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Criticism of Amnesty International

December 01, 2023

Criticism of Amnesty International includes claims of selection bias, as well as ideology and foreign policy bias against either non-Western countries or Western-supported countries. Various governments criticized by Amnesty International have in turn criticized the organization, complaining about what they assert constituted one-sided reporting.

Separate to its human rights reporting, Amnesty has been criticized for the high salaries of some of its staff,[1][2] as well as its workplace environment,[3] including the issue of institutional racism within the organization.[4]

Criticism by country edit

Allegations of pro-Western bias edit

This includes non-Western governments claiming Amnesty is ideologically biased against them, such as those of the Democratic Republic of the Congo,[5] the People's Republic of China,[6] Vietnam,[7] and Russia[8] who have criticized Amnesty International for what they assert constituted one-sided reporting or a failure to treat threats to security as a mitigating factor. The actions of these governments—and of other governments critical of Amnesty International—have been the subject of human rights concerns voiced by Amnesty.

Allegations of anti-Western bias edit

United States edit

In 2005, Amnesty International claimed that the United States was a human rights offender. The White House rejected these allegations, stating that they were unsupported by facts.[9]

Russian dissident Pavel Litvinov has said of AI's criticism of the US: "[B]y using hyperbole and muddling the difference between repressive regimes and the imperfections of democracy, Amnesty's spokesmen put its authority at risk. U.S. human rights violations seem almost trifling in comparison with those committed by Cuba, North Korea, Pakistan or Saudi Arabia."[10]

Guantánamo Bay comments edit
 
Protest against human rights violation at Guantánamo Bay prison (June 2006)

In the foreword[11] to Amnesty International's Report 2005,[12] the Secretary General, Irene Khan, referred to the Guantánamo Bay prison as "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." In the subsequent press conference, she added

"If Guantanamo evokes images of Soviet repression, 'ghost detainees' – or the incommunicado detention of unregistered detainees – bring back the practice of 'disappearances' so popular with Latin American dictators in the past. According to US official sources there could be over 100 ghost detainees held by the US. In 2004, thousands of people were held by the US in Iraq, hundreds in Afghanistan, and undisclosed numbers in undisclosed locations. AI is calling on the US Administration to close Guantanamo and disclose the rest".[13]

Former U.S. Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld believed the comments were "reprehensible", Vice President Dick Cheney said he was "offended", and President Bush said he believed the report was "absurd". The Washington Post editorialized that "lately the organization has tended to save its most vitriolic condemnations not for the world's dictators but for the United States."[14] The human rights organization Human Rights Watch also criticized the Bush administration over the camp in its 2003 world report, stating: "Washington has ignored human rights standards in its own treatment of terrorism suspects."[15]

Edmund McWilliams, a retired senior US Foreign Service Officer who monitored Soviet and Vietnamese abuse of prisoners in their "gulags", defended Amnesty International's comparison. "I note that abuses that I reported on in those inhumane systems parallel abuses reported in Guantanamo, at the Bagram air base in Afghanistan and at the Abu Ghraib prison: prisoners suspended from the ceiling and beaten to death; widespread 'waterboarding'; prisoners 'disappeared' to preclude monitoring by the International Committee of the Red Cross — and all with almost no senior-level accountability."[16]

Pavel Litvinov, a human rights activist and former Soviet-era "gulag" prisoner, criticized the analogy saying, "By any standard, Guantanamo and similar American-run prisons elsewhere do not resemble, in their conditions of detention or their scale, the concentration camp system that was at the core of a totalitarian communist system."[10]

John Podhoretz, writing in the New York Post on the difference between Guantanamo and a Soviet gulag, said, "Maybe the people who work at Amnesty International really do think that the imprisonment of 600 certain or suspected terrorists is tantamount to the imprisonment of 25 million slaves. The case of Amnesty International proves that well-meaning people can make morality their life's work and still be little more than moral idiots."[17]

William F. Schulz, executive director of Amnesty International USA, defended the statement, saying, "What is 'absurd' is President Bush's attempt to deny the deliberate policies of his administration." and "What is 'absurd' and indeed outrageous is the Bush administration's failure to undertake a full independent investigation." Secretary General Irene Khan also responded saying, "The administration's response has been that our report is absurd, that our allegations have no basis, and our answer is very simple: if that is so, open up these detention centres, allow us and others to visit them."

Since the U.S. administration originally claimed that these prisoners were not entitled to the protections of the Geneva Conventions, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled against this interpretation in 2006.[18] Following this, on 7 July 2006, the Department of Defense issued an internal memo stating that prisoners will in the future be entitled to protection under the Geneva Conventions.[19][20][21]

In 2010, Gita Sahgal, an Amnesty senior official, publicly condemned the organization for its collaboration with former Guantanamo detainee Moazzam Begg of Cageprisoners. In a letter to Amnesty's leadership, she wrote: "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." She warned that it "constitutes a threat to human rights".[22] Begg has toured Europe with Amnesty officials.[23] In 2010, Claudio Cordone asserted that Begg's views on holding talks with the Taliban or the role of jihad in self-defence were not antithetical to human rights, even though he may disagree with them. Cordone's assertion was criticized by Amrita Chhachhi, Sara Hossain, and Sunila Abeysekera who said that "defensive jihad" or "defence of religion" is often used as an excuse to violate human rights by Muslim, Christian and Hindu extremists.[24]

Amnesty International's abortion policies edit

In April 2007, Amnesty International changed its neutral stance on abortion to supporting access to abortion in cases of rape and incest, and when the life or the health of the mother might be threatened.[25] Amnesty's official policy is that they "do not promote abortion as a universal right" but "support the decriminalisation of abortion".[26] According to deputy secretary general Kate Gilmore, the debate over the change was difficult, but eventually the overwhelming majority of national Amnesty chapters supported the change. The change was opposed by several organizations, notably by senior figures in the Catholic Church, traditionally a strong supporter of Amnesty International,[27] and a group of US legislators. Amnesty spokeswoman Suzanne Trimel estimated that a "handful, probably less than 200" of over 400,000 members had quit over the issue.[28]

The Catholic Church's Pontifical Council for Justice and Peace in June 2007 issued a statement urging Catholics not to donate to Amnesty because of its abortion stance.[29] Cardinal Renato Martino said that abortion was murder, as was "to justify it selectively, in the event of rape, that is to define an innocent child in the belly of its mother as an enemy, as 'something one can destroy'". In an interview with the National Catholic Register, the Cardinal said he believed that "if in fact Amnesty International persists in this course of action, individuals and Catholic organizations must withdraw their support, because, in deciding to promote abortion rights, AI has betrayed its mission."[30] The Church withdrew funding globally for Amnesty, and churches in various locations took other steps to sever their ties with the group.[31]

Decriminalisation of sex work edit

In June 2013, confusion arose when a local chapter of Amnesty UK called Paisley Branch endorsed a Scottish bill that sought to criminalise sex work. Amnesty UK had its name removed from the list of supporters of the bill, stating that it ran contrary to its international policy not to criminalise 'the sex worker herself or himself' nor 'consensual sex between adults', and 'no conflating trafficking and sex work'. The issue forced Amnesty International to clarify its position on the legal status of sex work.[32]

When a draft copy of the policy appeared in early 2014, several abolitionist feminists and former sex workers condemned the proposal.[33][34][35]

On 7 July 2015 an updated draft was released to Amnesty International members.[36] The New York Times reported that, although 'some complain[ed] that it was conceived at Amnesty's headquarters in London', 'various versions have been reviewed by the organization's national chapters, and a consensus emerged supporting decriminalization for just the prostitutes, according to minutes of organizational meetings.'[37] The July 2015 draft policy was the result of two years of research and consultations with its members,[38] and proposed to decriminalise both sellers and buyers of sex; it was scheduled to be put to a vote by about 500 Amnesty delegates from more than 80 countries at an Amnesty International conference in Dublin in August 2015.[37] The proposal was criticised by abolitionist feminist organisations, including The Coalition Against Trafficking of Women (CATW), who published an open letter signed by over 400 advocates and organisations, condemning "Amnesty's proposal to adopt a policy that calls for the decriminalization of pimps, brothel owners and buyers of sex – the pillars of a $99 billion global sex industry".[39] Contrary to claims that decriminalisation would make prostituted people safer, CATW pointed to research which alleged that deregulation of the sex industry had produced catastrophic results in several countries: "the German government, for example, which deregulated the industry of prostitution in 2002, has found that the sex industry was not made safer for women after the enactment of its law. Instead, the explosive growth of legal brothels in Germany has triggered an increase in sex trafficking."[39] CATW instead asked Amnesty to support the so-called Nordic model, in which sex buyers and pimps are criminalized, while prostituted people are decriminalized.[39]

In early August, a large number of NGOs published an open letter in support of the decriminalization proposal. The organizations supporting Amnesty International's position included the Global Network of Sex Work Projects (NSWP), the Committee on the Rights of Sex Workers in Europe (ICRSE), Sex Workers' Rights Advocacy Network in Central and Eastern Europe and Central Asia (SWAN), Human Rights Watch, and the Global Alliance Against Traffic in Women.[40][41] On 11 August 2015, the International Council Meeting (ICM) voted in favour of a resolution which authorised the International Board to develop and adopt the decriminalisation policy.[42] The New York Times described it as the result of 'days of emotional debates and intense lobbying', reporting that the abolitionist camp's lobbying was particularly 'aggressive', but a majority voted for the decriminalisation proposal as 'the best way to reduce risks for prostitutes' against 'arbitrary arrest and detention, extortion and harassment, and physical and sexual violence'.[38] After the vote, a French abolitionist group announced it would no longer work with Amnesty in the future.[38] In May 2016, Amnesty published its policy calling on governments around the world to decriminalise consensual sex work as the best way to improve the human rights of sex workers, and rejecting the 'Nordic model'; some abolitionist groups criticised the move.[43]

Israel edit

The Israel Ministry of Foreign Affairs criticised the May 2012 report on administrative detention saying it was "one sided", and "not particularly serious", and "that it seemed little more than a public relations gimmick".[44] The Israeli embassy in London called Amnesty "ridiculous". Amnesty said that this report "is not intended to address violations of detainees' rights by the Palestinian Authority, or the Hamas de facto administration. These violations have been and will continue to be addressed separately by the organisation".[45]

Some people have criticized Amnesty for promoting an unbalanced and excessive focus on Israel. The American Jewish Congress asserts that Amnesty's criticism of Israel distorts the law of war by "read[ing] the law of war as if it was a law banning war", and misinterprets the Geneva Conventions with regard to the issue of proportionality in war.[46]

In 2010 Frank Johansson, the chairman of Amnesty International-Finland called Israel a nilkkimaa, a derogatory term variously translated as "scum state", "creep state" or "punk state".[47][48] Johansson stood by his statement, saying that it was based on Israel's "repeated flouting of international law", and his own personal experiences with Israelis. When asked by a journalist if any other country on earth that could be described in these terms, he said that he could not think of any, although some individual "Russian officials" could be so described.[48] According to Israeli professor Gerald M. Steinberg of NGO Monitor, a pro Israel campaign group: "Amnesty International has promoted an intense anti-Israel ideology, resulting in statements like these."[48]

In November 2012, Amnesty UK began a disciplinary process against staffer Kristyan Benedict, Amnesty UK campaigns manager, because of a posting on his Twitter account, said to be anti-semitic, regarding three Jewish members of parliament and Operation Pillar of Defense where he wrote: "Louise Ellman, Robert Halfon and Luciana Berger walk into a bar ... each orders a round of B52s ... #Gaza". Amnesty International UK said "the matter has been referred to our internal and confidential processes." Amnesty's campaigns director Tim Hancock said, "We do not believe that humour is appropriate in the current circumstances, particularly from our own members of staff." An Amnesty International UK spokesperson later said the charity had decided that "the tweet in question was ill-advised and had the potential to be offensive and inflammatory but was not racist or antisemitic."[49][50][51]

In the April 2015 annual Amnesty International UK AGM, delegates voted (468 votes to 461) against a motion proposing a campaign against antisemitism in the UK. The debate on the motion formed a consensus that Amnesty should fight "discrimination against all ethnic and religious groups", but were divided over the issue of an anti-racism campaign with a "single focus". The Jewish Chronicle noted that Amnesty International had previously published a report on discrimination against Muslims in Europe. NGO monitor released a statement saying the decision "highlights the hypocrisy and moral bankruptcy of what was once a leader in human rights advocacy."[52][53][54]

In November 2016, Amnesty International conducted a second internal investigation of Benedict for comparing Israel to the Islamic state.[55]

In April 2021, Amnesty International distanced itself from a tweet written in 2013 by its new Secretary General, Agnes Callamard, which read: ""NYT Interview of Shimon Perres [sic] where he admits that Yasser Arafat was murdered"; Amnesty responded by saying: "The tweet was written in haste and is incorrect. It does not reflect the position of Amnesty International or Agnès Callamard."[56][57][58] Callamard herself has not deleted the tweet.[56]

On March 11, 2022, Paul O'Brien, the Amnesty International USA Director stated at a private event: "We are opposed to the idea — and this, I think, is an existential part of the debate — that Israel should be preserved as a state for the Jewish people", while adding "Amnesty takes no political views on any question, including the right of the State of Israel to survive."[59][60][61][62] He also rejected a poll that found 8 in 10 American Jews were pro-Israel, saying: ""I believe my gut tells me that what Jewish people in this country want is to know that there's a sanctuary that is a safe and sustainable place that the Jews, the Jewish people can call home."[59][60][61] On March 14, 2022, all 25 Jewish Democrats in the House of Representatives issued a rare joint statement rebuking O'Brien, saying that he "has added his name to the list of those who, across centuries, have tried to deny and usurp the Jewish people's independent agency" and "condemning this and any antisemitic attempt to deny the Jewish people control of their own destiny."[63][64][65] On March 25, 2022, O'Brien wrote to the Jewish congressmen: "I regret representing the views of the Jewish people."[64]

Alleged ties to Muslim Brotherhood and Islamists edit

In August 2015, The Times reported that Yasmin Hussein, then Amnesty's director of faith and human rights and previously its head of international advocacy and a prominent representative at the United Nations, had "undeclared private links to men alleged to be key players in a secretive network of global Islamists", including the Muslim Brotherhood and Hamas.[66][67] Ms. Hussein's husband, Wael Musabbeh and a Bradford community trust, of which both Mr Musabbeh and Ms Hussein were directors, were alleged by the United Arab Emirates to be part of a financial and ideological network linking the Muslim Brotherhood to its affiliate in the UAE, which the UAE government in 2013 accused of trying to overthrow the government.[67] Amnesty said it knew in 2013 of the alleged links between the Muslim Brotherhood, Mr Musabbeh, and the Bradford trust, but did not realize there was any connection to Ms Hussein, Musabbeh's wife of 20 years; it also challenged the fairness of the trial.[67] Mr Musabbeh said he had no connection to the Muslim Brotherhood and was not an Islamist.[67]

The Times also detailed instances where Hussein was alleged to have had inappropriately close relationships with the al-Qazzaz family, members of which were high-ranking government ministers in the administration of Mohammed Morsi and Muslim Brotherhood leaders at the time.[66][67] In 2012, Amnesty staff alerted authorities in the organization after Ms Hussein held a private, unofficial meeting in Egypt with Adly al-Qazzaz, a ministerial education adviser blamed by a teachers' union for undertaking the "Brotherhoodisation" of Egypt's education system; shared an evening meal with his family; and stayed overnight in their home.[66] Amnesty International's policies strictly forbid it from siding with any government or political party, and Amnesty staff are asked to declare links that may produce a real or perceived conflict of interest with its independence and impartiality.[66] Amnesty International said that conducted an internal inquiry and told Ms Hussein that her overnight stay with the al-Qazzaz family was inappropriate.[66] Ms Hussein apologized and denied supporting the Muslim Brotherhood, saying that "any connections are purely circumstantial".[66]

Iranian government's protest of Amnesty's claims about the death toll in the 2019 fuel protests in Iran edit

On 19 November 2019, Amnesty International reported that at least 106 civilians had been "unlawfully killed" by Iranian security forces during the 2019 Iranian protests which were triggered by outrage over a sudden increase in gasoline prices.[68] Amnesty later revised the figure upwards to 304, claiming that unarmed protesters had been deliberately massacred by the authorities who had "green lighted" a brutal crackdown to suppress dissent.[69] The Iranian authorities, whilst acknowledging that some armed rioters had been shot by police, rejected Amnesty's figure as "sheer lies" and part of a "disinformation campaign waged against Iran from outside the country".[70]

Judiciary spokesman, Gholamhussein Esmayeeli, countered that it was armed rioters who had actually killed many people, but that Amnesty and other organizations had nonetheless, "named people who have died in other incidents that are different from the recent riots and many of those people claimed to be killed are alive".[71] Secretary of Supreme National Security Council (SNSC), Rear Admiral Ali Shamkhani, also denied that civilian deaths were caused mostly by security forces and instead asserted that, "more than 85 percent of victims of the recent unrest in cities of Tehran province had not taken part in any of the protests.".[72] In a thinly veiled rebuttal to Amnesty, Prosecutor-General Mohammad Montazeri retorted that, "people, who are outside the country, have no access to exact information and accurate figures. They provide different figures which are invalid."[73] In its 16 December press release, Amnesty's research director for MENA, Philip Luther, moreover, did not acknowledge the widespread arson, vandalism and looting apparent during the protests/riots, that led to the forceful response, or the reported killing of security officers either. He also appeared to misquote supreme Leader, Ayatollah Khamenei, as stating that all those protesting in the streets were "villains". The Iranian leader had, in fact, distinguished between those peacefully objecting to the govermmemt policy and those who destroyed property: "Some people are no doubt worried by this decision (to raise the price of gasoline) ... but sabotage and arson is done by villains, not our people."[74] Ayatollah Khamenei further elaborated that those killed in any crossfire between the security forces and armed rioters/saboteurs were to be regarded as "martyrs".[75]

On 20 May 2020, Amnesty published a final report on the protests where, for the first time, it named 232 out of the 304 alleged victims.[76] Amnesty also acknowledged that many of those killed were bystanders who were not even protesting at the time of their death. The report was itself heavily criticized by two independent analysts who accused Amnesty of distorting many facts, making unsupported claims and ignoring key evidence.[77] On 1 June 2020, an Iranian lawmaker, Mojtaba Zolnour, made it known that 230 persons had been killed, including 6 security officers and 40 from the Baseej volunteer force. More than a quarter were bystanders who he alleged were killed by rioters.[78]

2019 report on workplace bullying within Amnesty International edit

In February 2019, Amnesty International's management team offered to resign. The offer came after an independent report by Konterra group found what it called a "toxic culture" of workplace bullying, as well as numerous evidences of bullying, harassment, sexism and racism. The report was commissioned by Amnesty after the investigation of the suicides of 30-year Amnesty veteran Gaëtan Mootoo in Paris in May 2018 (who left a note citing work pressures), and 28-year-old intern Rosalind McGregor in Geneva in July 2018.[79] The Konterra report found that: "39 per cent of Amnesty International staff reported that they developed mental or physical health issues as the direct result of working at Amnesty". The report concluded, "organisational culture and management failures are the root cause of most staff wellbeing issues.".[80]

The report said that efforts by Amnesty to address its problems had been "ad hoc, reactive, and inconsistent," and that staff described the senior leadership team as out-of-touch, incompetent and callous. Those signing a letter offering to resign were the senior directors of research, the Secretary General's office, global fundraising, global operations, people and services, law and policy and campaigns and communications. However, Amnesty International's Secretary General Kumi Naidoo did not accept resignations and instead offered generous redundancies to managers concerned, including to Mootoo's senior director Anna Neistat directly implicated in the report on Mootoo's death. Naidoo stated that his priority was "to rebuild trust at a dangerous time when Amnesty was needed more than ever".[79]

After none of the managers were held accountable, a group of workers petitioned for Amnesty's chief to resign. On 5 December 2019 Naidoo resigned from his post of Amnesty's Secretary General, citing ill health.[81] Julie Verhaar was appointed as interim Secretary General the same day.[82]

2019 budgetary crisis controversy edit

In 2019 Amnesty International's Secretary General Kumi Naidoo admitted to a hole in the organization's budget of up to £17m in donor money to the end of 2020. In order to deal with the budgetary crisis Naidoo announced to staff that the organization's headquarters would have cut almost 100 jobs as a part of urgent restructuring. Unite the Union, the UK's biggest trade union, said the redundancies were a direct result of "overspending by the organisation's senior leadership team" and have occurred "despite an increase in income".[83] Unite, which represents Amnesty's staff, feared that cuts would fall heaviest on lower income staff. It said that in the previous year the top 23 highest earners at Amnesty International were paid a total of £2.6m – an average of £113,000 per year. Unite demanded a review of whether it is necessary to have so many managers in the organisation.[84]

2020 secret payout controversy edit

In September 2020 The Times reported that Amnesty International paid £800,000 in compensation over the workplace suicide of Gaëtan Mootoo and demanded his family keep the deal secret.[85] The pre-trial agreement between London-based Amnesty's International Secretariat and Motoo's wife was reached on the condition that she keeps the deal secret by signing NDA. This was done particularly to prevent discussing the settlement with the press or on social media. The arrangement led to criticism on social media, with people asking why an organisation such as Amnesty would condone the use of non-disclosure agreements. Shaista Aziz, co-founder of the feminist advocacy group NGO Safe Space, questioned on Twitter why the "world's leading human rights organisation" was employing such contracts.[86] The source of the money was unknown. Amnesty stated that the payout to Motoo's family "will not be made from donations or membership fees".

India edit

On 29 September 2020, the Indian offshoot of Amnesty International released a statement announcing suspension of its operations in the country after the Enforcement Directorate, which investigates financial crimes and irregularities in India, ordered the freezing of its bank accounts.[87] In a statement, the Indian Ministry of Home Affairs said that Amnesty had contravened Indian laws by receiving funds from abroad. Amnesty, which said it had been harassed by the Indian government for its actions on human rights, particularly for its call for accountability in the Indian state of Kashmir, denied the charges and stated that it would appeal in Indian courts.[88][89][90]

Earlier, in 2009, Amnesty's Indian offshoot suspended its India operations as the UPA government rejected its application for receiving foreign funding.[90]

Alexei Navalny edit

On February 24, 2021, Amnesty announced that it would strip Alexei Navalny of his status as a prisoner of conscience on account of comments he had made about migrants in 2007 and 2008.[91][92][93] Amnesty said that the statements by Navalny, who had been poisoned by Novichok in 2020 and imprisoned by Russia in February 2021, could amount to incitement to discrimination, violence or hostility, met the level of "hate speech", and were thus incompatible with the label "prisoner of conscience".[92][94][95]

Amnesty's decision was met by sharp criticism from supporters, British parliamentarians, and other opposition figures in Russia.[96][97] Critics noted that many of the original complaints that led Amnesty to rescind its designation had cited material that originated with a Twitter account that appeared to be linked to the Russian state, and Amnesty's Russia media manager asserted that there appeared to be a coordinated campaign by pro-Kremlin forces to discredit Navalny;[93][97] in celebrating the decision, the head of Russia's state-funded TV network RT, Margarita Simonyan, referred to the source of the original allegations against Navalny as "our columnist."[92][96] The decision appeared to have been made by Amnesty's London Headquarters without the consultation of its Moscow branch; on February 27, 2021, Julie Vahaar, Amnesty's secretary-general, announced an internal inquiry into the process by which Amnesty had redesginated Navalny, saying that Amnesty had been targeted by a "Russian government smear campaign."[96] In a private Zoom call with pro-Russian pranksters posing as Navalny's associates, members of Amnesty's leadership, including Vahaar, admitted that the move had "done a lot of damage."[98]

On May 7, 2021, Amnesty redesignated Navalny as a Prisoner of Conscience and apologized, saying they had "made a wrong decision" and apologizing personally to Navalny "and the activists in Russia and around the world who tirelessly campaign for his freedom" for the negative impacts their decision had had;[95][99][100] Amnesty also observed that their actions had been used to "further violate Navalny's rights."[94] They also clarified that in redesignating Navalny a POC, Amnesty was not implying any endorsement of his past comments, which it found "reprehensible."[94][99] Leonid Volkov, Navalny's chief of staff, responded on Twitter that "the ability to recognize mistakes and move on is the most important thing that distinguishes normal people from Putins [sic]".[101] Amnesty also stated that it would reconsider the process by which it designated individuals as Prisoners of Conscience.[94]

2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine edit

Dissolution by the Russian government edit

In early March 2022, during the 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine, Roskomnadzor blocked the Russian-language website of Amnesty International.[102] In early April 2022, the Russian Ministry of Justice announced that it would forcibly shut down the Russian branch of Amnesty International, saying that the organisation had committed "violations of the current legislation of the Russian Federation."[103]

Report on placement of Ukrainian forces in civilian areas edit

On 4 August 2022, Amnesty International published a report saying that it had found evidence that the Armed Forces of Ukraine had based forces and weapons in residential areas on several occasions when there were viable alternatives nearby. Amnesty further stated that while these cases did not justify Russian attacks on civilians, and that in a number of cases they had investigated Ukrainian forces had not acted similarly, these tactics risked endangering civilians.[104] The Amnesty report followed a report from the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights in June that had warned that both Russian and Ukrainian forces had established themselves "either in residential areas or near civilian objects, from where they launched military operations without taking measures for the protection of civilians present, as required under international humanitarian law" and a report from Human Rights Watch in July that said it had found evidence of three cases where "Ukrainian forces based forces among homes where people were living but took no apparent action to move residents to safer areas" and four cases of Russian forces doing the same.[105][106][107]

The Amnesty report sparked significant outrage in Ukraine. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy accused Amnesty of trying to "amnesty the terrorist state and shift the responsibility from the aggressor to the victim", while Ukrainian Minister of Foreign Affairs Dmytro Kuleba stated that the report creates "a false balance between the oppressor and the victim, between the country that is destroying hundreds and thousands of civilians, cities, territories and [a] country that is desperately defending itself".[108][109] The Kyiv Independent editorial team strongly criticized the report, pointing out flaws in reasoning and stating that "Amnesty [International] could not properly articulate who the main perpetrator of violence in Ukraine was".[110]

The report also generated significant controversy within other Western countries. An editorial published by British newspaper The Times described Amnesty International as "Putin's propagandists", noting that the organization already has a "previous form in abasing itself before the Kremlin" by refusing to recognize Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny as a prisoner of conscience, and stating that "Amnesty evidently learnt nothing from that fiasco".[111] British conservative journalist Stephen Pollard wrote on The Daily Telegraph that Amnesty was "utterly morally bankrupt" and that it was driven by an "anti-Western obsession".[112]

Amnesty's report was criticized by military and legal experts such as John Spencer, a specialist in urban warfare studies, who stated that advising Ukrainian forces not to be in urban areas did not make sense, as the circumstances of the war necessitated that.[113][114][115] United Nations war crime investigator Marc Garlasco stated that the Amnesty report got the law wrong, and also that Ukraine was making efforts to protect civilians, including helping them to relocate.[114] Further criticism came from French philosopher Bernard-Henri Lévy and by Italian journalist Lorenzo Cremonesi.[116][117]

The report, however, was praised by several Russian and pro-Russian figures, including the Russian embassy in London, causing further criticism against the organization.[118]

Following the publication of the report, Oksana Pokalchuk, head of Amnesty International in Ukraine, resigned from her post, left the organization[119] and published an explanation in The Washington Post on 13 August.[120] Amnesty International Sweden cofounder Per Wästberg also terminated his relationship with the organization in protest to the report.[121] Amnesty's Canadian branch issued a statement expressing regret for among other things the "insufficient context and legal analysis".[122] On 12 August, Amnesty's German branch issued a statement apologizing for aspects of the report's release and its effect, saying that it would be examined through a process initiated at the international level to determine what went wrong, and condemning its instrumentalization by Russian authorities.[123]

In mid-October 2022, the UN Independent International Commission of Inquiry on Ukraine released a report which included a section with findings similar to the findings of Amnesty's report.[124] The report stated that the Commission "documented that in areas controlled by Ukrainian armed forces, particularly during the first phase of the hostilities, on some occasions, there was also a lack of separation between armed forces and civilians, which placed civilians at risk."[125]

Amnesty commissioned an independent review into the report, that was leaked to The New York Times in mid-April 2023 and was published publicly by Amnesty in mid-May 2023.[126] The review found that the "principal factual finding" of the report was "reasonably substantiated by the evidence presented," but that the report had a number of shortcomings, including overstating the legal interpretation that Ukrainian forces has violated humanitarian law, using "ambiguous, imprecise and in some respects legally questionable" language in the press release, and that there was a "failure to proactively seek Amnesty Ukraine’s viewpoint and contextual understanding."[127]

Artificial images edit

A report about the repression in the Colombian protests of 2021 was illustrated with pseudo-realistic images generated by artificial intelligence. Although they were labelled as such, AI was criticised for undermining its credibility. The organisation explained the change from earlier use of photographs as an attempt to protect protesters. In response to criticism, it removed the images from its social media postings.[128]

See also edit

References edit

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Further reading edit

  • American Gulag at National Review Online, (27 May 2005). [1]
  • Jonathan V. Last, Calling It Like They See It, The Weekly Standard, 3 April 2003.
  • Nabeel Abraham, Torture, Anyone?, Lies of Our Times, May 1992, pp. 2–4. Claims AI and other groups are reticent in describing alleged torture on the part of Israel.

December 01, 2023
criticism, amnesty, international, includes, claims, selection, bias, well, ideology, foreign, policy, bias, against, either, western, countries, western, supported, countries, various, governments, criticized, amnesty, international, have, turn, criticized, o. Criticism of Amnesty International includes claims of selection bias as well as ideology and foreign policy bias against either non Western countries or Western supported countries Various governments criticized by Amnesty International have in turn criticized the organization complaining about what they assert constituted one sided reporting Separate to its human rights reporting Amnesty has been criticized for the high salaries of some of its staff 1 2 as well as its workplace environment 3 including the issue of institutional racism within the organization 4 Contents 1 Criticism by country 1 1 Allegations of pro Western bias 1 2 Allegations of anti Western bias 1 2 1 United States 1 2 1 1 Guantanamo Bay comments 2 Amnesty International s abortion policies 3 Decriminalisation of sex work 4 Israel 5 Alleged ties to Muslim Brotherhood and Islamists 6 Iranian government s protest of Amnesty s claims about the death toll in the 2019 fuel protests in Iran 7 2019 report on workplace bullying within Amnesty International 8 2019 budgetary crisis controversy 9 2020 secret payout controversy 10 India 11 Alexei Navalny 12 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine 12 1 Dissolution by the Russian government 12 2 Report on placement of Ukrainian forces in civilian areas 13 Artificial images 14 See also 15 References 16 Further readingCriticism by country editAllegations of pro Western bias edit This includes non Western governments claiming Amnesty is ideologically biased against them such as those of the Democratic Republic of the Congo 5 the People s Republic of China 6 Vietnam 7 and Russia 8 who have criticized Amnesty International for what they assert constituted one sided reporting or a failure to treat threats to security as a mitigating factor The actions of these governments and of other governments critical of Amnesty International have been the subject of human rights concerns voiced by Amnesty Allegations of anti Western bias edit United States edit In 2005 Amnesty International claimed that the United States was a human rights offender The White House rejected these allegations stating that they were unsupported by facts 9 Russian dissident Pavel Litvinov has said of AI s criticism of the US B y using hyperbole and muddling the difference between repressive regimes and the imperfections of democracy Amnesty s spokesmen put its authority at risk U S human rights violations seem almost trifling in comparison with those committed by Cuba North Korea Pakistan or Saudi Arabia 10 Guantanamo Bay comments edit nbsp Protest against human rights violation at Guantanamo Bay prison June 2006 In the foreword 11 to Amnesty International s Report 2005 12 the Secretary General Irene Khan referred to the Guantanamo Bay prison as 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 In the subsequent press conference she added If Guantanamo evokes images of Soviet repression ghost detainees or the incommunicado detention of unregistered detainees bring back the practice of disappearances so popular with Latin American dictators in the past According to US official sources there could be over 100 ghost detainees held by the US In 2004 thousands of people were held by the US in Iraq hundreds in Afghanistan and undisclosed numbers in undisclosed locations AI is calling on the US Administration to close Guantanamo and disclose the rest 13 Former U S Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld believed the comments were reprehensible Vice President Dick Cheney said he was offended and President Bush said he believed the report was absurd The Washington Post editorialized that lately the organization has tended to save its most vitriolic condemnations not for the world s dictators but for the United States 14 The human rights organization Human Rights Watch also criticized the Bush administration over the camp in its 2003 world report stating Washington has ignored human rights standards in its own treatment of terrorism suspects 15 Edmund McWilliams a retired senior US Foreign Service Officer who monitored Soviet and Vietnamese abuse of prisoners in their gulags defended Amnesty International s comparison I note that abuses that I reported on in those inhumane systems parallel abuses reported in Guantanamo at the Bagram air base in Afghanistan and at the Abu Ghraib prison prisoners suspended from the ceiling and beaten to death widespread waterboarding prisoners disappeared to preclude monitoring by the International Committee of the Red Cross and all with almost no senior level accountability 16 Pavel Litvinov a human rights activist and former Soviet era gulag prisoner criticized the analogy saying By any standard Guantanamo and similar American run prisons elsewhere do not resemble in their conditions of detention or their scale the concentration camp system that was at the core of a totalitarian communist system 10 John Podhoretz writing in the New York Post on the difference between Guantanamo and a Soviet gulag said Maybe the people who work at Amnesty International really do think that the imprisonment of 600 certain or suspected terrorists is tantamount to the imprisonment of 25 million slaves The case of Amnesty International proves that well meaning people can make morality their life s work and still be little more than moral idiots 17 William F Schulz executive director of Amnesty International USA defended the statement saying What is absurd is President Bush s attempt to deny the deliberate policies of his administration and What is absurd and indeed outrageous is the Bush administration s failure to undertake a full independent investigation Secretary General Irene Khan also responded saying The administration s response has been that our report is absurd that our allegations have no basis and our answer is very simple if that is so open up these detention centres allow us and others to visit them Since the U S administration originally claimed that these prisoners were not entitled to the protections of the Geneva Conventions the U S Supreme Court ruled against this interpretation in 2006 18 Following this on 7 July 2006 the Department of Defense issued an internal memo stating that prisoners will in the future be entitled to protection under the Geneva Conventions 19 20 21 In 2010 Gita Sahgal an Amnesty senior official publicly condemned the organization for its collaboration with former Guantanamo detainee Moazzam Begg of Cageprisoners In a letter to Amnesty s leadership she wrote 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 She warned that it constitutes a threat to human rights 22 Begg has toured Europe with Amnesty officials 23 In 2010 Claudio Cordone asserted that Begg s views on holding talks with the Taliban or the role of jihad in self defence were not antithetical to human rights even though he may disagree with them Cordone s assertion was criticized by Amrita Chhachhi Sara Hossain and Sunila Abeysekera who said that defensive jihad or defence of religion is often used as an excuse to violate human rights by Muslim Christian and Hindu extremists 24 Amnesty International s abortion policies editIn April 2007 Amnesty International changed its neutral stance on abortion to supporting access to abortion in cases of rape and incest and when the life or the health of the mother might be threatened 25 Amnesty s official policy is that they do not promote abortion as a universal right but support the decriminalisation of abortion 26 According to deputy secretary general Kate Gilmore the debate over the change was difficult but eventually the overwhelming majority of national Amnesty chapters supported the change The change was opposed by several organizations notably by senior figures in the Catholic Church traditionally a strong supporter of Amnesty International 27 and a group of US legislators Amnesty spokeswoman Suzanne Trimel estimated that a handful probably less than 200 of over 400 000 members had quit over the issue 28 The Catholic Church s Pontifical Council for Justice and Peace in June 2007 issued a statement urging Catholics not to donate to Amnesty because of its abortion stance 29 Cardinal Renato Martino said that abortion was murder as was to justify it selectively in the event of rape that is to define an innocent child in the belly of its mother as an enemy as something one can destroy In an interview with the National Catholic Register the Cardinal said he believed that if in fact Amnesty International persists in this course of action individuals and Catholic organizations must withdraw their support because in deciding to promote abortion rights AI has betrayed its mission 30 The Church withdrew funding globally for Amnesty and churches in various locations took other steps to sever their ties with the group 31 Decriminalisation of sex work editIn June 2013 confusion arose when a local chapter of Amnesty UK called Paisley Branch endorsed a Scottish bill that sought to criminalise sex work Amnesty UK had its name removed from the list of supporters of the bill stating that it ran contrary to its international policy not to criminalise the sex worker herself or himself nor consensual sex between adults and no conflating trafficking and sex work The issue forced Amnesty International to clarify its position on the legal status of sex work 32 When a draft copy of the policy appeared in early 2014 several abolitionist feminists and former sex workers condemned the proposal 33 34 35 On 7 July 2015 an updated draft was released to Amnesty International members 36 The New York Times reported that although some complain ed that it was conceived at Amnesty s headquarters in London various versions have been reviewed by the organization s national chapters and a consensus emerged supporting decriminalization for just the prostitutes according to minutes of organizational meetings 37 The July 2015 draft policy was the result of two years of research and consultations with its members 38 and proposed to decriminalise both sellers and buyers of sex it was scheduled to be put to a vote by about 500 Amnesty delegates from more than 80 countries at an Amnesty International conference in Dublin in August 2015 37 The proposal was criticised by abolitionist feminist organisations including The Coalition Against Trafficking of Women CATW who published an open letter signed by over 400 advocates and organisations condemning Amnesty s proposal to adopt a policy that calls for the decriminalization of pimps brothel owners and buyers of sex the pillars of a 99 billion global sex industry 39 Contrary to claims that decriminalisation would make prostituted people safer CATW pointed to research which alleged that deregulation of the sex industry had produced catastrophic results in several countries the German government for example which deregulated the industry of prostitution in 2002 has found that the sex industry was not made safer for women after the enactment of its law Instead the explosive growth of legal brothels in Germany has triggered an increase in sex trafficking 39 CATW instead asked Amnesty to support the so called Nordic model in which sex buyers and pimps are criminalized while prostituted people are decriminalized 39 In early August a large number of NGOs published an open letter in support of the decriminalization proposal The organizations supporting Amnesty International s position included the Global Network of Sex Work Projects NSWP the Committee on the Rights of Sex Workers in Europe ICRSE Sex Workers Rights Advocacy Network in Central and Eastern Europe and Central Asia SWAN Human Rights Watch and the Global Alliance Against Traffic in Women 40 41 On 11 August 2015 the International Council Meeting ICM voted in favour of a resolution which authorised the International Board to develop and adopt the decriminalisation policy 42 The New York Times described it as the result of days of emotional debates and intense lobbying reporting that the abolitionist camp s lobbying was particularly aggressive but a majority voted for the decriminalisation proposal as the best way to reduce risks for prostitutes against arbitrary arrest and detention extortion and harassment and physical and sexual violence 38 After the vote a French abolitionist group announced it would no longer work with Amnesty in the future 38 In May 2016 Amnesty published its policy calling on governments around the world to decriminalise consensual sex work as the best way to improve the human rights of sex workers and rejecting the Nordic model some abolitionist groups criticised the move 43 Israel editThis section may lend undue weight to certain ideas incidents or controversies Please help to create a more balanced presentation Discuss and resolve this issue before removing this message April 2022 The Israel Ministry of Foreign Affairs criticised the May 2012 report on administrative detention saying it was one sided and not particularly serious and that it seemed little more than a public relations gimmick 44 The Israeli embassy in London called Amnesty ridiculous Amnesty said that this report is not intended to address violations of detainees rights by the Palestinian Authority or the Hamas de facto administration These violations have been and will continue to be addressed separately by the organisation 45 Some people have criticized Amnesty for promoting an unbalanced and excessive focus on Israel The American Jewish Congress asserts that Amnesty s criticism of Israel distorts the law of war by read ing the law of war as if it was a law banning war and misinterprets the Geneva Conventions with regard to the issue of proportionality in war 46 In 2010 Frank Johansson the chairman of Amnesty International Finland called Israel a nilkkimaa a derogatory term variously translated as scum state creep state or punk state 47 48 Johansson stood by his statement saying that it was based on Israel s repeated flouting of international law and his own personal experiences with Israelis When asked by a journalist if any other country on earth that could be described in these terms he said that he could not think of any although some individual Russian officials could be so described 48 According to Israeli professor Gerald M Steinberg of NGO Monitor a pro Israel campaign group Amnesty International has promoted an intense anti Israel ideology resulting in statements like these 48 In November 2012 Amnesty UK began a disciplinary process against staffer Kristyan Benedict Amnesty UK campaigns manager because of a posting on his Twitter account said to be anti semitic regarding three Jewish members of parliament and Operation Pillar of Defense where he wrote Louise Ellman Robert Halfon and Luciana Berger walk into a bar each orders a round of B52s Gaza Amnesty International UK said the matter has been referred to our internal and confidential processes Amnesty s campaigns director Tim Hancock said We do not believe that humour is appropriate in the current circumstances particularly from our own members of staff An Amnesty International UK spokesperson later said the charity had decided that the tweet in question was ill advised and had the potential to be offensive and inflammatory but was not racist or antisemitic 49 50 51 In the April 2015 annual Amnesty International UK AGM delegates voted 468 votes to 461 against a motion proposing a campaign against antisemitism in the UK The debate on the motion formed a consensus that Amnesty should fight discrimination against all ethnic and religious groups but were divided over the issue of an anti racism campaign with a single focus The Jewish Chronicle noted that Amnesty International had previously published a report on discrimination against Muslims in Europe NGO monitor released a statement saying the decision highlights the hypocrisy and moral bankruptcy of what was once a leader in human rights advocacy 52 53 54 In November 2016 Amnesty International conducted a second internal investigation of Benedict for comparing Israel to the Islamic state 55 In April 2021 Amnesty International distanced itself from a tweet written in 2013 by its new Secretary General Agnes Callamard which read NYT Interview of Shimon Perres sic where he admits that Yasser Arafat was murdered Amnesty responded by saying The tweet was written in haste and is incorrect It does not reflect the position of Amnesty International or Agnes Callamard 56 57 58 Callamard herself has not deleted the tweet 56 On March 11 2022 Paul O Brien the Amnesty International USA Director stated at a private event We are opposed to the idea and this I think is an existential part of the debate that Israel should be preserved as a state for the Jewish people while adding Amnesty takes no political views on any question including the right of the State of Israel to survive 59 60 61 62 He also rejected a poll that found 8 in 10 American Jews were pro Israel saying I believe my gut tells me that what Jewish people in this country want is to know that there s a sanctuary that is a safe and sustainable place that the Jews the Jewish people can call home 59 60 61 On March 14 2022 all 25 Jewish Democrats in the House of Representatives issued a rare joint statement rebuking O Brien saying that he has added his name to the list of those who across centuries have tried to deny and usurp the Jewish people s independent agency and condemning this and any antisemitic attempt to deny the Jewish people control of their own destiny 63 64 65 On March 25 2022 O Brien wrote to the Jewish congressmen I regret representing the views of the Jewish people 64 Alleged ties to Muslim Brotherhood and Islamists editIn August 2015 The Times reported that Yasmin Hussein then Amnesty s director of faith and human rights and previously its head of international advocacy and a prominent representative at the United Nations had undeclared private links to men alleged to be key players in a secretive network of global Islamists including the Muslim Brotherhood and Hamas 66 67 Ms Hussein s husband Wael Musabbeh and a Bradford community trust of which both Mr Musabbeh and Ms Hussein were directors were alleged by the United Arab Emirates to be part of a financial and ideological network linking the Muslim Brotherhood to its affiliate in the UAE which the UAE government in 2013 accused of trying to overthrow the government 67 Amnesty said it knew in 2013 of the alleged links between the Muslim Brotherhood Mr Musabbeh and the Bradford trust but did not realize there was any connection to Ms Hussein Musabbeh s wife of 20 years it also challenged the fairness of the trial 67 Mr Musabbeh said he had no connection to the Muslim Brotherhood and was not an Islamist 67 The Times also detailed instances where Hussein was alleged to have had inappropriately close relationships with the al Qazzaz family members of which were high ranking government ministers in the administration of Mohammed Morsi and Muslim Brotherhood leaders at the time 66 67 In 2012 Amnesty staff alerted authorities in the organization after Ms Hussein held a private unofficial meeting in Egypt with Adly al Qazzaz a ministerial education adviser blamed by a teachers union for undertaking the Brotherhoodisation of Egypt s education system shared an evening meal with his family and stayed overnight in their home 66 Amnesty International s policies strictly forbid it from siding with any government or political party and Amnesty staff are asked to declare links that may produce a real or perceived conflict of interest with its independence and impartiality 66 Amnesty International said that conducted an internal inquiry and told Ms Hussein that her overnight stay with the al Qazzaz family was inappropriate 66 Ms Hussein apologized and denied supporting the Muslim Brotherhood saying that any connections are purely circumstantial 66 Iranian government s protest of Amnesty s claims about the death toll in the 2019 fuel protests in Iran editOn 19 November 2019 Amnesty International reported that at least 106 civilians had been unlawfully killed by Iranian security forces during the 2019 Iranian protests which were triggered by outrage over a sudden increase in gasoline prices 68 Amnesty later revised the figure upwards to 304 claiming that unarmed protesters had been deliberately massacred by the authorities who had green lighted a brutal crackdown to suppress dissent 69 The Iranian authorities whilst acknowledging that some armed rioters had been shot by police rejected Amnesty s figure as sheer lies and part of a disinformation campaign waged against Iran from outside the country 70 Judiciary spokesman Gholamhussein Esmayeeli countered that it was armed rioters who had actually killed many people but that Amnesty and other organizations had nonetheless named people who have died in other incidents that are different from the recent riots and many of those people claimed to be killed are alive 71 Secretary of Supreme National Security Council SNSC Rear Admiral Ali Shamkhani also denied that civilian deaths were caused mostly by security forces and instead asserted that more than 85 percent of victims of the recent unrest in cities of Tehran province had not taken part in any of the protests 72 In a thinly veiled rebuttal to Amnesty Prosecutor General Mohammad Montazeri retorted that people who are outside the country have no access to exact information and accurate figures They provide different figures which are invalid 73 In its 16 December press release Amnesty s research director for MENA Philip Luther moreover did not acknowledge the widespread arson vandalism and looting apparent during the protests riots that led to the forceful response or the reported killing of security officers either He also appeared to misquote supreme Leader Ayatollah Khamenei as stating that all those protesting in the streets were villains The Iranian leader had in fact distinguished between those peacefully objecting to the govermmemt policy and those who destroyed property Some people are no doubt worried by this decision to raise the price of gasoline but sabotage and arson is done by villains not our people 74 Ayatollah Khamenei further elaborated that those killed in any crossfire between the security forces and armed rioters saboteurs were to be regarded as martyrs 75 On 20 May 2020 Amnesty published a final report on the protests where for the first time it named 232 out of the 304 alleged victims 76 Amnesty also acknowledged that many of those killed were bystanders who were not even protesting at the time of their death The report was itself heavily criticized by two independent analysts who accused Amnesty of distorting many facts making unsupported claims and ignoring key evidence 77 On 1 June 2020 an Iranian lawmaker Mojtaba Zolnour made it known that 230 persons had been killed including 6 security officers and 40 from the Baseej volunteer force More than a quarter were bystanders who he alleged were killed by rioters 78 2019 report on workplace bullying within Amnesty International editIn February 2019 Amnesty International s management team offered to resign The offer came after an independent report by Konterra group found what it called a toxic culture of workplace bullying as well as numerous evidences of bullying harassment sexism and racism The report was commissioned by Amnesty after the investigation of the suicides of 30 year Amnesty veteran Gaetan Mootoo in Paris in May 2018 who left a note citing work pressures and 28 year old intern Rosalind McGregor in Geneva in July 2018 79 The Konterra report found that 39 per cent of Amnesty International staff reported that they developed mental or physical health issues as the direct result of working at Amnesty The report concluded organisational culture and management failures are the root cause of most staff wellbeing issues 80 The report said that efforts by Amnesty to address its problems had been ad hoc reactive and inconsistent and that staff described the senior leadership team as out of touch incompetent and callous Those signing a letter offering to resign were the senior directors of research the Secretary General s office global fundraising global operations people and services law and policy and campaigns and communications However Amnesty International s Secretary General Kumi Naidoo did not accept resignations and instead offered generous redundancies to managers concerned including to Mootoo s senior director Anna Neistat directly implicated in the report on Mootoo s death Naidoo stated that his priority was to rebuild trust at a dangerous time when Amnesty was needed more than ever 79 After none of the managers were held accountable a group of workers petitioned for Amnesty s chief to resign On 5 December 2019 Naidoo resigned from his post of Amnesty s Secretary General citing ill health 81 Julie Verhaar was appointed as interim Secretary General the same day 82 2019 budgetary crisis controversy editIn 2019 Amnesty International s Secretary General Kumi Naidoo admitted to a hole in the organization s budget of up to 17m in donor money to the end of 2020 In order to deal with the budgetary crisis Naidoo announced to staff that the organization s headquarters would have cut almost 100 jobs as a part of urgent restructuring Unite the Union the UK s biggest trade union said the redundancies were a direct result of overspending by the organisation s senior leadership team and have occurred despite an increase in income 83 Unite which represents Amnesty s staff feared that cuts would fall heaviest on lower income staff It said that in the previous year the top 23 highest earners at Amnesty International were paid a total of 2 6m an average of 113 000 per year Unite demanded a review of whether it is necessary to have so many managers in the organisation 84 2020 secret payout controversy editIn September 2020 The Times reported that Amnesty International paid 800 000 in compensation over the workplace suicide of Gaetan Mootoo and demanded his family keep the deal secret 85 The pre trial agreement between London based Amnesty s International Secretariat and Motoo s wife was reached on the condition that she keeps the deal secret by signing NDA This was done particularly to prevent discussing the settlement with the press or on social media The arrangement led to criticism on social media with people asking why an organisation such as Amnesty would condone the use of non disclosure agreements Shaista Aziz co founder of the feminist advocacy group NGO Safe Space questioned on Twitter why the world s leading human rights organisation was employing such contracts 86 The source of the money was unknown Amnesty stated that the payout to Motoo s family will not be made from donations or membership fees India editOn 29 September 2020 the Indian offshoot of Amnesty International released a statement announcing suspension of its operations in the country after the Enforcement Directorate which investigates financial crimes and irregularities in India ordered the freezing of its bank accounts 87 In a statement the Indian Ministry of Home Affairs said that Amnesty had contravened Indian laws by receiving funds from abroad Amnesty which said it had been harassed by the Indian government for its actions on human rights particularly for its call for accountability in the Indian state of Kashmir denied the charges and stated that it would appeal in Indian courts 88 89 90 Earlier in 2009 Amnesty s Indian offshoot suspended its India operations as the UPA government rejected its application for receiving foreign funding 90 Alexei Navalny editOn February 24 2021 Amnesty announced that it would strip Alexei Navalny of his status as a prisoner of conscience on account of comments he had made about migrants in 2007 and 2008 91 92 93 Amnesty said that the statements by Navalny who had been poisoned by Novichok in 2020 and imprisoned by Russia in February 2021 could amount to incitement to discrimination violence or hostility met the level of hate speech and were thus incompatible with the label prisoner of conscience 92 94 95 Amnesty s decision was met by sharp criticism from supporters British parliamentarians and other opposition figures in Russia 96 97 Critics noted that many of the original complaints that led Amnesty to rescind its designation had cited material that originated with a Twitter account that appeared to be linked to the Russian state and Amnesty s Russia media manager asserted that there appeared to be a coordinated campaign by pro Kremlin forces to discredit Navalny 93 97 in celebrating the decision the head of Russia s state funded TV network RT Margarita Simonyan referred to the source of the original allegations against Navalny as our columnist 92 96 The decision appeared to have been made by Amnesty s London Headquarters without the consultation of its Moscow branch on February 27 2021 Julie Vahaar Amnesty s secretary general announced an internal inquiry into the process by which Amnesty had redesginated Navalny saying that Amnesty had been targeted by a Russian government smear campaign 96 In a private Zoom call with pro Russian pranksters posing as Navalny s associates members of Amnesty s leadership including Vahaar admitted that the move had done a lot of damage 98 On May 7 2021 Amnesty redesignated Navalny as a Prisoner of Conscience and apologized saying they had made a wrong decision and apologizing personally to Navalny and the activists in Russia and around the world who tirelessly campaign for his freedom for the negative impacts their decision had had 95 99 100 Amnesty also observed that their actions had been used to further violate Navalny s rights 94 They also clarified that in redesignating Navalny a POC Amnesty was not implying any endorsement of his past comments which it found reprehensible 94 99 Leonid Volkov Navalny s chief of staff responded on Twitter that the ability to recognize mistakes and move on is the most important thing that distinguishes normal people from Putins sic 101 Amnesty also stated that it would reconsider the process by which it designated individuals as Prisoners of Conscience 94 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine editDissolution by the Russian government edit In early March 2022 during the 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine Roskomnadzor blocked the Russian language website of Amnesty International 102 In early April 2022 the Russian Ministry of Justice announced that it would forcibly shut down the Russian branch of Amnesty International saying that the organisation had committed violations of the current legislation of the Russian Federation 103 Report on placement of Ukrainian forces in civilian areas edit On 4 August 2022 Amnesty International published a report saying that it had found evidence that the Armed Forces of Ukraine had based forces and weapons in residential areas on several occasions when there were viable alternatives nearby Amnesty further stated that while these cases did not justify Russian attacks on civilians and that in a number of cases they had investigated Ukrainian forces had not acted similarly these tactics risked endangering civilians 104 The Amnesty report followed a report from the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights in June that had warned that both Russian and Ukrainian forces had established themselves either in residential areas or near civilian objects from where they launched military operations without taking measures for the protection of civilians present as required under international humanitarian law and a report from Human Rights Watch in July that said it had found evidence of three cases where Ukrainian forces based forces among homes where people were living but took no apparent action to move residents to safer areas and four cases of Russian forces doing the same 105 106 107 The Amnesty report sparked significant outrage in Ukraine Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy accused Amnesty of trying to amnesty the terrorist state and shift the responsibility from the aggressor to the victim while Ukrainian Minister of Foreign Affairs Dmytro Kuleba stated that the report creates a false balance between the oppressor and the victim between the country that is destroying hundreds and thousands of civilians cities territories and a country that is desperately defending itself 108 109 The Kyiv Independent editorial team strongly criticized the report pointing out flaws in reasoning and stating that Amnesty International could not properly articulate who the main perpetrator of violence in Ukraine was 110 The report also generated significant controversy within other Western countries An editorial published by British newspaper The Times described Amnesty International as Putin s propagandists noting that the organization already has a previous form in abasing itself before the Kremlin by refusing to recognize Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny as a prisoner of conscience and stating that Amnesty evidently learnt nothing from that fiasco 111 British conservative journalist Stephen Pollard wrote on The Daily Telegraph that Amnesty was utterly morally bankrupt and that it was driven by an anti Western obsession 112 Amnesty s report was criticized by military and legal experts such as John Spencer a specialist in urban warfare studies who stated that advising Ukrainian forces not to be in urban areas did not make sense as the circumstances of the war necessitated that 113 114 115 United Nations war crime investigator Marc Garlasco stated that the Amnesty report got the law wrong and also that Ukraine was making efforts to protect civilians including helping them to relocate 114 Further criticism came from French philosopher Bernard Henri Levy and by Italian journalist Lorenzo Cremonesi 116 117 The report however was praised by several Russian and pro Russian figures including the Russian embassy in London causing further criticism against the organization 118 Following the publication of the report Oksana Pokalchuk head of Amnesty International in Ukraine resigned from her post left the organization 119 and published an explanation in The Washington Post on 13 August 120 Amnesty International Sweden cofounder Per Wastberg also terminated his relationship with the organization in protest to the report 121 Amnesty s Canadian branch issued a statement expressing regret for among other things the insufficient context and legal analysis 122 On 12 August Amnesty s German branch issued a statement apologizing for aspects of the report s release and its effect saying that it would be examined through a process initiated at the international level to determine what went wrong and condemning its instrumentalization by Russian authorities 123 In mid October 2022 the UN Independent International Commission of Inquiry on Ukraine released a report which included a section with findings similar to the findings of Amnesty s report 124 The report stated that the Commission documented that in areas controlled by Ukrainian armed forces particularly during the first phase of the hostilities on some occasions there was also a lack of separation between armed forces and civilians which placed civilians at risk 125 Amnesty commissioned an independent review into the report that was leaked to The New York Times in mid April 2023 and was published publicly by Amnesty in mid May 2023 126 The review found that the principal factual finding of the report was reasonably substantiated by the evidence presented but that the report had a number of shortcomings including overstating the legal interpretation that Ukrainian forces has violated humanitarian law using ambiguous imprecise and in some respects legally questionable language in the press release and that there was a failure to proactively seek Amnesty Ukraine s viewpoint and contextual understanding 127 Artificial images editA report about the repression in the Colombian protests of 2021 was illustrated with pseudo realistic images generated by artificial intelligence Although they were labelled as such AI was criticised for undermining its credibility The organisation explained the change from earlier use of photographs as an attempt to protect protesters In response to criticism it removed the images from its social media postings 128 See also editCriticism of Human Rights WatchReferences edit Pack Peter A letter to all AI members and staff from the International Executive Committee PDF Archived from the original PDF on 21 September 2013 Retrieved 25 January 2012 Mason Tania Charity Commission has no jurisdiction over board member s payment from Amnesty civilsociety co uk 21 February 2011 Retrieved 21 February 2011 McVeigh Karen 6 February 2019 Amnesty International has toxic working culture report finds The Guardian Statement Racism inquiry DR Congo blasts Amnesty International report on repression The Namibian 14 January 2000 Retrieved 15 May 2006 The U S and China This Week U S China Policy Foundation 16 February 2001 Retrieved 15 May 2006 Tom Ha The Cream of The Diplomatic Crop from Ha Noi Thien Ly Bửu Toa Retrieved 15 May 2006 Russian official blasts Amnesty International over Chechnya refugees Archived 19 December 2007 at the Wayback Machine Human Rights Violations in Chechnya 22 August 2003 Retrieved 15 May 2006 Press Briefing By Scott McClellan The White House 25 May 2005 Retrieved 30 May 2006 a b Litvinov Pavel 18 June 2005 No American Gulag The Washington Post Retrieved 20 March 2018 AI Report 2005 Foreword Archived 17 June 2005 at the Wayback Machine Irene Khan Amnesty International 2005 AI Report 2005 Archived 24 May 2005 at the Wayback Machine Amnesty International 2005 Document Amnesty International American Gulag The Washington Post 26 May 2005 New Survey Documents Global Repression Human Rights Watch 14 January 2003 A U S Gulag by Any Name The Washington Post 2 June 2005 Amnesty s Idiocy Archived 30 May 2005 at the Wayback Machine New York Post 27 May 2005 Hamdan v Rumsfeld PDF 29 June 2006 Retrieved 10 February 2007 US detainees to get Geneva rights BBC 11 July 2006 White House Detainees entitled to Geneva Convention protections CNN 11 July 2006 dead link White House Changes Gitmo Policy CBS News 11 July 2006 Kerbaj Richard 7 February 2010 Amnesty International is damaged by Taliban link The Times London Retrieved 30 April 2010 Guantanamo New call for Europe to take 50 men trapped at camp Amnesty International 11 January 2010 Archived 23 January 2010 at the Wayback Machine Suroor Hasan 2 April 2010 Row over support for defensive jihad The Hindu Chennai India Archived from the original on 5 April 2010 Retrieved 9 September 2020 To Stop Violence Against Women respect for women s human rights is essential Amnesty International Archived from the original on 10 July 2007 Retrieved 15 July 2007 Amnesty International defends access to abortion for women at risk Amnesty International 14 June 2007 Hurst Lynda 28 July 2007 Amnesty Catholic Church go to war over abortion Toronto Star Retrieved 30 April 2010 Crary David 26 July 2007 Furor Over Amnesty s Abortion Stance USA Today Associated Press Retrieved 9 February 2009 Vatican urges end to Amnesty aid BBC News 14 June 2007 National Catholic Register 12 June 2007 No Amnesty For the Unborn Archived 24 January 2008 at the Wayback Machine Website last accessed 19 June 2007 Amnesty faces ban in Northern Ireland s Catholic schools Website last accessed 21 September 2007 Melissa Gira Grant 12 June 2013 Amnesty human rights and the criminalisation of sex work New Statesman Retrieved 16 February 2021 Murphy Meghan 16 February 2014 Amnesty International advocates for the decriminalization of prostitution amp Canada strikes down their current laws What s next rabble Archived from the original on 28 September 2015 Retrieved 13 August 2015 Simone Andrea 29 January 2014 Open Letter To Amnesty International re Prostitution Policy by Simone Andrea Archived from the original on 30 January 2014 Statement Opposing Amnesty International s resolution to decriminalise Pimps and Johns PDF SPACE International Survivors of Prostitution Abuse Calling for Enlightenment n d Archived from the original PDF on 4 February 2016 Amnesty International International Secretariat 7 July 2015 32nd International Council Meeting Circular No 18 015 ICM circular Draft policy on Sex Work PDF a b Doreen Carvajal 31 July 2015 Amnesty International Considers Pushing for Decriminalization of Prostitution The New York Times Retrieved 17 February 2021 a b c Doreen Carvajal 11 August 2015 Amnesty International Votes for Policy Calling for Decriminalization of Prostitution The New York Times Retrieved 17 February 2021 a b c Open Letter to Amnesty International PDF 22 July 2015 Archived from the original PDF on 15 August 2015 Retrieved 13 August 2015 1100 organizations and individuals ask Amnesty International to support decriminalization of sex work Association for Women s Rights in Development 5 August 2015 Archived from the original on 16 September 2015 Retrieved 25 August 2015 Statement of Support for Amnesty International PDF nswp org Global Network of Sex Work Projects August 2015 Retrieved 16 February 2021 Global Movement Votes to Adopt Policy to Protect Human Rights of Sex Workers 11 August 2015 Emily Bazelon 25 May 2016 Why Amnesty International Is Calling for Decriminalizing Sex Work The New York Times Retrieved 16 February 2021 Amnesty administrative detention report PR gimmick The Jerusalem Post JPost com Dysch Marcus 7 June 2012 Israeli embassy attacks Amnesty over hunger strike report The Jewish Chronicle Retrieved 16 November 2020 American Jewish Congress Amnesty International s Criticism of Israeli Action in Gaza Distorts the Law of War Archived from the original on 27 September 2011 Finland s Amnesty head calls Israel punk state Jewish Telegraphic Agency 24 August 2010 Archived from the original on 27 August 2010 a b c Amnesty Int l Finland Israel scum state Benjamin Weinthal 14 August 2010 The Jerusalem Post Haviv Rettig Gur 22 November 2012 Amnesty UK official in hot water over Jewish MPs tweet The Times of Israel Marcus Dysch 21 November 2012 Amnesty takes disciplinary action over official s Jewish MPs tweet The Jewish Chronicle Dysch Marcus 20 December 2012 Amnesty orders official to apologise for tweet The Jewish Chronicle Retrieved 16 October 2019 Amnesty Votes Down Proposal for U K Campaign Against anti Semitism Haaretz Retrieved 16 April 2022 Winer Stuart Amnesty International rejects call to fight anti Semitism www timesofisrael com Retrieved 16 April 2022 Amnesty International Rejects Motion to Fight Anti Semitism at Annual Conference Tablet Magazine 27 April 2015 Retrieved 16 April 2022 Amnesty campaigns manager equates Israel with Islamic State www jewishnews co uk Retrieved 16 April 2022 a b Daventry Michael Amnesty International chief retracts Israel murdered Arafat claim www jewishnews co uk Retrieved 16 April 2022 Amnesty denounces S G s tweet that alluded Israel assassinated Arafat The Jerusalem Post JPost com Retrieved 16 April 2022 Jerusalem Anshel Pfeffer Israel leaks Amnesty report on apartheid against Palestinians The Times ISSN 0140 0460 Retrieved 16 April 2022 a b Deutch Gabby 11 March 2022 Israel shouldn t exist as a Jewish state Amnesty USA director tells Democratic group Jewish Insider Retrieved 16 April 2022 a b Amnesty USA Head Criticized for Saying Israel Shouldn t Exist As a Jewish State Jewish Journal 11 March 2022 Retrieved 16 April 2022 a b Amnesty International official is opposed to Israel as a Jewish state Jewish Telegraphic Agency 11 March 2022 Retrieved 16 April 2022 Amnesty s US director Israel shouldn t be Jewish state rather safe Jewish space report www timesofisrael com Retrieved 16 April 2022 All Jewish House Democrats Slam Amnesty Chief s Offensive Remarks on U S Jews and Israel Haaretz Retrieved 16 April 2022 a b Rod Marc 31 March 2022 Amnesty s O Brien responds to Jewish Dems I regret representing the views of the Jewish people Jewish Insider Retrieved 16 April 2022 In rare show of unity all 25 Jewish House Dems blast Amnesty director s comments on Israel www timesofisrael com Jewish Telegraphic Agency Retrieved 16 April 2022 a b c d e f Norfolk Andrew Amnesty director s links to global network of Islamists The Times ISSN 0140 0460 Retrieved 16 April 2022 a b c d e Norfolk Andrew A shadowy web traced back to Bradford The Times ISSN 0140 0460 Retrieved 16 April 2022 Luther Philip 19 November 2019 Iran More than 100 protesters believed to be killed as top officials give green light to crush protests Luther Philip 16 December 2019 Iran Thousands arbitrarily detained and at risk of torture in chilling post protest crackdown Iran blasts Amnesty protest toll calling it disinformation Al Jazeera 20 November 2019 Fars News 3 December 2019 Judiciary Spokesman Many People Police Officers Killed Wounded by Rioters Tasnim News 12 December 2019 Most of Those Killed in Recent Riots Were Not Even Present in Protests Mehr News 30 November 2019 Foreign media s estimates on death toll during recent riots are false Iran s Khamenei blames enemies for sabotage in gasoline price protests Reuters 17 November 2019 Al Monitor 5 December 2019 Khamenei labels some Iran protesters martyrs iran details of 304 deaths in crackdown on november 2019 protests PDF Amnesty International 20 May 2020 Yousef Bozorgmehr Reza Esfandiari 8 June 2020 How Amnesty and Iran lied about the 2019 protests in Iran Fars News 6 June 2020 Senior MP 230 People Killed in November Protests in Iran a b Amnesty management team offers to resign over toxic culture of bullying RTE News 23 February 2019 Retrieved 24 February 2019 Radical change needed at Amnesty International after new report reveals toxic work culture Unite the Union 7 February 2019 Amnesty International s Secretary General steps down Amnesty International 5 December 2019 Retrieved 5 December 2019 Kantaria Priya 6 December 2019 Amnesty International s secretary general Kumi Naidoo steps down civilsociety co uk Amnesty International to make almost 100 staff redundant The Guardian 9 June 2019 Booth Robert 27 April 2019 Amnesty International staff braced for redundancies The Guardian Retrieved 1 October 2021 Amnesty s secret 800 000 payout after suicide of Gaetan Mootoo www thetimes co uk Retrieved 11 October 2020 Amnesty International criticised for using non disclosure agreement in relation to alleged 800k payment www thirdsector co uk Retrieved 11 October 2020 Unfortunate exaggerated Govt on Amnesty International s witch hunt claims mint 29 September 2020 Retrieved 30 September 2020 Amnesty International announces closure of its India offices The Telegraph Kolkota Retrieved 30 September 2020 Masih Niha Amnesty International to cease work in India citing government harassment The Washington Post Retrieved 19 November 2020 a b Amnesty Int l halts India operations citing gov t reprisals Associated Press 20 April 2021 Amnesty strips Alexei Navalny of prisoner of conscience status BBC News 24 February 2021 Retrieved 16 April 2022 a b c Amnesty strips Alexei Navalny of prisoner of conscience status the Guardian 24 February 2021 Retrieved 16 April 2022 a b Neuman Scott 24 February 2021 Amnesty Rescinds Prisoner Of Conscience Designation For Russia Activist Navalny NPR Retrieved 16 April 2022 a b c d Amnesty apologises to Alexei Navalny over prisoner of conscience status BBC News 7 May 2021 Retrieved 16 April 2022 a b Moscow Theo Merz Amnesty to restore Kremlin critic Navalny s status as prisoner of conscience The Times ISSN 0140 0460 Retrieved 16 April 2022 a b c Brown David Supporters quit Amnesty International over betrayal of Alexei Navalny The Times ISSN 0140 0460 Retrieved 16 April 2022 a b Oliphant Roland Georgieva Maria 24 February 2021 Amnesty accused of siding with tyrants for revoking Alexei Navalny s prisoner of conscience status The Telegraph ISSN 0307 1235 Retrieved 16 April 2022 Alexei Navalny Top Putin critic sent to Russian penal colony BBC News 26 February 2021 Retrieved 16 April 2022 a b Basu Zachary 7 May 2021 Amnesty International restores Alexei Navalny s prisoner of conscience status Axios Retrieved 16 April 2022 Picheta Rob 7 May 2021 Amnesty International restores prisoner of conscience status to Kremlin critic Alexei Navalny CNN Retrieved 16 April 2022 Amnesty International restores Alexei Navalny s prisoner of conscience status the Guardian Reuters 7 May 2021 Retrieved 16 April 2022 Russia Authorities block Amnesty International s Russian language website Amnesty International 11 March 2022 Retrieved 7 August 2022 Moscow Shutting Down Amnesty Human Rights Watch in Russia The Moscow Times 8 April 2022 Retrieved 7 August 2022 Ukraine Ukrainian fighting tactics endanger civilians Amnesty International 4 August 2022 Into military targets How Russian propaganda utilized and distorted allegations by Amnesty International that Ukrainian troops endanger civilians Meduza 6 August 2022 Retrieved 7 August 2022 Russian Ukrainian Bases Endangering Civilians Human Rights Watch 21 July 2022 Retrieved 7 August 2022 Situation of Human Rights in Ukraine in the Context of the Armed Attack by the Russian Federation 24 February 15 May 2022 Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights 29 June 2022 Retrieved 7 August 2022 Hopkins Valerie Gibbons Neff Thomas 7 August 2022 Amnesty International Assessment That Ukraine Put Civilians in Harm s Way Stirs Outrage The New York Times ISSN 0362 4331 Askew Joshua 5 August 2022 Outrage in Kyiv after Amnesty accuses it of endangering civilian life Euronews Editorial It is Amnesty International s report that endangers Ukrainian civilians The Kyiv Independent 8 August 2022 Retrieved 10 August 2022 The Times view on Amnesty International s Ukraine report Putin s Propagandists The Times 5 August 2022 ISSN 0140 0460 Pollard Stephen 6 August 2022 Amnesty is now utterly morally bankrupt The Daily Telegraph ISSN 0307 1235 Kramer Andrew E 4 August 2022 Russia Steps Up Attacks on Ukrainian Fortifications in the East The New York Times ISSN 0362 4331 Retrieved 3 October 2022 a b Ukraine Amnesty Int l report sparks furor resignation AP NEWS 6 August 2022 Retrieved 3 October 2022 Barnes Joe 5 August 2022 Amnesty Ukraine says headquarters ignored its concerns about incomplete evidence in war crimes report The Telegraph ISSN 0307 1235 Retrieved 3 October 2022 La responsable d Amnesty en Ukraine demissionne apres le rapport critique par Kiev vives reactions en France La Depeche du Midi in French 6 August 2022 Cremonesi Lorenzo 8 May 2022 Sull Ucraina Amnesty ha sbagliato Corriere della Sera in Italian Pro Moscow Figures Hail Controversial Amnesty Report on Kyiv War Tactics The Moscow Times 5 August 2022 Pietsch Bryan 8 August 2022 Amnesty International s Ukraine chief resigns after report criticizes Kyiv The Washington Post ISSN 0190 8286 Pokalchuk Oksana 13 August 2022 What Amnesty got wrong in Ukraine and why I had to resign The Washington Post Archived from the original on 14 August 2022 Retrieved 14 August 2022 Co founder of Amnesty Resigns Due to Disagreement with the Report on the Armed Forces of Ukraine www eurointegration com ua Retrieved 15 August 2022 Response to Amnesty International s August 4 2022 Press Release Amnesty International Canada 11 August 2022 Retrieved 26 August 2022 Statement zur Ukraine Pressemitteilung vom 4 August 2022 Statement on the Ukraine press release of 4 August 2022 Amnesty International Deutschland in German 12 August 2022 Retrieved 16 August 2022 Russia committed vast majority of alleged war crimes in Ukraine UN report The Hill 18 October 2022 Retrieved 25 October 2022 Commission members also suggested both Russia and Ukraine to differing degrees failed to protect civilians by locating military assets near densely populated areas That finding echoes the conclusions of Amnesty International in August when it wrote that the Ukrainian military put civilians at risk by operating out of schools and hospitals A 77 533 Independent International Commission of Inquiry on Ukraine Note by the Secretary General Independent International Commission of Inquiry on Ukraine 18 October 2022 Retrieved 25 October 2022 55 The Commission also documented that in areas controlled by Ukrainian armed forces particularly during the first phase of the hostilities on some occasions there was a lack of separation between armed forces and civilians which placed civilians at risk In the city of Chernihiv residents stated that although schools 18 and 21 were used to distribute humanitarian aid to the civilian population and school staff had written children on the walls of one of the school buildings Territorial Defence Forces of the Ukrainian armed forces had set up headquarters in school 18 and their members were also present at school 21 Both military personnel and civilians were among those killed and injured when an airstrike hit both schools and nearby houses on 3 March 2022 By not separating civilians from their personnel the Ukrainian armed forces in this case failed to protect civilians under their control from the effects of attacks Beaumont Peter 28 April 2023 Leaked Amnesty review finds own Ukraine report legally questionable The Guardian ISSN 0261 3077 Retrieved 28 April 2023 Ukraine Organizational Report Key findings and learnings relating to the August 4 press release on ukraine Amnesty International 17 May 2023 Retrieved 1 June 2023 Taylor Luke 2 May 2023 Amnesty International criticised for using AI generated images The Guardian Retrieved 26 May 2023 Further reading editAmerican Gulag at National Review Online 27 May 2005 1 Jonathan V Last Calling It Like They See It The Weekly Standard 3 April 2003 Nabeel Abraham Torture Anyone Lies of Our Times May 1992 pp 2 4 Claims AI and other groups are reticent in describing alleged torture on the part of Israel Retrieved from https en wikipedia org w index php title Criticism of Amnesty International amp oldid 1186340104, wikipedia, wiki, book, books, library,

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