Amnesty International - Sucking up to supporters of Terror and Organizations that abhor Basic Human Rights - Now who would believe that? I would never have thought that - Clearly they are losing sight of the objective - Human Rights for everyone.What is your opinion?
http://network.nationalpost.com/np/blogs/fullcomment/archive/2010/02/08/terry-glavin-amnesty-international.aspx
Amnesty International doubles down on appeasementPosted: February 08, 2010, 1:00 PM by Kelly McParlandThis has been going on for far too long. Now it's gone too far.To the embarrassment of its most principled supporters and against all internal entreaties, Amnesty International has persisted in whoring itself out to Cage Prisoners, a front for Taliban enthusiasts and al Qaida devotees that fraudulently presents itself a human rights group.
After two years of trying to reason with her bosses, Gita Sahgal, the head of AI's gender unit, decided she'd finally had enough. This weekend, she blew the whistle. She gave the Times of London her January 30 appeal to her bosses, which states only the obvious: AI's service to Cage Prisoners is both prone and supine, it "fundamentally damages Amnesty International’s integrity and, more importantly, constitutes a threat to human rights.” AI's conduct has been driven by a cowardly fear of being labeled Islamophobic. More of the obvious: “To be appearing on platforms with Britain’s most famous supporter of the Taliban, whom we treat as a human rights defender, is a gross error of judgment.”Today, AI relieved Gita of her duties.
If you want AI's transparently subject-changing, point-avoiding non-explanation for its behaviour, you're welcome to it, here. For an account of the way Amnesty International started racing downhill with Islamist crackpots five years ago, Nick Cohen is, as always, indispensable. As Martin Bright points out in the Spectator today: "It is Gita Sahgal who should be the darling of the human rights establishment, not Moazzam Begg.
"Cage Prisoners' Moazzam Begg, a Taliban admirer who happily trotted off to Afghanistan when the Taliban ran the show, before 2001, is a former Guantanamo inmate and was a collaborator of the "Underpants Bomber" Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab back in 2007, when Umar was a UCL Islamic Society president (and is now the fourth former UCL Islamic Society president to face terrorism charges in as many years). Moazzam and Umar are both rather more than mere acquaintances of the American-born Yemeni Al Qaida cleric Anwar al-Awlaki, Umar's former teacher (and the Fort Hood shooter's former confessor, if you don't mind). Here's Moazzam chatting up Anwar, and Anwar thanking Cage Prisoners for all the help. Anwar's fatwas calling for the murder of Danish cartoonist Kurt Westergaard have not yet hit their mark, but it's been close. After Westergaard visited Canada late last year, a Canadian living in Chicago was indicted in a plot to kill him. Tahawwur Hussain Rana, along with his pal David Coleman Headley, are also facing charges related to helping plan the Mumbai rampage that left 166 people dead in 2008. And if Umar's own testimony to the FBI is to be believed, it was Anwar al-Awlaki himself who directed him to blow up that airliner on Christmas Day.
All along, while Amnesty International brass has been promoting and servicing Begg and Cage Prisoners, Begg and Cage Prisoners have been promoting and servicing Anwar al-Awlaki. And that's not even the half of it.
So, enough. Amnesty International has long depended upon the trust, the goodwill and the generosity of liberals, civil libertarians, and people of conscience from across the political spectrum who have been pleased to send AI their money. Those people should stop.
Not a penny for AI until Gita Sahgal is reinstated and AI cuts all its ties to fraudsters like Cage Prisoners and Moazzam Begg.
Read more: http://network.nationalpost.com/np/blogs/fullcomment/archive/2010/02/08/terry-glavin-amnesty-international.aspx#ixzz0f3JTOhwvRead more: http://network.nationalpost.com/np/blogs/fullcomment/archive/2010/02/08/terry-glavin-amnesty-international.aspx#ixzz0f3JTQi9B
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/afghanistan/article7017810.ece
SENIOR official at Amnesty International has accused the charity of putting the human rights of Al-Qaeda terror suspects above those of their victims.
Gita Sahgal, head of the gender unit at Amnesty’s international secretariat, believes that collaborating with Moazzam Begg, a former British inmate at Guantanamo Bay, “fundamentally damages” the organisation’s reputation.
In an email sent to Amnesty’s top bosses, she suggests the charity has mistakenly allied itself with Begg and his “jihadi” group, Cageprisoners, out of fear of being branded racist and Islamophobic.
Sahgal describes Begg as “Britain’s most famous supporter of the Taliban”. He has championed the rights of jailed Al-Qaeda members and hate preachers, including Anwar al-Awlaki, the alleged spiritual mentor of the Christmas Day Detroit plane bomber.
Amnesty’s work with Cageprisoners took it to Downing Street last month to demand the closure of Guantanamo Bay. Begg has also embarked on a European tour, hosted by Amnesty, urging countries to offer safe haven to Guantanamo detainees. This is despite concerns about former inmates returning to terrorism.
Sahgal, who has researched religious fundamentalism for 20 years, has decided to go public because she feels Amnesty has ignored her warnings for the past two years about the involvement of Begg in the charity’s Counter Terror With Justice campaign.
“I believe the campaign fundamentally damages Amnesty International’s integrity and, more importantly, constitutes a threat to human rights,” Sahgal wrote in an email to the organisation’s leaders on January 30. “To be appearing on platforms with Britain’s most famous supporter of the Taliban, whom we treat as a human rights defender, is a gross error of judgment.”
Amnesty is the world’s biggest human rights organisation with 2.2m members and a galaxy of celebrity supporters, including Bono, John Cleese, Yoko Ono, Al Pacino and Sinead O’Connor. Its decision to work with Begg poses liberal backers with a moral dilemma and raises questions about the direction in which Amnesty has travelled since it was set up in 1961 to support “prisoners of conscience”.
“As a former Guantanamo detainee it was legitimate to hear his experiences, but as a supporter of the Taliban it was absolutely wrong to legitimise him as a partner,” Sahgal told The Sunday Times.
Begg, 42, from Birmingham, was held at Guantanamo for three years until 2005 under suspicion of links to Al-Qaeda, which he denies. Prior to his arrest, Begg lived with his family in Kabul and praised the Taliban in his memoirs as “better than anything Afghanistan has had in 20 years”. After his release Begg became the figurehead for Cageprisoners, which describes itself as “a human rights organisation that exists solely to raise awareness of the plight of prisoners ... held as part of the War On Terror”.
Among the Muslim inmates it highlights are Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, alleged mastermind of the 9/11 attacks, Abu Hamza, the hook-handed cleric facing extradition from Britain to America on terror charges, and Abu Qatada, a preacher described as Osama Bin Laden’s “European ambassador”.
Sahgal, 53, is not the only critic of Begg at Amnesty. In 2008 a board member of its US arm opposed Begg’s appearance, via videolink, at its AGM, but was overruled.
When Begg appeared at Downing Street last month as part of a group delivering a letter to Gordon Brown calling for the release of the last British resident held at Guantanamo, he was accompanied by Kate Allen, head of Amnesty’s UK section since 2000. Allen is a leftwinger who was the girlfriend of Ken Livingstone, the former mayor of London, for almost 20 years.
This weekend Amnesty said it had launched an internal inquiry after Sahgal raised her concerns with bosses, including Allen and Claudio Cordone, the interim secretary-general.
Anne Fitzgerald, policy director of Amnesty’s international secretariat, said the charity had formed a relationship with Begg because he was a “compelling speaker” on detention. She said he had been paid expenses for his attendance at its events.
Asked if she thought Begg was a human rights advocate, Fitzgerald said: “It’s something you’d have to speak to him about. I don’t have the information to answer that.”
Yesterday Begg dismissed Sahgal’s claims as “ridiculous”. He defended his support for the Taliban and the decision by Cageprisoners to highlight the plight of detainees linked to Al-Qaeda: “We need to be engaging with those people who we find most unpalatable. I don’t consider anybody a terrorist until they have been charged and convicted of terrorism.”
Statement by Gita Sahgal07-Feb-10
This morning the Sunday Times published an article about Amnesty International’s association with groups that support the Taliban and promote Islamic Right ideas. In that article, I was quoted as raising concerns about Amnesty’s very high profile associations with Guantanamo-detainee Moazzam Begg. I felt that Amnesty International was risking its reputation by associating itself with Begg, who heads an organization, Cageprisoners, that actively promotes Islamic Right ideas and individuals.
Within a few hours of the article being published, Amnesty had suspended me from my job.
A moment comes, which comes but rarely in history, when a great organisation must ask: if it lies to itself, can it demand the truth of others? For in defending the torture standard, one of the strongest and most embedded in international human rights law, Amnesty International has sanitized the history and politics of the ex-Guantanamo detainee, Moazzam Begg and completely failed to recognize the nature of his organisation Cageprisoners.
The tragedy here is that the necessary defence of the torture standard has been inexcusably allied to the political legitimization of individuals and organisations belonging to the Islamic Right.
I have always opposed the illegal detention and torture of Muslim men at Guantanamo Bay and during the so-called War on Terror. I have been horrified and appalled by the treatment of people like Moazzam Begg and I have personally told him so. I have vocally opposed attempts by governments to justify ‘torture lite’.The issue is not about Moazzam Begg’s freedom of opinion, nor about his right to propound his views: he already exercises these rights fully as he should.
The issue is a fundamental one about the importance of the human rights movement maintaining an objective distance from groups and ideas that are committed to systematic discrimination and fundamentally undermine the universality of human rights. I have raised this issue because of my firm belief in human rights for all.
I sent two memos to my management asking a series of questions about what considerations were given to the nature of the relationship with Moazzam Begg and his organisation, Cageprisoners.
I have received no answer to my questions. There has been a history of warnings within Amnesty that it is inadvisable to partner with Begg.
Amnesty has created the impression that Begg is not only a victim of human rights violations but a defender of human rights.
Many of my highly respected colleagues, each well-regarded in their area of expertise has said so. Each has been set aside.
As a result of my speaking to the Sunday Times, Amnesty International has announced that it has launched an internal inquiry. This is the moment to press for public answers, and to demonstrate that there is already a public demand including from Amnesty International members, to restore the integrity of the organisation and remind it of its fundamental principles.
I have been a human rights campaigner for over three decades, defending the rights of women and ethnic minorities, defending religious freedom and the rights of victims of torture, and campaigning against illegal detention and state repression. I have raised the issue of the association of Amnesty International with groups such as Begg’s consistently within the organisation. I have now been suspended for trying to do my job and staying faithful to Amnesty’s mission to protect and defend human rights universally and impartially.
http://network.nationalpost.com/np/blogs/fullcomment/archive/2010/02/08/terry-glavin-amnesty-international.aspx
Amnesty International doubles down on appeasementPosted: February 08, 2010, 1:00 PM by Kelly McParlandThis has been going on for far too long. Now it's gone too far.To the embarrassment of its most principled supporters and against all internal entreaties, Amnesty International has persisted in whoring itself out to Cage Prisoners, a front for Taliban enthusiasts and al Qaida devotees that fraudulently presents itself a human rights group.
After two years of trying to reason with her bosses, Gita Sahgal, the head of AI's gender unit, decided she'd finally had enough. This weekend, she blew the whistle. She gave the Times of London her January 30 appeal to her bosses, which states only the obvious: AI's service to Cage Prisoners is both prone and supine, it "fundamentally damages Amnesty International’s integrity and, more importantly, constitutes a threat to human rights.” AI's conduct has been driven by a cowardly fear of being labeled Islamophobic. More of the obvious: “To be appearing on platforms with Britain’s most famous supporter of the Taliban, whom we treat as a human rights defender, is a gross error of judgment.”Today, AI relieved Gita of her duties.
If you want AI's transparently subject-changing, point-avoiding non-explanation for its behaviour, you're welcome to it, here. For an account of the way Amnesty International started racing downhill with Islamist crackpots five years ago, Nick Cohen is, as always, indispensable. As Martin Bright points out in the Spectator today: "It is Gita Sahgal who should be the darling of the human rights establishment, not Moazzam Begg.
"Cage Prisoners' Moazzam Begg, a Taliban admirer who happily trotted off to Afghanistan when the Taliban ran the show, before 2001, is a former Guantanamo inmate and was a collaborator of the "Underpants Bomber" Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab back in 2007, when Umar was a UCL Islamic Society president (and is now the fourth former UCL Islamic Society president to face terrorism charges in as many years). Moazzam and Umar are both rather more than mere acquaintances of the American-born Yemeni Al Qaida cleric Anwar al-Awlaki, Umar's former teacher (and the Fort Hood shooter's former confessor, if you don't mind). Here's Moazzam chatting up Anwar, and Anwar thanking Cage Prisoners for all the help. Anwar's fatwas calling for the murder of Danish cartoonist Kurt Westergaard have not yet hit their mark, but it's been close. After Westergaard visited Canada late last year, a Canadian living in Chicago was indicted in a plot to kill him. Tahawwur Hussain Rana, along with his pal David Coleman Headley, are also facing charges related to helping plan the Mumbai rampage that left 166 people dead in 2008. And if Umar's own testimony to the FBI is to be believed, it was Anwar al-Awlaki himself who directed him to blow up that airliner on Christmas Day.
All along, while Amnesty International brass has been promoting and servicing Begg and Cage Prisoners, Begg and Cage Prisoners have been promoting and servicing Anwar al-Awlaki. And that's not even the half of it.
So, enough. Amnesty International has long depended upon the trust, the goodwill and the generosity of liberals, civil libertarians, and people of conscience from across the political spectrum who have been pleased to send AI their money. Those people should stop.
Not a penny for AI until Gita Sahgal is reinstated and AI cuts all its ties to fraudsters like Cage Prisoners and Moazzam Begg.
Read more: http://network.nationalpost.com/np/blogs/fullcomment/archive/2010/02/08/terry-glavin-amnesty-international.aspx#ixzz0f3JTOhwvRead more: http://network.nationalpost.com/np/blogs/fullcomment/archive/2010/02/08/terry-glavin-amnesty-international.aspx#ixzz0f3JTQi9B
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/afghanistan/article7017810.ece
SENIOR official at Amnesty International has accused the charity of putting the human rights of Al-Qaeda terror suspects above those of their victims.
Gita Sahgal, head of the gender unit at Amnesty’s international secretariat, believes that collaborating with Moazzam Begg, a former British inmate at Guantanamo Bay, “fundamentally damages” the organisation’s reputation.
In an email sent to Amnesty’s top bosses, she suggests the charity has mistakenly allied itself with Begg and his “jihadi” group, Cageprisoners, out of fear of being branded racist and Islamophobic.
Sahgal describes Begg as “Britain’s most famous supporter of the Taliban”. He has championed the rights of jailed Al-Qaeda members and hate preachers, including Anwar al-Awlaki, the alleged spiritual mentor of the Christmas Day Detroit plane bomber.
Amnesty’s work with Cageprisoners took it to Downing Street last month to demand the closure of Guantanamo Bay. Begg has also embarked on a European tour, hosted by Amnesty, urging countries to offer safe haven to Guantanamo detainees. This is despite concerns about former inmates returning to terrorism.
Sahgal, who has researched religious fundamentalism for 20 years, has decided to go public because she feels Amnesty has ignored her warnings for the past two years about the involvement of Begg in the charity’s Counter Terror With Justice campaign.
“I believe the campaign fundamentally damages Amnesty International’s integrity and, more importantly, constitutes a threat to human rights,” Sahgal wrote in an email to the organisation’s leaders on January 30. “To be appearing on platforms with Britain’s most famous supporter of the Taliban, whom we treat as a human rights defender, is a gross error of judgment.”
Amnesty is the world’s biggest human rights organisation with 2.2m members and a galaxy of celebrity supporters, including Bono, John Cleese, Yoko Ono, Al Pacino and Sinead O’Connor. Its decision to work with Begg poses liberal backers with a moral dilemma and raises questions about the direction in which Amnesty has travelled since it was set up in 1961 to support “prisoners of conscience”.
“As a former Guantanamo detainee it was legitimate to hear his experiences, but as a supporter of the Taliban it was absolutely wrong to legitimise him as a partner,” Sahgal told The Sunday Times.
Begg, 42, from Birmingham, was held at Guantanamo for three years until 2005 under suspicion of links to Al-Qaeda, which he denies. Prior to his arrest, Begg lived with his family in Kabul and praised the Taliban in his memoirs as “better than anything Afghanistan has had in 20 years”. After his release Begg became the figurehead for Cageprisoners, which describes itself as “a human rights organisation that exists solely to raise awareness of the plight of prisoners ... held as part of the War On Terror”.
Among the Muslim inmates it highlights are Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, alleged mastermind of the 9/11 attacks, Abu Hamza, the hook-handed cleric facing extradition from Britain to America on terror charges, and Abu Qatada, a preacher described as Osama Bin Laden’s “European ambassador”.
Sahgal, 53, is not the only critic of Begg at Amnesty. In 2008 a board member of its US arm opposed Begg’s appearance, via videolink, at its AGM, but was overruled.
When Begg appeared at Downing Street last month as part of a group delivering a letter to Gordon Brown calling for the release of the last British resident held at Guantanamo, he was accompanied by Kate Allen, head of Amnesty’s UK section since 2000. Allen is a leftwinger who was the girlfriend of Ken Livingstone, the former mayor of London, for almost 20 years.
This weekend Amnesty said it had launched an internal inquiry after Sahgal raised her concerns with bosses, including Allen and Claudio Cordone, the interim secretary-general.
Anne Fitzgerald, policy director of Amnesty’s international secretariat, said the charity had formed a relationship with Begg because he was a “compelling speaker” on detention. She said he had been paid expenses for his attendance at its events.
Asked if she thought Begg was a human rights advocate, Fitzgerald said: “It’s something you’d have to speak to him about. I don’t have the information to answer that.”
Yesterday Begg dismissed Sahgal’s claims as “ridiculous”. He defended his support for the Taliban and the decision by Cageprisoners to highlight the plight of detainees linked to Al-Qaeda: “We need to be engaging with those people who we find most unpalatable. I don’t consider anybody a terrorist until they have been charged and convicted of terrorism.”
Statement by Gita Sahgal07-Feb-10
This morning the Sunday Times published an article about Amnesty International’s association with groups that support the Taliban and promote Islamic Right ideas. In that article, I was quoted as raising concerns about Amnesty’s very high profile associations with Guantanamo-detainee Moazzam Begg. I felt that Amnesty International was risking its reputation by associating itself with Begg, who heads an organization, Cageprisoners, that actively promotes Islamic Right ideas and individuals.
Within a few hours of the article being published, Amnesty had suspended me from my job.
A moment comes, which comes but rarely in history, when a great organisation must ask: if it lies to itself, can it demand the truth of others? For in defending the torture standard, one of the strongest and most embedded in international human rights law, Amnesty International has sanitized the history and politics of the ex-Guantanamo detainee, Moazzam Begg and completely failed to recognize the nature of his organisation Cageprisoners.
The tragedy here is that the necessary defence of the torture standard has been inexcusably allied to the political legitimization of individuals and organisations belonging to the Islamic Right.
I have always opposed the illegal detention and torture of Muslim men at Guantanamo Bay and during the so-called War on Terror. I have been horrified and appalled by the treatment of people like Moazzam Begg and I have personally told him so. I have vocally opposed attempts by governments to justify ‘torture lite’.The issue is not about Moazzam Begg’s freedom of opinion, nor about his right to propound his views: he already exercises these rights fully as he should.
The issue is a fundamental one about the importance of the human rights movement maintaining an objective distance from groups and ideas that are committed to systematic discrimination and fundamentally undermine the universality of human rights. I have raised this issue because of my firm belief in human rights for all.
I sent two memos to my management asking a series of questions about what considerations were given to the nature of the relationship with Moazzam Begg and his organisation, Cageprisoners.
I have received no answer to my questions. There has been a history of warnings within Amnesty that it is inadvisable to partner with Begg.
Amnesty has created the impression that Begg is not only a victim of human rights violations but a defender of human rights.
Many of my highly respected colleagues, each well-regarded in their area of expertise has said so. Each has been set aside.
As a result of my speaking to the Sunday Times, Amnesty International has announced that it has launched an internal inquiry. This is the moment to press for public answers, and to demonstrate that there is already a public demand including from Amnesty International members, to restore the integrity of the organisation and remind it of its fundamental principles.
I have been a human rights campaigner for over three decades, defending the rights of women and ethnic minorities, defending religious freedom and the rights of victims of torture, and campaigning against illegal detention and state repression. I have raised the issue of the association of Amnesty International with groups such as Begg’s consistently within the organisation. I have now been suspended for trying to do my job and staying faithful to Amnesty’s mission to protect and defend human rights universally and impartially.
