Amnesty International's reputation was built on standing up for victims. While sometimes outside viewers might have thought the victims were getting what they deserved - they put themselves in stupid situations, they were inherently bad people, and so on - AI nevertheless came to their rescue. Well, they wrote stuff about coming to the rescue; they didn't actually show up on white horses with their banners unfurled on the breeze. But over the past week, two reports out of Amnesty cause me to question who it is that has purchased AI's soul. With the whole world watching, Israel unleashed a hugely disproportionate assault on Gaza last year. And in a story two days ago, AP reported: The human rights group Amnesty International said in a report Thursday that Palestinian militants committed war crimes during the 2014 Gaza conflict by killing both Israeli and Palestinian civilians using indiscriminate projectiles.Amnesty claims that they conferred with an 'independent munitions expert' who told them that 13 Palestinians killed in a Gaza refugee camp died because of an errant Palestinian rocket. To be fair, Amnesty has also condemned Israel for the brutality of last year's assault. But the conclusion of the report accusing Gaza of war crimes is an exercise in fatuous stupidity. Essentially, it concludes that you can't misbehave just because someone is misbehaving toward you. In other words, when Israel attacks you with highly sophisticated weaponry, you must simply stand there and take it if you can't return fire with equal sophistication. Well, that seems pretty reasonable. This morning I read on teleSUR that Amnesty has now sold the Venezuelan people down the river. While the actual report from AI is not public at the time of this writing, their executive summary is. As reported by teleSUR: Amnesty International's latest report on Venezuela calls for justice for the dozens of people killed during the unrest that shook the country a year ago, while using sleight of hand to deflect attention away from those responsible.Essentially, AI is choosing to ignore how those 43 died, who caused it, and why it happened. They choose to ignore the assaults upon security forces, the barbarism of opposition renegades in Venezuela, and the underlying current of foreign money and foreign encouragement driving a handful of people to attack the government. I'll let teleSUR pick up the story here: “The use of unnecessary or disproportionate force is precisely what exacerbated the wave of tragic events last year,” said Erika Guevara Rosas, Amnesty's Americas director.There is also a conclusion reached in the teleSUR piece that rings true: One possible explanation is that Amnesty prefers to criticize governments, rather than call out substate actors. However, this doesn't stand up to scrutiny. On Feb. 20, 2015, Amnesty International issued a report accusing both Boko Haram and the Nigerian government of human rights abuses. Then on March 26, 2015, they accused Palestinian militants of war crimes, after also condemning Israeli forces for human rights abuses in 2014. Clearly, in many parts of the world, Amnesty is capable of critiquing both sides of a conflict – but not in Venezuela.Here at Axis of Logic we have long dismissed Human Rights Watch as a shill for corporate interests, and clearly in the pockets of several governments and lobby groups. From this point forward, I think it's safe to say we aren't going to be paying much attention to Amnesty International's blathering either. It's a shame, because the organization once appeared to stand for something noble. Paul Richard Harris is an Axis of Logic editor and columnist, based in Canada. He can be reached at paul@axisoflogic.com. Read the Biography and additional articles by Axis Columnist, Paul Richard Harris © Copyright 2015 by AxisofLogic.com This material is available for republication as long as reprints include verbatim copy of the article in its entirety, respecting its integrity. Reprints must cite the author and Axis of Logic as the original source including a "live link" to the article. Thank you! |