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