KazPost

Kazakhstan News
Friday, Mar 29, 2024

Consider Amnesty’s message, don’t shoot the messenger

Consider Amnesty’s message, don’t shoot the messenger

It’s wrong to fault the human rights group for criticizing Ukraine.

Amnesty International, the global human rights group, is no stranger to controversy.

In its 60 years of shining a light on the darkest corners of man’s inhumanity toward man, the Nobel Peace Prize-winning organization has often offended the powerful and made it more awkward for liberal democracies to ignore their own values when conducting foreign policy.

Today, Amnesty stands accused of “blaming the victims” and acting as Russian President Vladimir Putin’s “useful idiots” because it issued a statement critical of the conduct of Ukraine’s armed forces at a time when the Western-backed democracy is resisting a Russian invasion. But it’s wrong to fault the group for criticizing Ukraine.

Let’s be clear: Amnesty has relentlessly criticized Moscow’s war of aggression on its neighbor, documenting assaults on civilian neighborhoods; gathering evidence of war crimes, torture and disappearances; and denouncing the blocking of humanitarian assistance to civilians in the war zone. Their evaluations prompted the Russian authorities to close the group’s Moscow office in April, along with those of other international NGOs — all dubbed “foreign agents.”

Yet, a single report criticizing the Ukrainian armed forces for endangering civilians’ lives through the way they’ve operated in some residential areas has drawn a firestorm of Ukrainian and Western indignation, prompting the head of Amnesty’s Kyiv office, Oksana Pokalchuk, as well as the co-founder of the Swedish Division of Amnesty International to resign.

Pokalchuk said her local team hadn’t been properly consulted over the report, which unwittingly “sounded like support for Russian narratives” and failed to take the full context of a country being torn apart by invaders into account. “Seeking to protect civilians, this research instead became a tool of Russian propaganda,” she added.

Western critics also recalled that Amnesty had withdrawn its “prisoner of conscience” label from Putin’s most outspoken domestic political opponent Alexei Navalny last year, over xenophobic comments he’d made more than a decade earlier, only to subsequently restore the status after protests.

Some see a pattern here of pro-Russian or anti-Western bias.

As even a cursory glance at Amnesty’s publications on Russia demonstrates, however, this is nonsense. Any reputable human rights organization must apply consistent standards to all the parties in a conflict, without turning a blind eye to the behavior of “our side.”

Western citizens are happy enough to light an Amnesty candle in support of prisoners of conscience in Myanmar, Iran or Cuba. However, the group has been lambasted for criticizing the United States for its use of indefinite detention without trial at Guantanamo Bay in Cuba for terrorism suspects after the 9/11 attacks, and likewise for comparing Israel’s treatment of Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza Strip to apartheid.

In seeking to use an objective ethical yardstick, Amnesty is facing the same moral dilemmas as reputable international news media.

When I was bureau chief for Reuters in Jerusalem in the 1980s, for example, I endured frequent pressure from supporters of both Israel and the Palestinians over our real-time coverage of the first Palestinian Intifada, a mostly unarmed uprising in the occupied West Bank and Gaza Strip, which erupted in 1987.

Palestinian demonstrator throws rock during violent protests against the Israeli occupation of the West Bank and the Gaza Strip in 1987, in East Jerusalem


Some accused us of double standards because we were unable to provide similar coverage of repression in tightly sealed Syria or Algeria. We were also accused of creating a false equivalence between the occupiers and the occupied — or between “security forces” and “terrorists” — and of under-reporting on higher casualty tolls in other parts of the world.

Sometimes we were faulted for not letting local staff determine the angle of a story, or for failing to give the authorities enough time to respond before publication — even if that mainly denied them the opportunity to use censorship to silence us, or to denounce us preemptively.

I remember being greeted with denial and accusations of anti-Semitism when I briefed a Jewish delegation visiting from Canada on the situation in Gaza. I invited the group’s members to come to Gaza the following morning to see for themselves. There were no takers.

Amnesty’s report may be politically inconvenient for the Ukrainian government and its allies in the West, but that doesn’t make it wrong or inaccurate. No country, even when under brutal assault from a bullying neighbor, is above reproach.

The organization says its researchers documented multiple cases of Ukrainian forces basing themselves in schools and hospitals and launching attacks from populated neighborhoods, drawing Russian fire that endangered civilian lives. Of course, since Moscow’s forces took the war to the cities from the outset, Ukrainian defenders had little choice but to operate in these urban areas. But Amnesty says they should have done more to evacuate non-combatants.

A mature response to such criticism would be to take the findings seriously and work to improve army practices and the protection of civilians — not shoot the messenger.

President Volodymyr Zelenskyy would have done better to acknowledge that even his heroic defenders are capable of error and take the report to heart, instead of accusing Amnesty of giving “amnesty to the terrorist state and shifting responsibility from the aggressor to the victim.”

Encouragingly, there are signs that Kyiv is now trying harder to persuade civilians to leave combat zones before launching military operations — notably in the Kherson region, where it has issued repeated public appeals to citizens to leave ahead of a likely Ukrainian counteroffensive.

It’s also important to remember that Amnesty International isn’t above criticism either. A 2019 report commissioned after two employees committed suicide found a toxic work culture of bullying, public humiliation, and discrimination at the organization. And in response to the findings, Amnesty introduced a series of internal reforms and decentralized its organization, reducing the power of its London-based international secretariat.

Ukraine should respond to Amnesty’s criticism in a similar spirit. And its Western supporters should want to ensure that the billions in taxpayer money being poured into Ukraine to support its self-defense and keep it financially afloat are being properly spent.

Maintaining public support for Ukraine’s struggle requires a constructive response to criticism from reputable human rights organizations, not trying to muzzle them or discredit their findings.

Newsletter

Related Articles

KazPost
0:00
0:00
Close
It's always the people with the dirty hands pointing their fingers
Paper straws found to contain long-lasting and potentially toxic chemicals - study
FTX's Bankman-Fried headed for jail after judge revokes bail
Blackrock gets half a trillion dollar deal to rebuild Ukraine
America's First New Nuclear Reactor in Nearly Seven Years Begins Operations
Southeast Asia moves closer to economic unity with new regional payments system
Today Hunter Biden’s best friend and business associate, Devon Archer, testified that Joe Biden met in Georgetown with Russian Moscow Mayor's Wife Yelena Baturina who later paid Hunter Biden $3.5 million in so called “consulting fees”
Singapore Carries Out First Execution of a Woman in Two Decades Amid Capital Punishment Debate
Google testing journalism AI. We are doing it already 2 years, and without Google biased propoganda and manipulated censorship
Unlike illegal imigrants coming by boats - US Citizens Will Need Visa To Travel To Europe in 2024
Musk announces Twitter name and logo change to X.com
The future of sports
Unveiling the Black Hole: The Mysterious Fate of EU's Aid to Ukraine
Farewell to a Music Titan: Tony Bennett, Renowned Jazz and Pop Vocalist, Passes Away at 96
Alarming Behavior Among Florida's Sharks Raises Concerns Over Possible Cocaine Exposure
Transgender Exclusion in Miss Italy Stirs Controversy Amidst Changing Global Beauty Pageant Landscape
TikTok Takes On Spotify And Apple, Launches Own Music Service
Global Trend: Using Anti-Fake News Laws as Censorship Tools - A Deep Dive into Tunisia's Scenario
Arresting Putin During South African Visit Would Equate to War Declaration, Asserts President Ramaphosa
Hacktivist Collective Anonymous Launches 'Project Disclosure' to Unearth Information on UFOs and ETIs
Typo sends millions of US military emails to Russian ally Mali
Server Arrested For Theft After Refusing To Pay A Table's $100 Restaurant Bill When They Dined & Dashed
The Changing Face of Europe: How Mass Migration is Reshaping the Political Landscape
China Urges EU to Clarify Strategic Partnership Amid Trade Tensions
Europe is boiling: Extreme Weather Conditions Prevail Across the Continent
The Last Pour: Anchor Brewing, America's Pioneer Craft Brewer, Closes After 127 Years
Democracy not: EU's Digital Commissioner Considers Shutting Down Social Media Platforms Amid Social Unrest
Sarah Silverman and Renowned Authors Lodge Copyright Infringement Case Against OpenAI and Meta
Why Do Tech Executives Support Kennedy Jr.?
The New York Times Announces Closure of its Sports Section in Favor of The Athletic
BBC Anchor Huw Edwards Hospitalized Amid Child Sex Abuse Allegations, Family Confirms
Florida Attorney General requests Meta CEO's testimony on company's platforms' alleged facilitation of illicit activities
The Distorted Mirror of actual approval ratings: Examining the True Threat to Democracy Beyond the Persona of Putin
40,000 child slaves in Congo are forced to work in cobalt mines so we can drive electric cars.
Historic Moment: Edgars Rinkevics, EU's First Openly Gay Head of State, Takes Office as Latvia's President
An Ominous Shift in Warfare: Western Powers Risk War Crimes and Violate International Norms with Cluster Bomb Supply to Ukraine
Bye bye democracy, human rights, freedom: French Cops Can Now Secretly Activate Phone Cameras, Microphones And GPS To Spy On Citizens
The Poor Man With Money, Mark Zuckerberg, Unveils Twitter Replica with Heavy-Handed Censorship: A New Low in Innovation?
The Double-Edged Sword of AI: AI is linked to layoffs in industry that created it
US Sanctions on China's Chip Industry Backfire, Prompting Self-Inflicted Blowback
Meta Copy Twitter with New App, Threads
The New French Revolution
BlackRock Bitcoin ETF Application Refiled, Naming Coinbase as ‘Surveillance-Sharing’ Partner
Corruption in the European Parliament - Business as usual
UK Crypto and Stablecoin Regulations Become Law as Royal Assent is Granted
Paris Suburb Grapples with Violence as Curfew Imposed: Saint-Denis Residents Express Dismay and Anger
A Delaware city wants to let businesses vote in its elections
Alef Aeronautics Achieves Historic Milestone with Flight Certification for World's First Flying Car
Google Blocked Access to Canadian News in Response to New Legislation
French Politicians Advocate for Pan-European Regulation on Social Media Influencers
×