth century campaign led by the Spanish monk, Bartolomé de Las Casas. He dedicated his life to improving the plight of the indigenous people living within the Spanish Empire in the New World.1 Beginning in 1514 he condemned Spanish treatment of the native people and led a one man campaign to convince Charles V of the Holy Roman Empire (Charles I of Spain) that the period of military conquest was over. He further asserted it was time to peacefully convert the natives and transform the area into an agricultural colony. While he succeeded in persuading the King of Spain, not much changed in the Americas due to the distance and time involved in enforcing royal decrees. As a result, Las Casas began to take 1 Part of Las Casas’s efforts involved the publication of The Devastation of the Indies: A Brief Account which documented the treatment of the indigenous population by the Spanish. This volume has been reprinted numerous times and the 1992 edition published by John Hopkins University