Amnesty International

[LeoCasey@xxxxxxx]

I disagree strongly with the substance of Chris B.'s comments on Amnesty
International, the Shining Path and Peru. Chris presents his opinion in the
form of a logical argument on the evidence, but disguises in that form
incredible leaps of logic and assoications which -- when taken in context --
simply do not hold water. For reasons that I can not fathom, and seem to me
at best some form of nostalgia for the ultra-left Maoist politics of his
past, Chris seems intent on making a tortured, strained and entirely
implausible argument that Shining Path may really be a bunch of misunderstood
revolutionaries fighting their 'peoples war' and struggling against
misleading propaganda on every side. Moreover, since Chris repeatedly makes
the moral equasion of Peru and South Africa, and thus, of the Shining Path
and the ANC, I am forced to conclude that it is not accidental, but
deliberate. I must say that I find that equasion profoundly offensive -- and
that the ANC itself would be greatly offended at such an equasion.

Amnesty International has a long and honorable history of organizing
opposition to the imprisonment, torture and murder of political opposition of
every ideological stripe. Of course, if one is not a democrat, and does not
believe in the democratic rights of political opponents, then Amnesty
International is faulted for calling attention to your particular political
crimes -- and not limiting themselves to the crimes of others. But for those
of us who do believe in basic democratic rights, Amnesty International has a
credibility, won in years of work that took up the causes of South Africans
and Cambodians, of Chileans and Chinese simultaneously, that carries
considerably more weight than a group whose very advocates -- and on this
list, too; one need look no further -- talk of organized political murder as
a justifiable form of political action.

Moreover, since the Manichean world view of the Shining Path places in the
camp of the enemy all who do not adhere to their totalitarian political
project, of course, any independent source which criticizes their massacres
automatically becomes an agent of the government. On the basis of nothing
more than the Shining Path's claim that the church was in opposition to them
-- and how could it be anything else for them, for it is an independent force
-- Chris is prepared to disqualify a Church commission report on the
massacres, as well as AI's report which uses that Church commision. Rather
than giving the benefit of the doubt to AI, that they -- as always -- had
carefully checked out their sources, it is given to the Shining Path, for
whom every independent sources will be suspect. Given the complete lack of
independent, credible sources which support the Shining Path's claims, this
is incredible. (I don't know if Chris B., in England, is aware of this, but
certainly Americans with the most minimal knowledge of Latin America and
American policy, know that the NACLA which has been constantly condemned by
the Shining Path on this list, is the major, long-standing organization of
the North American left which has been involved in solidarity work with Latin
American struggles, from Chile to El Salvador and Nicaragua; what we have
here is a pattern with every credible, independent organization, including
those on the left, with FIRST HAND KNOWLEDGE on one side of the issue, and
the Shining Path and its few North American cadre, on the other side of the
issue.)

It is not suprising to me that Matt, in between his sallies in defense of the
Shining Path, would also take up the cause of Pol Pot and the Khymer Rouge.
But it is shocking, and the cause for more than a little concern and unease,
that Chris B. seems to feel the need to buy into and give the slightest
benefit of the doubt to this profound moral and political corruption. For me,
this is an absolute line of demarcation issue -- if you are going to enter
this moral and political cesspool of  the Shining Path, you have lost all
moral and political credibility. You might as well go over to the Nazis;
there is little moral distance between the two. It is precisely compromises
on such issues which has helped put the radical left in its current
completely marginal position in the West, and further compromises can only
add to this maginality -- and it will be a richly deserved marginality.



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