For anyone who has followed Amnesty International in recent years, its attack on Ukraine for daring to defend itself against Russia and thereby “putting civilians at risk” was entirely characteristic. The organization that was once a beacon of hope for political prisoners has become a de facto offshoot of Stop The War. It now operates with the same agenda as other groups on the fringes of far-left politics, pushing the same hardcore anti-Western obsessions (even infamously teaming up with Cage, the British Islamist group for a time), but with more PR success than most as it trades with his former reputation for good works.
According to Amnesty, Ukrainian forces in Kharkiv, Donbas and Mykolaiv violated international law by operating from residential areas. “We have documented a pattern of Ukrainian forces putting civilians at risk and violating the laws of war when operating in populated areas,” wrote Agnes Callamard, its secretary general. Never mind that the only reason Ukrainian forces are in residential areas is to protect them from Russian invaders – who are killing, torturing and capturing Ukrainian civilians. As Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said in response, Amnesty is trying to “shift responsibility from the aggressor to the victim.”
The Russian Embassy in the UK welcomed Amnesty’s ‘report’ with glee, tweeting: ‘@Amnesty confirms that #Ukraine’s tactics violate international humanitarian law and endanger civilians…exactly what #Russia has been saying all along. #StopNaziUkraine”
Just in case anyone might doubt her position, Ms Callamard responded to the Ukrainian government’s removal of her insults by equating it with Russian invaders – and dismissing Ukrainian ministers as trolls for good measure.
But it is not only the Ukrainian government that has condemned Amnesty’s distortion of reality. So is Amnesty’s office in Ukraine. Oksana Pokalchuk, its head, has now resigned, saying Amnesty has become a “tool of Russian propaganda”. When AI officials in Ukraine complained about the draft report, they were ignored: “Our team’s arguments about the inadmissibility and incompleteness of such material were not taken into account. Representatives of the Ukrainian office did everything possible to prevent this material from being published.
Like all good far-left outfits, Amnesty has been obsessed with Israel for years. In 2012, Christian Benedict, then the charity’s campaigns manager, took to Twitter to post a “joke” about 3 Jewish MPs: “Louise Ellmann, Robert Halfon and Luciana Berger walk into a bar… each ordering a round of B52 … #Gaza”. How did Amnesty respond to one of its key staff posting something that was widely perceived as anti-Semitic? Mr. Benedict was promoted and is now his “Crisis Response Manager.”
In February, Amnesty published another report on Israel, which it claimed was an apartheid state. It was usually full of errors, both in fact and in law. And who brought the opposition to this? As in Ukraine, Amnesty’s own staff. Amnesty Israel’s executive director, Molly Malekar, described the Israeli report as a “gut punch”, while its chief executive, Yariv Mohar, said he was “shocked and angry” to hear of its conclusions.
In other words, the central command of a hard-left NGO has created propaganda that is based more on ideology than facts, only to be criticized by its own people on the ground – who understand the reality.
Amnesty is a useless, morally bankrupt scam that helps terrorist states. The sooner it collapses under the weight of its own distortions, the better.
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