US loss of moral status

U.S. Has Lost Moral Ground -- by Rev. William F. Schulz

One of the nation's leading advocates for human rights, the Rev. William F. Schulz, 56, of Halesite, retired earlier this month after 12 years as executive director of Amnesty International USA. Besides leading missions to Romania, India, Northern Ireland and the Middle East, Schulz increasingly turned his organization inward over the years, to look at the United States. He talked with Newsday editor Jim Smith about this shift in focus.

Jim Smith: In 1994, when you joined Amnesty, it wasn't going after the U.S. government much. But many of your recent campaigns have been directed against Americans and U.S.-based corporations. How did that change come about?

William F. Schultz: In 1999, following a yearlong global Amnesty campaign on U.S. human rights violations, the movement changed its "work on own country" rule to allow all its sections, including Amnesty International USA, to work on issues in their own countries. Before that, we had worked on selected U.S. issues, such as [opposing] the death penalty or U.S. treatment of asylum seekers. After 1999, we were permitted to work on prison conditions, use of electro-shock weapons by police, life without parole sentences for juvenile offenders, etc.

JS: During your tenure, Amnesty began buying stock in U.S. corporations, such as ExxonMobil and ChevronTexaco, and used shareholder resolutions to try to focus attention on corporate human rights violations abroad, such as poor working conditions, use of child labor, pollution, quashing unions. Why do you think people in power abuse it?

WFS: The principal reason is because they think they can get away with it. When powerful people know they may pay a penalty ... human rights violations diminish markedly ... Leaders have rarely paid a price for abusing human rights. But that may be changing. Corporations, for example, are more and more sensitive to their public images, and Abu Ghraib has made even conservative politicians aware that unbridled torture is bad for America's interests.

JS: Do we have a violent culture that tolerates this stuff?

WFS: I don't know that U.S. culture is more inherently violent than other cultures.

JS: Is trying to stop violations by the Bush administration harder than trying to stop violations committed by, say, ExxonMobil?

WFS: They're both tough. But I think grassroots pressure on corporations is beginning to have significant impacts. Witness the changes Wal-Mart has been introducing, albeit reluctantly, to repair its image as a heartless corporate exploiter of its workforce. And though we haven't stopped all the Bush administration's war-on-terror-related abuses, we've had a number of victories - from the report of the Justice Department's inspector general confirming Amnesty's claims of mistreatment of post-9/11 detainees at the Metropolitan Detention Center in Brooklyn to the Supreme Court's rejection of the administration's arguments that Guantanamo prisoners ought to have no access to U.S. courts ... to passage of the McCain anti-torture amendment.

JS: One of your recent mailings to members basically calls the president a liar for saying "we do not torture" and urges them to demand that Congress set up an independent commission to uncover the facts about U.S. torture policy. Is that a risky stance, in terms of fundraising?

WFS: I don't think it is. Amnesty International USA, in terms of its membership [360,000], staff [165 in six offices] and finances [$23 million stock portfolio], is stronger than it's been in years. We have another 400,000 online activists.

JS: The U.S. is holding many people around the world in secret detention centers. Is this a great disappointment?

WFS: Of course ... because it reflects badly on America and Americans. ... Human rights are based on what we used to call "a gentlemen's agreement among nations," and the Bush administration has undermined it. The result is that we are seeing an expansion of violations by other countries, citing America's violations as authority. The two best examples are Zimbabwe and China.

JS: So we've lost the moral high ground?

WFS: Absolutely. If we had set out to undermine our moral authority, we couldn't have done a better job. You can't engage in torture and then defend that. We've violated the Geneva Conventions ... you can't hold prisoners in secret detention centers, thumb your nose at the United Nations and expect to maintain moral authority.

JS: Amnesty's traditional role, since its founding in London in 1961, has been calling attention to so-called prisoners of conscience incarcerated around the world for their political, religious and social views. Does it surprise you that you've had to focus so much on violations by Amercans?

WFS: My most formative experience was as a student minister at Kent State in 1970 during the shootings there [while attending Oberlin College]. I had a firsthand encounter with a government capable of turning on its citizens, so the idea that the U.S. government was capable of human rights violations was not surprising to me. What has been most damaging about the Bush administration is that it set out intentionally to undermine the very principles on which human rights are based.