Anti-Climacus

LINK: Jacob Levy has a good rebuttal to this Crooked Timber post. Me likey:

"I do trust Amnesty's reporting to a very high level of confidence. I don't trust either the organization's priorities, its understanding of human rights, or its understanding of the relationship between human rights and other things very far at all. Amnesty says

AI is independent of any government, political ideology, economic interest or religion. It does not support or oppose any government or political system, nor does it support or oppose the views of the victims whose rights it seeks to protect. It is concerned solely with the impartial protection of human rights.

This impartiality is in part a necessary pose, in part justified, and in part moral obtuseness. It seems to me necessary to remember simultaneously that torture is torture, and is reprehensible under whatever regime it takes place and that some political regimes and systems are built on and centrally dedicated to the violation of human rights and some aren't. Not to oppose "any government or political system"-- not Nazi Germany, Stalin's USSR, apartheid South Africa, Mao's China, Pol Pot's Cambodia, Pinochet's Chile, or insert-your-least-favorite-example-here-- isn't being an honest impartial assessor of human rights violations. It's radically misunderstanding where human rights violations come from, and how they're stopped. AI does great work embarrassing governments into releasing what the organization terms "prisoners of conscience." But some political systems rely on, and endorse as a matter of principle, punishing people for their religious and political views. Others don't. The one-prisoner-at-a-time, don't-judge-the-system approach maintains the organization's credibility with some governments. But it damages the organization's moral credibility."