Management's decision to 'reorganise' its workforce reveals that the human rights body has lost its way
Western liberals are wide open to attack, and not only from their obvious enemies on the authoritarian right. Far leftists dismiss freedom as a bourgeois illusion. Poor world demagogues play on the post-colonial guilt of the rich world's whites. Amnesty International's leaders have surrendered to attacks from both sides. Indeed, at times it appears as if they have crossed over to the enemy.
Amnesty![ext]()
was one of 20th-century Britain's greatest gifts to the world. Now it is a wreck. Staff have gone on strike![ext]()
in both its British and international offices to protest against the management's decision to sack workers campaigning to defend prisoners on death row, women's rights, gay rights and refugees.
Unite, the union at Amnesty, has called on its UK director to resign. "Our members have lost confidence in Kate Allen's ability to guarantee a viable future for Amnesty International and its human rights work," a spokesman explained. Amnesty's directors receive £500,000 payoffs – and think how many jumble sales it takes to raise that sum. The workers are heading for the dole.
It's not as if Amnesty is short of money. Its membership is rising, and the management asserts, quite truthfully, that it is one of the few organisations around not suffering from the global financial crisis. Instead, it is afflicted with a mental deformation: the racism of low expectations; the belief that human rights are "western" rights, and those who support them know little of the global "south".
To understand what is being lost, you must know what Amnesty once was. Peter Benenson![ext]()
founded it in 1961 after reading an article in the Observer about the incarceration of political prisoners by Portugal's dictators. He was wise enough to impose a strict self-denying ordinance. Amnesty would only campaign for prisoners of conscience and no one else. Its members could be left-leaning. They could loathe the west for colluding with regimes that persecuted socialists in South America, southern Europe and Asia. Nevertheless, they also had to plead for political prisoners held in the socialist states of the Soviet empire, China and Vietnam. Mutatis mutandis, Amnesty said that Conservatives appalled by the communists' massacres must condemn the crimes the west sanctioned as well.
Such tough-minded impartiality is hard to stick to, which is why good judges and unbiased BBC journalists are rare. Holding the line was too much for Amnesty. It began to support a hodgepodge of "progressive" causes: opposition to the death penalty, rights to abortion, and so on. Although I think it's better to do one thing well than a dozen things badly, I've nothing against any of the battles Amnesty joined. But there was a danger. Become too "progressive" and you start to wonder whether "conscience" is a luxury the poor can't afford; whether the freedom to speak and argue which Amnesty defended is a rich man's self-indulgence.
I don't need to tell Observer readers that democratic governments abuse human rights. The US tortures terrorist suspects; France hounds the Roma. Meanwhile, one does not need to look too far back into "our island story" to realise the truth of the Chartist leader Ernest Jones![ext]()
's brilliant retort to the enthusiasts for the empire of the 1850s. "On its colonies the sun never sets," Jones conceded, "but the blood never dries."
The majority of crimes reputable human rights organisations must concentrate on, however, are in the poor world. Dictatorships, theocracies and oligarchies want to lure them into a trap, and make them change the conversation. In 2005, Irene Khan, she of the £500,000 payoff, fell into it. Human rights "for the vast majority of the world's population don't mean very much", said Amnesty's then director. Freedom of expression means nothing to a man who can't read. Poverty, not authoritarianism, was the evil that Amnesty must face. At first, I thought Khan had just succumbed to the derangement that overcame liberal opinion during the wars of Bush and Blair. Amnesty so lost its way it forced out Gita Sahgal![ext]()
, its most distinguished campaigner for women's rights, because she criticised its alliances with misogynist Islamists.
But in 2010, long after Bush and Blair had gone, Salil Shetty![ext]()
, Amnesty's latest secretary general, was confronted by a smarmy presenter from al-Jazeera. The hack pleased his Qatari masters by announcing that "sceptics" thought human rights organisations were vehicles for "spreading a western agenda". Instead of countering him by pointing to the Qatari royal family's many infringements of its subject people's liberties, Shetty said: "The ultimate torture is poverty. There are many more prisoners of poverty today than prisoners of conscience in the old way."
This is both a great truth and a great lie. A truth, because if you are starving, your right to speak freely does not matter a damn. A lie, because the communist regimes that said economic rights trumped liberal rights denied their subject peoples both, and presided over some of the most terrible man-made famines in history. A lie, because Amnesty was meant to know that, and was founded to speak for prisoners of conscience when no one else would.
Such thinking is old hat now. Amnesty must move to the global "south" and reflect its concerns. This means harebrained proposals to take money from donors to pay bail for the release of alleged minor offenders from cells in India's remand prisons. The delays of the Indian law are indeed scandalous, but I wouldn't like to be in the Amnesty press office when one goes on to commit a more serious crime.
Speaking of which, the press officers told me that Amnesty was still committed to campaign in Britain against the arms trade and the Syrian atrocities. It was simply engaged in a "reorganisation" that would concentrate resources on what he called "regional hubs". My sources inside Amnesty were a little more candid. In Britain and other western countries Amnesty will be a "fig leaf" organisation, one said. Its members will be cash cows. They will sign a few petitions, a few postcards here and there, "but sustained and strategic campaigning that we do with partner organisations, the UK government, the UK public, etc, will end". While Amnesty fires its campaigners, it is keeping its press officers because they raise money, rather than awareness.
Observer readers are Amnesty members. You founded it, and you should not put up with this. Organise, occupy, vote out the current board and elect a better one. Amnesty was once a source of pride to you. I give fair warning it will soon be an embarrassment. Reported by guardian.co.uk 48 minutes ago.
Western liberals are wide open to attack, and not only from their obvious enemies on the authoritarian right. Far leftists dismiss freedom as a bourgeois illusion. Poor world demagogues play on the post-colonial guilt of the rich world's whites. Amnesty International's leaders have surrendered to attacks from both sides. Indeed, at times it appears as if they have crossed over to the enemy.
Amnesty
was one of 20th-century Britain's greatest gifts to the world. Now it is a wreck. Staff have gone on strike in both its British and international offices to protest against the management's decision to sack workers campaigning to defend prisoners on death row, women's rights, gay rights and refugees.Unite, the union at Amnesty, has called on its UK director to resign. "Our members have lost confidence in Kate Allen's ability to guarantee a viable future for Amnesty International and its human rights work," a spokesman explained. Amnesty's directors receive £500,000 payoffs – and think how many jumble sales it takes to raise that sum. The workers are heading for the dole.
It's not as if Amnesty is short of money. Its membership is rising, and the management asserts, quite truthfully, that it is one of the few organisations around not suffering from the global financial crisis. Instead, it is afflicted with a mental deformation: the racism of low expectations; the belief that human rights are "western" rights, and those who support them know little of the global "south".
To understand what is being lost, you must know what Amnesty once was. Peter Benenson
founded it in 1961 after reading an article in the Observer about the incarceration of political prisoners by Portugal's dictators. He was wise enough to impose a strict self-denying ordinance. Amnesty would only campaign for prisoners of conscience and no one else. Its members could be left-leaning. They could loathe the west for colluding with regimes that persecuted socialists in South America, southern Europe and Asia. Nevertheless, they also had to plead for political prisoners held in the socialist states of the Soviet empire, China and Vietnam. Mutatis mutandis, Amnesty said that Conservatives appalled by the communists' massacres must condemn the crimes the west sanctioned as well.Such tough-minded impartiality is hard to stick to, which is why good judges and unbiased BBC journalists are rare. Holding the line was too much for Amnesty. It began to support a hodgepodge of "progressive" causes: opposition to the death penalty, rights to abortion, and so on. Although I think it's better to do one thing well than a dozen things badly, I've nothing against any of the battles Amnesty joined. But there was a danger. Become too "progressive" and you start to wonder whether "conscience" is a luxury the poor can't afford; whether the freedom to speak and argue which Amnesty defended is a rich man's self-indulgence.
I don't need to tell Observer readers that democratic governments abuse human rights. The US tortures terrorist suspects; France hounds the Roma. Meanwhile, one does not need to look too far back into "our island story" to realise the truth of the Chartist leader Ernest Jones
's brilliant retort to the enthusiasts for the empire of the 1850s. "On its colonies the sun never sets," Jones conceded, "but the blood never dries."The majority of crimes reputable human rights organisations must concentrate on, however, are in the poor world. Dictatorships, theocracies and oligarchies want to lure them into a trap, and make them change the conversation. In 2005, Irene Khan, she of the £500,000 payoff, fell into it. Human rights "for the vast majority of the world's population don't mean very much", said Amnesty's then director. Freedom of expression means nothing to a man who can't read. Poverty, not authoritarianism, was the evil that Amnesty must face. At first, I thought Khan had just succumbed to the derangement that overcame liberal opinion during the wars of Bush and Blair. Amnesty so lost its way it forced out Gita Sahgal
, its most distinguished campaigner for women's rights, because she criticised its alliances with misogynist Islamists.But in 2010, long after Bush and Blair had gone, Salil Shetty
, Amnesty's latest secretary general, was confronted by a smarmy presenter from al-Jazeera. The hack pleased his Qatari masters by announcing that "sceptics" thought human rights organisations were vehicles for "spreading a western agenda". Instead of countering him by pointing to the Qatari royal family's many infringements of its subject people's liberties, Shetty said: "The ultimate torture is poverty. There are many more prisoners of poverty today than prisoners of conscience in the old way."This is both a great truth and a great lie. A truth, because if you are starving, your right to speak freely does not matter a damn. A lie, because the communist regimes that said economic rights trumped liberal rights denied their subject peoples both, and presided over some of the most terrible man-made famines in history. A lie, because Amnesty was meant to know that, and was founded to speak for prisoners of conscience when no one else would.
Such thinking is old hat now. Amnesty must move to the global "south" and reflect its concerns. This means harebrained proposals to take money from donors to pay bail for the release of alleged minor offenders from cells in India's remand prisons. The delays of the Indian law are indeed scandalous, but I wouldn't like to be in the Amnesty press office when one goes on to commit a more serious crime.
Speaking of which, the press officers told me that Amnesty was still committed to campaign in Britain against the arms trade and the Syrian atrocities. It was simply engaged in a "reorganisation" that would concentrate resources on what he called "regional hubs". My sources inside Amnesty were a little more candid. In Britain and other western countries Amnesty will be a "fig leaf" organisation, one said. Its members will be cash cows. They will sign a few petitions, a few postcards here and there, "but sustained and strategic campaigning that we do with partner organisations, the UK government, the UK public, etc, will end". While Amnesty fires its campaigners, it is keeping its press officers because they raise money, rather than awareness.
Observer readers are Amnesty members. You founded it, and you should not put up with this. Organise, occupy, vote out the current board and elect a better one. Amnesty was once a source of pride to you. I give fair warning it will soon be an embarrassment. Reported by guardian.co.uk 48 minutes ago.