Amnesty International and U.S. Foreign Policy: Human Rights Campaigns in Guatemala, the United States, and China (Law and Society, Recent Scholarship) PDF
Preview Amnesty International and U.S. Foreign Policy: Human Rights Campaigns in Guatemala, the United States, and China (Law and Society, Recent Scholarship)
Law and Society Recent Scholarship Edited by Melvin I. Urofsky A Series from LFB Scholarly This page intentionally left blank Amnesty International and U.S. Foreign Policy Human Rights Campaigns in Guatemala, the United States, and China Maria T. Baldwin LFB Scholarly Publishing LLC El Paso 2009 Copyright © 2009 by LFB Scholarly Publishing LLC All rights reserved. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Baldwin, Maria T. Amnesty International and U.S. foreign policy : human rights campaigns in Guatemala, the United States, and China / Maria T. Baldwin. p. cm. -- (Law and society, recent scholarship) Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978-1-59332-329-5 (alk. paper) 1. Amnesty International. 2. Human rights--Guatemala. 3. Human rights--United States. 4. Human rights--China. 5. Capital punishment- -United States. 6. United States--Foreign relations--Guatemala. 7. United States--Foreign relations--China. 8. Guatemala--Foreign relations--United States., 9. China--Foreign relations--United States. I. Title. JC571.B339 2008 323--dc22 2008043886 ISBN 978-1-59332-329-5 Printed on acid-free 250-year-life paper. Manufactured in the United States of America. Table of Contents Chapter One 1 AI’s Determined Protest for Human Rights Protection Chapter Two 45 Human Rights Abuse, Guatemala, and U.S. Policy Chapter Three 85 AI v. Political Murder in Guatemala Chapter Four 123 Evolving Standards of Decency and the U.S. Death Penalty Chapter Five 163 AI v. the Machinery of Death in the United States Chapter Six 205 The Path to Tiananmen Square Chapter Seven 237 AI and the Forgotten Prisoners of China Chapter Eight 275 Evaluation of AI’s Human Rights Campaigns References 289 Index 301 v This page intentionally left blank ACKNOWLEDGMENTS Completion of this project was greatly assisted by a number of very generous people who provided helpful suggestions and encouragement; special thanks to Dr. Gary R. Hess whose interest and insights improved the final draft. I thank them and acknowledge that any shortcomings of this project lay solely with the author. Additional thanks are extended to Ohio University in Athens, Ohio which houses most of the AI documents used throughout this study. I am also indebted to the millions of members that have built Amnesty International over the past forty-seven years. The tireless work of these human rights advocates have provided more than just a fertile area of study for academics. It has also highlighted the need to balance geopolitical and economic considerations with concern for human dignity and social justice if we are to create a better world. vii This page intentionally left blank CHAPTER ONE AI’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 over 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 World War II 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 suggested 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 1
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