How Manafort knowingly did business and accepted millions with regimes who practiced torture
THE TORTURERS' LOBBY
How Human Rights-Abusing Nations
Are Represented in Washington
By Pamela Brogan
THE CENTER FOR PUBLIC INTEGRITY
1910 K Street N.W.. Suite #802
Washington D.C. 20006
(202)223-0299
"The greatest evil today is indifference. To know and not to act is a way of consenting
to these injustices. The planet has become a very small place. What happens in
other countries affects us."
Elie Wiesel
winner of the Nobel Peace Prize, 1986
http://cloudfront-files-1.publicintegrity.org/legacy_projects/pdf_reports/THETORTURERSLOBBY.pdf
With the fall of communism and the end of the Cold War, nations such as Nicaragua, Angola and
the Eastern European countries, once caught in the struggle between the United States and the Soviet Union,
have begun the long hard march toward democracy. Indeed, the world celebrates this tide of democratic
freedom and self-determination. Yet. oppression and human rights abuses persist around the globe.
Consider Guatemala, the homeland of this year's Nobel Peace Prize winner, Rigoberta Menchu, a
human rights activist who fled her country in the mid 1980s. Security forces tortured and murdered most
of her family for their efforts to gain respect for the rights of Guatemala's indigenous population. Menchu
does not know if she will return to live in Guatemala now that she has won the Nobel. She continues to
receive death threats.
In November 1989. Diana Ortiz, an American nun teaching in Guatemala, was kidnapped, taken to
a secret detention center, tortured and raped. A few months later, Michael DeVine, an American who was
an innkeeper in rural Guatemala, was abducted, tortured and executed by members of Guatemala's security
forces. The human rights situation has not substantially improved in Guatemala -- last year, hundreds of
political executions were reported.
Although the U.S. Ambassador to Guatemala was recalled, and U.S. military aid and commercial
arms sales to Guatemala were suspended in December 1990, the country was given nearly $91 million in
U.S. assistance in fiscal year 1991.
To keep those dollars flowing in, and to refurbish its dismal human rights image, Guatemala spent
more than $650,000 for Washington lobbyists and public relations experts. No one in Washington received
more money from Guatemala than Patton, Boggs and Blow, the powerful firm that took in $220,000 from
Guatemala in 1991. One of its assignments: prepare a status report on the Michael DeVine murder.
On a different continent, both Kenya and Nigeria have widely criticized human rights records. Last
year, Kenya received $38 million in U.S. foreign aid, and spent over $1.4 million on Washington lobbyists
to get it. Nigeria received $8.3 million and expended in excess of $2.5 million. Whom did both countries
call upon to do their bidding before the U.S. government? The lobbying firm of Black. Manafort, Stone
and Kelly Public Affairs Co.. which received $660,000 from Kenya in 1992-1993 and $1 million from
Nigeria in 1991.
Former Reagan political operative Paul Manafort oversees foreign accounts; his partner, Charles R.
Black, was a senior political strategist in the 1992 Bush-Quayle campaign. Their firm's fees to represent
Nigeria. Kenya, the Philippines and Angola's UNITA rebel group in 1991 totaled more than $3 million.
All four receive U.S. aid and abuse human rights. A spokeswoman for Black, Manafort, Stone and Kelly
told the Center that the firm does not "attempt to explain away" concerns about human rights. Instead,
she said, "we try to open a dialogue."
Other firms paid more than $1 million dollars by U.S. aid recipients identified as abusing human rights
were Sawyer Miller Group; White & Case; Black, Manafort, Stone and Kelly; Edward Aycoth & Co.;
and International Advisers. Inc.
*this was a very interesting read*