Silly Little Country

Amnesty International Continues to Flush Itself Down the Toilet

And Gita Shagal gets to document the process.

the organisation has sanitized the reputation of Moazzam Begg, a former Guanatamo detainee. They have treated him as a human rights advocate, although he champions Anwar al Awlaki and al Timmimi.

Pathetic and unbelievable, unless their leaders are infected with the usual lefty disease, in which case this is just pathetic.

Soon, they claimed that his views were indeed universalist but that he supported ‘defensive jihad.’ – which is, after all waged to establish systematic discrimination. Amnesty International felt that this view was not ‘antithetical to human rights. Although he published in a Muslim Brotherhood journal and has associated with the Jamaat I Islami the senior leadership decided to endorse him as a human rights advocate, which they had refrained from doing before the crisis.

Well, he IS against America so must be a good guy.
And they are not alone.

Most western human rights and civil liberties organizations have watched the unfolding crisis in a frozen and complicit silence. They say nothing because they too have committed similar errors of judgement, supporting proponents of radical Islam rather than simply defending their rights. Too often in Britain, entirely legitimate concerns about racism and the marginalization of Muslims are allied to the promotion of groups associated with the Jamaat I Islami and Muslim Brotherhood.
Their programmes of social control such as promotion of the hijab are supported quite uncritically. The actions of human rights advocates mirror those of governments from Chechnya to the UK. Recruit former insurgents or fundamentalists and subcontract them to provide surveillance and control over the mass of the population. Defeat one form of fundamentalism by supporting another.
Human rights groups have entirely ignored this story and as a result simply cannot tell the story of the times within which we live. There is a void, where there should be analysis of the organizational forms and ideological links of western Islamists. There is silence on ‘faith based initiatives as part of soft ‘counter-terrorism’ strategies. They cannot accuse governments without accusing themselves.

Their knees just keep jerking! PROMOTION of the hijab?! I am of two minds about bans on face covering, but I am certainly against anyone trying to spread this fatuous behavior.
I hope Gita Sahgal can carry out her current project:

As Amnesty trundles towards its 50th anniversary, I will be working with others to ensure that whether Amnesty is covering up or cleaning up, whether the review provides any answers, the hidden history of human rights will be put on record. Peter Benenson said that we work in Amnesty against oblivion. If human rights organizations can no longer tell their own stories, others will do it for them.

It is sad to see a once-repected organization turn to crap, but then so has the left in general, once committed to civil liberties, turn into a confederate of the most reactionary and totalitarian forces in the world. Hey! Wait a second! Wasn't the left fairly recently a pretty strong ally of the Communist world. Yeah they were - better go off and think some more.

posted by Alan Adamson @ 2:21 PM