AMNESTY SAYS PRACTICE WHAT YOU PREACH

Since becoming secretary-general of Amnesty International in 1992, Pierre
Sane has initiated a series of yearlong campaigns focused on human rights
abuses - in Sudan, Turkey, China, Colombia and Indonesia. It is not hard to
guess why those countries were chosen. Interviewed in San Francisco last
week, Sane gave five reasons why this year's target is the United States of
America:

1) The U.S. has too many ``wars'': on crime, on drugs, on illegal
immigrants. In wars, there are enemies, and human rights become a casualty
of slogans such as Three Strikes, Zero Tolerance and (on the border)
Detect, Detain, Deport.

2) The U.S. offers itself as a model - of democracy, human rights and
``neoliberal'' economics - at a time when there is no alternative model.
Sane says it is important to show that the model does not, in practice,
guarantee protection.

3) Not only are human rights violated here (and Amnesty backs up this
charge in a 153-page book) but also the U.S. exports arms, technology and
expertise that help torture and kill civilians abroad.

4) We help set international standards on rights, but when they're
inconvenient, we say our laws come first. We're the only Western
industrialized nation that still has the death penalty; we're among six
nations that execute juveniles (under 18), among 10 that didn't ratify the
U.N. Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against
Women and among two (Somalia is the other) that didn't ratify the
Convention on the Rights of the Child.

5) When the United States criticizes abuses in Iraq but not in Israel, in
Cuba but not in Mexico, the world sees a double standard and disrespects
the message as well as the messenger.

Sane is aware of the risks of this campaign. Congress will be hostile, and
Americans may not understand that Amnesty is trying to help, not hurt.
Outlaw nations could misuse Amnesty's criticism and data.

He still sees a big payoff, as an example to others, in encouraging the
United States to live up to its expressed values. Last year, Sane, who is
from Senegal, tried to talk the president of another African country,
Malawi's Bakili Muluzi, into dropping the death penalty. I can't, Muluzi
said. We're a democracy now, and people want it. Would you torture
prisoners, Sane asked, if people wanted that? Muluzi said no - but added
that executions must be OK because the U.S. has them.

That might have been the ending, but Stephanie Farrior, a Pennsylvania
State University law professor, was present and interjected, ``Yes, we have
executions, but we're ashamed of them.'' On the spot, for whatever reason,
Muluzi commuted all death sentences and pledged that no one will be
executed as long as he is president.

Checked-by: Mike Gogulski