rrizzo@bbncca.ARPA (Ron Rizzo) (02/14/86)
< Eat, drink and be merry....> <followup to Richard Carnes> On Richard's comments and the quote from the Americas' Watch report, "Human Rights in Nicaragua" (summer, 1985): I'm opposed to Reagan's policy and consider the White House worthless as a source of information. I also don't think that contras, their atrocities, or other hostile measures by Reagan justify AT ALL any excesses or abuses or abandonment of non-authoritarian gov't by the FSLN. (For a grim picture of contra life, character, and crimes, see the just-published book WITH THE CONTRAS (Simon & Schuster, 327 p, $18.95). Its author, leading Central American correspondent Christopher Dickey, traveled extensively with contra bands. It was reviewed in the 1/19/86 Boston Sunday Globe by Walter LaFeber.) As a human-rights monitoring group, AW is not very close to the scrupulous standards of a group like Amnesty International, if the quote in question is any indication. If the subject is human rights in Nicaragua, why does the report expatiate at length about Reagan policies and claims (ie, totalitarianism), and then describe the regime, politics, press, etc.? Worse: the terms it uses to describe life under the FSLN are seriously misleading, fairly closely resembling those used by partisans of the FSLN, and contradicted at many points by reliable testimony and public knowledge. By summer of 1985, to view the 1984 elections as "robust, outspoken, often even strident", religion as operating "independently" & its members freely expressing their views, the rubberstamp Assembly as "representing a wide spectrum of views," to characterize electoral criticism of the FSLN as "attacking", to continually gloss over those abuses AW is willing to admit by immediate comparison to those of Guate- mala's barbaric juntas, etc., etc. is certainly perverse for a purportedly nonpartisan human rights group and fails to distinguish it from advocacy groups for neo-Sandinism. I'm not going to rehash here all the counter- evidence I've posted to the net during the last 12 months. Groups monitoring human rights are supposed to be investigative, not easily satisfied by gov't window dressing, and sophisticated in the ways authoritarian regimes deceive and frustrate independent inquiry. The record of Marxism-Leninism is especially notorious. You'd think AW would be less gullible and more tenacious towards a junta whose members have openly declared, eg: "Marxism-Leninism is the scientific doctrine that guides our revolution. Our moral strength is Sandinismo and our doctrine is that of Marxism-Leninism." -- Daniel Ortega, 1981. Humberto Ortega, Bayardo Arce, & Tomas Borge have all made similar statements. All the Roman Catholic priests in the regime, often cited as examples of its non-Marxist-Leninist character, are "on record asserting the compatibility of Marxism and Christianity" (Paul Hollander, "The Newest Political Pilgrims," Commentary, August 1985, p 40) via an adherence to liberation theology. Yet even a superficial survey of developments impinging on human rights in Nicaragua would turn up serious allegations that deserve investigation in-depth: * Tomas Borge & his Interior Ministry suggest more than just `bad boy' hijinks (see the recent net exchange on "Who Is Tomas Borge?"). * In the current New Republic, a review of FSLN writer Omar Cabezas' FIRE ON THE MOUNTAIN by Xavier Arguello (29-34), an ex-Sandinista, ex-La Prensa editor, and member of the regime from 1979-1984 (he exiled himself to Costa Rica because of FSLN abuses & its growing totalitarian drift), refers to Cabezas' appointment to an Interior Minstry post as replacing "a bloody psychopath". If AW apparently bothered to visit FLSN offices & officials, why couldn't they also have interviewed those who've left the regime, like the well-known Arguello in neighboring Costa Rica? * Refugee Alvaro Jose Baldizon Aviles, "chief of the special investi- gations commission of Nicaragua's Ministry of the Interior" last fall "citing specific names, dates, and locations....disclosed hundreds of murders of peasants, Indians, businessmen, and opponents of the Sandinista regime, all of them carried out by Nicaraguan governemnt soldiers or police. Borge personally ordered some killings and whitewashed others....In 1981 Borge allegedly standard- ized the practice of murdering political foes by issuing a secret order allowing `special measures'". This according to New Republic senior editor Fred Barnes (1/20/86, p 11). Barnes says: "Juan Mendez of America's Watch, human rights monitoring group, went to the trouble of taking Baldizon to lunch, where they could confer without State Department interference. But America's Watch seems more interested in countering Reagan's attacks on Nicaragua than checking out Baldizon's evidence. Last July it put out a report evaluating Nicaragua's human rights record. The logical yardstick was the Sandinista promise of political pluralism and a mixed eco- nomy. Had the Sandinistas delivered on these? But that wasn't the question asked. Rather, America's Watch found the one human rights standard that the Sandinistas can meet: Is their human rights record as bad as Reagan says? Nope, America's Watch con- cluded." (p 12) Has AW published a report since July incorporat- ing what, if anything, Mendez learned from Baldizon? * "Contrary to the claims of American sympathizers, the Sandinistas (according to the Nicaraguan Commission of Jurists) carried out over 8,000 political executions between July 19, 1979 and December 12, 1982 [before any significant contra activity existed]. This and many other examples of political violence and human-rights violations have been extensively documented in what probably is the single best compilation of the true record of the Nicaraguan regime. Its author, Humberto Belli, used to be a supporter of the Sandinistas and editorial-page editor of La Prensa." (Hol- lander, p 41) Does anyone on the net know anything about either these claims, Humberto Belli, his compilation, or the Nicaraguan Commission of Jurists? * A recent posting (2/13 or 14/86) mentioned an AI report on human rights abuses in Nicaragua documenting FSLN offenses. If AI could find and report on these, why couldn't AW, instead of glossing over them? Time permitting, I will post the full text of two articles to supplement what the above suggests about the state of human rights under the Sandinistas: "The Sandinista Lobby: `Human Rights' groups with a double standard", by senior editor Fred Barnes, The New Republic, 1/20/86, p 11-14. Barnes is aggressive, partisan & at times nasty, with sometimes only mere fragments of information, but he describes questionable behavior and attitudes on the part of US groups supposedly monitoring events in Nicaragua, such as AW, the Washington Office on Latin America, the International Human Rights Law Group, the Coaliton for a New Foreign & Military Policy (an umbrella group that includes WOLA, the Council on Hemispheric Affairs, the Washington office of the Presbyterian Church (USA), the American Friends Service Committee, & the YWCA), the Commission on U.S-Central American Relations, the ACLU, and the Central American Histo- rical Institute at Georgetown University. In an earlier posting I mentioned an exchange of letters about the 1984 Nicaraguan elections between Larry Garber, an IHRLG director and Robert Leiken (NYReview of Books, 1/30/86, p 43-44) in which Leiken catches Garber misusing the scrupulous report of official Dutch observers in order to deny or minimize charges of electoral fraud and coercion. Leiken's long analysis of the elections in an earlier issue (12/5/85) also revealed the consistent pro-FSLN leaning of LASA, the Latin American Studies Association. A lack both of candor, skepticism and scrupulous research appears widespread among such groups, despite their claims to impartiality or to at least a desire to know and inform. "The Newest Political Pilgrims" by Paul Hollander, Commentary, August 1985, p 37-41. Like his book-length study POLITICAL PILGRIMS about the visits of myopic Western intellectuals to the USSR, China, Cuba, Indochina & Iran, Hollander assembles the self-embarrassing testimonials of starry-eyed North Americans & Europeans, underscoring not only the extent of their delusion but also the ambitious scale of Sandinista efforts to deceive. Better well-read than Red, Regards, Ron Rizzo