Is Amnesty International "politically biased"?

[Futile_Gesture]

@gum

The Secretary General of Amnesty International is Irene Kahn.

I am at a loss to see what your point is here.

A muslim woman

How is the Secretary General of Amnesty’s gender or religion relevant?

who said the Spanish law violated human rights when they arrested Tayseer Allouni, suspected of having close connections with Al-Qaeda.

And … ? Are you saying she’s wrong, right? Why? Your post lacks something… I’m guessing it’s a debate of any kind.

I’m disappointed that many in this thread seem to think that saying “Yeah, but what about them!” and pointing at some other sleazeball can function as an excuse for their own country’s wrongs. Is it really a surprise if Amnesty draw American citizen’s attention most to the abuses of their own country?? The point of the exercise is to put a stop to them, and who better to do that than the citizens of the USA? Sitting back a wailing that you’re not as bad as the other guy is completely missing the point!

[Jonathan_Chance]

Let’s take a look at the latest reports, shall we? Front the ‘Latest Reports’ link on their site:

Myanmar
Nepal
Guatemala
Honduras
Thailand
Turkey
Equitorial Guinea
USA
Nigeria
Afghanistan
Russian Federation
Nepal
Sudan
Greece
Lebanon
USA
Turkmenistan
Belarus
Iran
Iraq
USA
Spain
Greece
Vietnam
Zimbabwe
India
Russian Federation
Turkmenistan
Nepal
Russian Federation

The US ones are pretty much about Guantanamo and contain individual case studies of prisoners that AI believes are imprisoned unjustly.

Now, bear in mind, AI is going to consider just about anyone held without charges for an indefinite period to be held unjustly. God knows that applies.

But look at the list. It’s third world shithole after third world shithole.

I did a search on ‘USA: Guantanamo and beyond: The continuing pursuit of unchecked executive power’ for ‘gulag’ and found nothing.

Oop. There it is. In the AI Report 2005. Here’s the quote:

Instead, the US government has gone to great lengths to restrict the application of the Geneva Conventions and to “re-define” torture. It has sought to justify the use of coercive interrogation techniques, the practice of holding “ghost detainees” (people in unacknowledged incommunicado detention) and the “rendering” or handing over of prisoners to third countries known to practise torture. The detention facility at Guantánamo Bay has become the gulag of our times, entrenching the practice of arbitrary and indefinite detention in violation of international law. Trials by military commissions have made a mockery of justice and due process.

The USA, as the unrivalled political, military and economic hyper-power, sets the tone for governmental behaviour worldwide. When the most powerful country in the world thumbs its nose at the rule of law and human rights, it grants a licence to others to commit abuse with impunity and audacity. From Israel to Uzbekistan, Egypt to Nepal, governments have openly defied human rights and international humanitarian law in the name of national security and “counter-terrorism”.

And that second paragraph is the cause of AI’s focus on the topic of Guantanamo detainees…the example it sets for the other nations that AI has to confront on a daily basis concerning human rights abuses.

So don’t tell me it’s a ‘political bias’. It is, if anything, dismay that the country that should be the beacon of freedom (and bills itself as such in its mythos) has become ‘questionable’ in terms of its human rights policies. That’s worth emphasizing.

After all, if Joe’s S&L goes belly up it might not be worth covering…if Bank of America does you should scream it from the rooftops.

[Ms2001]

@Futile Gesture

Is it really a surprise if Amnesty draw American citizen’s attention most to the abuses of their own country?? The point of the exercise is to put a stop to them, and who better to do that than the citizens of the USA? Sitting back a wailing that you’re not as bad as the other guy is completely missing the point!

No kidding. Besides, everyone already knows North Korea has an awful human rights record, and who really expects anything better from them? “Man bites dog” is newsworthy and possibly indicative of a disturbing new trend; “dog bites man” is neither.

[Zoe]

From Amnesty International’s website:

AI’s vision is of a world in which every person enjoys all of the human rights enshrined in the the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and other international human rights standards.

<snip>

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. (bolding added)

I haven’t seen anything over the last forty years to make me doubt that their only agenda is to work for universal human rights. They have almost 2 million members in about 150 countries. They accept no money from any government.

I trust them more than any other source of information.

xtisme, if you haven’t already done so, read the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. I would like to know what you think of it. Parts of it remind me of some of America’s founding documents. Wasn’t this the kind of freedom we wanted to give to Iraq?

[hildea]

@xtisme

Again…it shows a political bias and an agenda.

I’m not sure if we agree or disagree here. My point is that AI has a clear political stance (I’m not sure if that’s the same as “bias” in this context) against human rights violations. They have a political agenda, which is fighting human rights violations, and has as its ultimate goal to make itself redundant.

Political stance, political agenda. Of course. One might as well ask whether Marx, or Ghandi, or Martin Luther King, or Bush, or Mandela, or Hitler, had a political agenda. Wanting to change the world – is there any agenda that’s more political than that?

A more meaningful question is whether their agenda is different from what they claim it is, or whether they are biased for or against specific countries, parts of the world, ideologies (apart from their own clearly stated ideology), whatever. I have yet to see a convincing argument of this.

Maybe their bias is first world vs third world, where they focus more on first world problems and less on third world, even though by and large third world problems are a lot worse from a human suffering perspective. I’m not sure.

Jonathan Chance’s list is a pretty good refutation of that. As is the rest of AI’s website, campaigns, and printed material.

But clearly they DO have a bias…otherwise they would have simply put the US’s transgressions at Gitmo in their report without further comment…and they would have prioritized it as lower down on the human suffering scale than many other examples, even in our own region.

There are several good arguments in this thread which explain how this can be grounded in a “anti human rights violations bias” and nothing more.[ul][li]In terms of sheer power, US is a world leader. Where it goes, others follow. When US imitates (in part) worse offenders in human rights violations, those who are worse find it easier to go on as before, or tighten the thumbscrews a few more turns.[/li][li]Big, powerful countries are more newsworthy than small ones. This affects both AI’s choices on what to publicise, and (to a greater extent) the choices of the media in which parts of AI’s statements they comment on.[/li][li]In some cases, it’s easier to effect a change in countries which aren’t completely shitty in all aspects.[/li][li]To keep credibility all over the world, AI needs to show that they criticise violations all over the world.[/li][li]If their reports and news only focused on the worst violators, those that are somewhat better might get more complacent, and slide downwards.[/ul][/li]
<nitpick>

it was a statement by AI’s Sec General about the whole ‘gulag’ thing…and he

It’s she. The aforementioned Irene Khan.
</nitpick>