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Amnesty’s Abuse of Rights Advocacy

from New Eastern Outlook

Alleged human rights advocacy organisation, Amnesty International, has had several of its recent reports called into question regarding the very real possibility that its “advocacy” work is nothing more than politically-motivated attacks on nations targeted by its Western sponsors.

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One report published under the titled, “Syria: Human Slaughterhouse: Mass Hangings and Extermination at Saydnaya Prison, Syria,” has been revealed to consist of nothing more than opposition accusations and fabricated evidence created on computers in the United Kingdom.
Despite Amnesty International’s report concluding that the Syrian government committed “crimes against humanity,” the report admits it lacked any sort of physical evidence, including access to the facility in which Amnesty claims between “5,000-13,000″ people were systematically tortured and executed.
Amnesty International, a long-established and internationally recognised rights advocacy organisation, must certainly know better than to draw such conclusions and levelling such serious accusations against another nation without any actual evidence.
Assuming Amnesty knew better, it then appears that the organisation deliberately used its reputation and credibility, along with techniques designed to prey on the emotions of the public, to create a politically hostile climate toward the Damascus government on behalf of the US-European and Persian Gulf state coalition aimed at its removal from power.
While Amnesty’s report on Syria is perhaps the most transparent and egregious abuse of human rights advocacy, Amnesty has produced other reports recently exhibiting a similar pattern of deception and lies of omission, preying on public ignorance and emotions, often at the cost of human rights advocacy rather than in defence of it.

Thailand’s Turn

Despite claims that America is posed to pursue a different tack regarding policy in Asia Pacific, the organisations and agencies arrayed by Wall Street and Washington against the region remain in place and very active.
Assisting these networks are organisations precisely like Amnesty International.
In their report titled, “Thailand: “They Cannot Keep Us Quiet”: The Criminalization of Activists, Human Rights Defenders, And Others in Thailand,” attempts to paint a picture of a draconian dictatorship silencing defenders of democracy and human rights.
In reality, virtually every individual and group listed by Amnesty International as victims of a supposed “systematic crackdown on government critics,” are in fact US-European funded agitators who have not only been deeply involved in subversion versus the Thai state, but who have collaborated with elements among the opposition responsible for violence, terrorism and mass murder.
Many of those listed by Amnesty International as “victims” of the Thai government were silent or actively complicit in the violence that unfolded between 2013-2014 when protesters sought the ouster of the US-European backed government of Thaksin Shinawatra and his sister Yingluck Shinawatra.
Over 20 men, women and children would be killed in armed assaults on protest sites.
Terrorists backing the Shinawatra regime employed everything from assault rifles to hand grenades and M-79 40mm grenade launchers on unarmed protesters. Yet Amnesty International’s report fails to mention any of this background information, intentionally omitting the violence these “activists” were either supporting, or hypocritically ignoring out of political convenience.
In fact, Amnesty International failed utterly to report on any of that violence even as it was taking place. It is another example of how Amnesty International’s reports selectively target governments the US and Europe seek to undermine or overthrow, and protect those these Western interests support.
The reason for Amnesty’s omission of these facts is very obvious. It would be very difficult to pass these “activists” off as pro-democracy when they sought to ignore, even silence with force, voices opposed to the political party they work for. It would be likewise difficult to pass these “activists” off as human rights advocates when they remained silent amid street violence carried out by their political allies and sponsors.
Through the lens of actual history, the “activists” Amnesty International’s report attempts to paint as victims, use human rights advocacy as a selective tool to advance their own agenda, ignoring rights violations when politically convenient, and staging attention-seeking protests citing human rights violations when politically expedient.
Virtually every “activist” in Amnesty International’s report is a verified recipient of US and European political, financial and material support.
Organisations like Prachatai are mentioned repeatedly throughout the report, but their funding from the US State Department, convicted financial criminal George Soros through his Open Society fund and other foreign sponsors is never mentioned once. Mentioning it would cast doubt on the organisation’s actual agenda versus the agenda Amnesty’s deceptive report attempts to assign to it.
Another foreign-funded organisation posing as a nongovernmental organisation (NGO) is Thai Lawyers for Human Rights. It is likewise funded by the US State Department through the National Endowment for Democracy (NED). Its work focuses entirely on defending anti-government activists, while systematically ignoring genuine activists and advocates in need of legal aid.

Amnesty is Wrecking Human Rights Advocacy, Not Upholding It

Amnesty International consistently covers up the abuse of US-European backed political and opposition groups while attacking the political opponents of the West, often fabricating accusations and evidence, or presenting a biased account of events, intentionally omitting essential facts denying the public of a truthful understanding of any given conflict.
Amnesty International is but one example of so-called “international” organisations that pose as advocates for human rights and democracy, while in reality is merely hiding behind such principles to advance a very specific and self-serving political agenda.
While Amnesty International poses as a leader in human rights advocacy, in reality, it is one of the largest and most destructive threats undermining genuine and legitimate human rights advocacy. Because of the systematic. politically-motivated deceit employed by Amnesty International and others, genuine advocates are finding it more difficult to engage an increasingly jaded and sceptical public when real abuse is taking place.
While Amnesty is constantly showered by awards, accolades and praise from the very system it serves, it is causing irreparable damage to not only the West’s supposed reputation of upholding human rights globally, but irreparable damage to the very concept of human rights advocacy itself.

Joseph Thomas is chief editor of Thailand-based geopolitical journal, The New Atlas and contributor to the online magazine “New Eastern Outlook”.

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Derrington
Derrington
Mar 22, 2017 10:15 AM

Amnesty has come out as an organisation in favour of prostituting females and children which it describes as free choice. Next theyll be advocating for rights of rich people to buy body parts off people in poverty.

BigB
BigB
Mar 18, 2017 12:57 PM

“If you take soft power off the table then you’re never going to win the war.”
Referring to the proposed 28% Budget cut to Foggy Bottom and CIA front USAid – did neocon warhawk Lindsey Graham inadvertently reveal the real agenda behind the Third Sector ‘soft power’ projection. I think he did.
As an auxiliary to the US $600 (soon to be $654) bn Imperial death machine: like AI or HRW – there is now a state-corporate philanthro-capitalist or private-funded charitable CSO, TSO, or NGO to cater for every aspect of the eternalised humanitarian interventionist wars.
How far we have come and how innovative we are in the pursuit of profit from death?

@synapticshrapnel
@synapticshrapnel
Mar 18, 2017 3:08 AM

AI and HRW pulled a variation of this during the war against Libya. They bought (and sold) the official story that Gaddafi was “killing his own people” and that Libya was being overrun with “African” (read: black) “mercenaries” who were supposedly slaughtering civilians on Gaddafi’s orders.
This was a racist fiction concocted by the rebels and their supporters and there is zero evidence Gadaffi ordered, or “his” soldiers carried out, mass slaughers of any kind. All that is quickly forgotten by the morally bankrupt liberal imperialists who bring death and destruction and untold misery to millions of people.
Amnesty and HRW try to play both sides by occasionally drawing attention to actual atrocities (like the Saudi/US/UK war against Yemen) but their credibility is shot and they are stooges of empire who never seem to get as outraged when the West and its “friends”, e.g. Israel, wantonly mass murder people. The fabricated, literally, story about thousands of executions at this Syrian jail is a new low for these charlatan “human rights” organizations.

mohandeer
mohandeer
Mar 18, 2017 2:32 AM

Thaksin Shinawatra was in hiding in Saudi Arabia in order to avoid having to serve the jail sentence he was given for the crimes he was found guilty of (mainly corruption and theft, for which he received a two year sentence) and his sister Yingluck Shinawatra is made of the same stuff (vile and foul smelling residue one sometimes finds stuck to the bottom of your shoe after walking in a dog park).
John McCain was in tight with the Muslim Brotherhood (he was observed, in what he thought would remain a clandestine meeting with them – it did not go unnoticed) and the NGO appointed a newly qualified CIA trained operator there, presumably to aid in directing the necessary funding for MB instigation of civil unrest.
It’s doubtful that HRW or AI have any credibility left, their reputations, now in tatters, precede them, but as long as big money keep funding them, they will survive, unfortunately for all those who have need of an unbiased, genuine and not bought and paid for “humanitarian” organisation. Sadly there is a paucity of such institutions and they are becoming scarcer by the day.

Jen
Jen
Mar 17, 2017 11:35 PM

“… While Amnesty [International] is constantly showered by awards, accolades and praise from the very system it serves, it is causing irreparable damage to not only the West’s supposed reputation of upholding human rights globally, but irreparable damage to the very concept of human rights advocacy itself.”
I do believe that is probably the whole agenda currently driving Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch and other similar organisations: by being overtaken from within and then driven to support and become part of the US-European neoliberal / neocolonialist drive, these agencies bring the whole notion of human rights advocacy and activism into disrepute among Western publics. AI, HRW and their kind become part of the divide-and-rule strategy that dissipates and weakens genuine striving for freedom and turns it into yet more identity politics.

mohandeer
mohandeer
Mar 18, 2017 2:36 AM
Reply to  Jen

As in the case of Avaaz and George Soros. You don’t have to delve too deeply to find the links that lead from the supposed “humanitarian” organisation, to the 1%ers supporting them. Following the money is not so much following the trail of breadcrumbs as the whacking great loaves evidenced in abundance these days.

Daniel Rich
Daniel Rich
Mar 18, 2017 11:02 PM
Reply to  Jen

@ Jen,
The attacks on humanity, as can be witnessed every single day, are a reflection of a talmudic fueled disdain for goyim as a whole.

Joy
Joy
Mar 17, 2017 7:33 PM

Amnesty have been trying to undermine the peace process in Syria, because that’s what the CIA require them to do.

archie1954
archie1954
Mar 17, 2017 6:27 PM

By politicizing its message, Amnesty International is destroying its reputation for truth and reliability. I will not accept what it says from now on without corroborating evidence!

Arrby
Arrby
Mar 18, 2017 6:43 PM
Reply to  archie1954

Well, My reply/post was disappeared again! I see that OG hasn’t been able to fix that. (Toshiba Satellite, Windows 7 professional, 64bit, Firefox and DDG) This post will come from that above machine but via my own WP blog and it’s reader.
I agree with your sentiment. Be prepared to be frustrated however. As you flit from one progressive site to another (I assume we here all do that), you will see quotes and info take from AI and HRW. It’s understanbable. One wants to be authoritative and who do you turn to for the kind of info that AI and HRW present? Sometimes those quotes will come with qualification. In my experience, Most of the time they will not. You will have no (easy) way of knowing where the progressive author stands. You can contact him (or…) and often I do just that. (I just asked Stephen Lendman about his endorsement of Antiwar.com, which question he responded to by completely avoiding the substance of the question. Just have a look at what Sibel Edmonds et al have to say about Antiwar.com).
The tentacles of the darkess are multiplying and growing in length. You’ll find them everywhere. For example, I regularly note, on Robert Parry’s Consortium News website that his carrying CIA asset, Graham Fuller’s articles is a fail. He hasn’t banned me yet. But he has completely ignored me. What can you and I do about that? Then you’ll see links to that fantastic resource on other progressive sites where, often, you’ll see other failures to keep out a tentacle or two. Just about every progressive site I visit has this characteristic. And readers who are paying attention are rewarded with fear. For example, Robert ignores me (and I was supported by at least one other reader). So what do I do? Shut up? Or, on principle, insist that he address the problem? At what point does he finally respond by claiming I’m disruptive or badgering or something and ban me? And what is gained when that happens?
That happened to me on Mother Jones and Common Dreams, but in those cases I can live with the move. They’re in fact working for the enemy. But, in the case of MJ, I didn’t see that until I found ‘all’ of my comments disappeared. I don’t see any other serious problem with CN, but I will once I’m banned, Won’t I?

Arrby
Arrby
Mar 20, 2017 4:23 PM
Reply to  Arrby

I see that OG has FAIR among its links. FAIR gets funding according to Discoverthenetworks.org (whose owners are nasty) partly from TIDES, which in turn has received funding from the Open Society Network.