From the Sidney Morning Herald:
The human rights pressure group [Amnesty International] has accused [Australia’s John] Howard of portraying asylum-seekers as a threat to national security.
In a report released overnight, it also criticised Australia’s role in the war on terror and its treatment of female victims of violence.
Amnesty secretary-general Irene Khan said the fear generated by leaders such as Mr Howard “thrives on myopic and cowardly leadership”.
Ms Khan lumped Mr Howard in with Mr Mugabe, US President George W Bush and Sudan’s President Omar al-Bashir in a paragraph about leaders who used fear to suit their political agenda.
In statement today, Mr Howard rejected the way Australia was characterised in the Amnesty report.“The report’s entry on Australia contains a string of assertions, unsupported by evidence and devoid of context,” he said.
“The report’s treatment of Australia amounts to little more than a shoddy caricature.
“Nowhere is the report’s political agenda clearer than the paragraph in its foreword which seeks to bracket Australian and US policies with the horrendous human rights situation in Darfur and Robert Mugabe’s disastrous misrule in Zimbabwe.”
Ms Khan stood by her comments today, accusing the Howard government of having an “appalling” domestic human rights record regarding its treatment of asylum seekers and indigenous people.
These failures had undermined its good work overseas, she told ABC Radio.
I had a long post written up—it discussed the “defining down” of human rights abuses in the context of the concommitant “progressive” attempts to define down ”torture,” ”patriotism,” ”propaganda,” “tolerance,” and a host of other terms its adherents seek to expand or revise to jibe with their commitment to emotionalism and Orwellian rhetoric as a discursive tactic—but I somehow lost it when I slammed my head repeatedly against the keyboard.
Important to highlight, though, is the irony that Amnesty International’s charges can only hope to appeal to countries committed to the rule of law and pluralism—which, for that reason, is who they tend to target, concentrating their efforts especially on freely elected “conservative” governments whose policies don’t jibe with those prescribed by Amnesty International and its supporters.
All of which suggests that the real intent of such reports by Amnesty International is to affect national elections, with the hope of installing governments sympathetic to their own “neutral” policy prescriptions.
Writes Charles Johnson—who points to an unbelievable poll on Amnesty’s website—“Amnesty International has finally gone completely off the rails.”
Which is, of course, a subjective opinion—and one that is belied by the rush of many of Amnesty’s progressive fellow-travelers to offer the report as proof that Bush and Howard engage in human rights abuses on par with those of Mugabe and Omar al-Bashir.
Leading me to believe that Amnesty—like many in the mainstream and international press—have simply dropped the risible mask of “objectivity” and are now comfortable enough in their convictions, and secure enough in their support, to agitate outwardly without fear of retribution.
*****
You can download the report here.
That’s non-profits for ya. Their interests are served by agitating, in a “responsible” manner, which means they need headlines, which means they need controversey. Nothing’s easier to manufacture.
Every time I think of Amnesty International, I can’t help but recall Gary Larson’s account of having received angry letters from them accusing him of “insensitivity” every time he published a medieval-torture-chamber joke in The Far Side. As if they didn’t have anything better to do.
I think they have to write the reports this way so the AP will write a story about them.
Ding ding ding! Give that man a cigar! Of course, this also drums up fundraising, which is truly the be-all-and-end-all of most mature non-profit oganizations.
However, we should also be clear that the leadership and rank & file of Amnesty International is most likely sincere in their belief that the U.S. is worse than Hitler and Satan sewn together.
(Once again, I apologize to all for my past work in this sorry industry.)
I’m waiting for Amnesty to set up shop in Khartoum or Harare in its panicked flight from the horrors of the Bush/Howard Torture Axis. If this yammering gaggle of limousine leftists can’t distinguish between the two, let’s see if their powers of perception are sharpened when the differences are manifested on their hides.
I love this. Somehow they tend to forget the hundreds of thousands living in actual slavery in the Middle East, not to mention the virtual slavery of half of the population in these countries. Where are they when an honor killing is carried out? When a women is beaten for showing too much ankle? It’s a shame that they can’t stand up for the principles on which their organization was supposed to be based.
Where are they when an honor killing is carried out? When a women is beaten for showing too much ankle? It’s a shame that they can’t stand up for the principles on which their organization was supposed to be based.
If they are True Believers in the Multicultural crede that states that all cultures are equal (and Western, Liberal ones less so), they may just be paralyzed with cognitive dissonance.
There was a time when Amnesty Int’l advocated against powerful regimes that were actually oppressing people. Now they are just BDS afflicted cowards without the courage to actually condemn real oppression. They’ve reduced themselves to a laughing stock.
Shorter Andrew: Direct Mail.
If Australia is really like Darfur, wouldn’t granting asylum there be a human rights abuse itself?
I have a feeling this peak will be outpeaked (as it were) some time in the near future.
The pendulum isn’t done swinging that way yet.
God help us all.
Amnesty International is like the drunk looking for his keys under the lamppost because the light is better.
Not exactly the same, however, as the latter joke is funny.
I just find it amazing that all those letter writing campaigns organized by Amnesty have so little effect on the likes of Mugabe and the regimes such as the one in Sudan.
Just wondering if Khan would like to address who these asylum seekers are and where they come from. Probably escaping from the oppression of the US no doubt.
I remember Spider Man 728, when Mugabe and the Scorpion almost got the Webslinger! Good times.
KHAAAAAAAAAAAAAAN !!!
The problem with Amnesty is the same problem with the ACLU. Their fundraising-driven sensationalism coupled with their feel-good leftist empty piety, trivializes (and in a lot of people’s eyes discredits) the causes they claim to be embracing. While many good people support the two groups, because they sound like they mean well, these (and many other nice-sounding groups) are led by left wing swine, whose embrace of human or civil rights is a “love the one that you’re with” maneuver to attack whatever institution (e.g. the U.S. Government) is the enemy of the day.
I use to think of Amnesty International as a group that did more good than harm, though occasionally lacking perspective. I believe the main incident that changed my view was a few years ago when some higher-up in the US office referred to Gitmo as a “gulag”, and someone in the press called him up and said, “you were just being dramatic, right?” and he said, no, the analogy is apt.
I buy that they can have more of an impact on relatively civilized governments than on Kim or Mugabe or Castro or Saud. That’s a legitimate reason to spend more of your time criticizing the US than North Korea. But equating minor transgressions of a civilized regime with the major transgression of an uncivilized regime doesn’t make you look evenhanded or pragmatic, it makes you look like a damn fool.
Worse, it’s simply false. And falsehood has consequences for human behavior.
Well, it used to, at least.
I admit it: I was raised reading the Bible and learned Civics by learning about US Constitution and Declaration of Independence, so I’m not apparently as worldly as you folks. But, I thought human rights were…well, you know, universal. And,when any government denies them, it is called an abuse.
Then again, I tend to think of the world in greater than black and white. Shorter PW posters: if Amnesty is against, they are for the terrorists. Of course, that is a joke. A cursory glance at their website points to reports on abuses by Iran and Venezuela for instance. Unfortunately, the mainstream press doesn’t report that Iran abuses human rights, because….well, we already know that.
Just because a country is a good guy doesn’t mean everything they do is good, nor does it mean that Amnesty equates Iran with the United States. They have an absolute standard (making the title of this post silly).
In the mean time, while you all froth and foam, could someone explain the difference between the Guantanamo and a Gulag. I wouldn’t have chosen such a politically charged word, but, when you compare the two: people who have no legal rights and no due process and held indefinitely, it seems rather apt. Is the difference because the Gulag folks were tortured better? Forced to perform slave labor? were in Siberia? were citizens of their own country (might want to peep out the 2006 MCA to determine if that is possible for our citizens…hell, I’ll save you the time, it is.) Or because, they were bad guys and we are good guys? Seems to me a difference in degree and not kind and that Guantanamo should be closed already.
But, again, I tend to believe in human rights, but that’s because I can’t wrap my head around why it’s bad for the other guys and okay for us. It’s probably that Don Quixote world view that makes me like AI and the ACLU.
P.S. Any parallels between the St. Louis in 1939 and Howard’s refusal to allow Muslims refugees to enter Australia is strictly accidental!
PPS oh, you defenders of liberty, froth away. I will be back to read your defense of human rights abuses after I do some much-needed work!
1. Inmates at Gitmo gain weight. Inmates in the gulag were worked to death on poor food.
Sorry, didn’t mean to froth all over you with, like, facts, you ignorant, self-important buffoon.
No, they just equate Zimbabwe and Sudan with the United States. Pretty much screams “ignore me!”