NGO Monitor letter to Salil Shetty, Secretary General of Amnesty Int'l

NGO Monitor
26 August '10

Mr. Salil Shetty
Secretary General
Amnesty International
London, UK

Dear Mr. Shetty,

Your appointment as Secretary General of Amnesty International follows a major decline in this once prestigious organization’s moral reputation and influence. We therefore strongly urge you to give priority to ending Amnesty’s systemic bias, lack of credibility, and violation of universal principles in many of its activities.

In particular, NGO Monitor notes:

1) The Gita Sahgal incident, in which Amnesty’s leading women’s rights activist was forced to resign after questioning cooperation with an alleged Taliban supporter, Moazzam Begg, and the interim Secretary General Claudio Cordone publically condoned “jihad in self-defense.” Amnesty’s behavior also demonstrated the absence of accountability in the organization’s response to legitimate criticism.

2) Amnesty’s activities related to the Arab-Israel conflict reflect a consistent and intense bias. For example, during and after the Gaza war (December 2008-January 2009), Amnesty issued many unsupported condemnations of Israel’s response to rocket attacks against civilians, including unverifiable and false charges of “war crimes.” Amnesty also led one-sided calls for an arms embargo against Israel, as part of the wider BDS campaign. This focused on Israel ignored illegal arms shipments from Iran and Syria to Hamas, reflecting the disproportionate attention given to Israel by Amnesty.

3) Amnesty has been central in promoting the distortion of international law and false claims made against Israel in the Goldstone report, including intense lobbying the UN and the EU. Similarly, Amnesty called for discriminatory sanctions against Israel in the form of suspending the EU-Israel Association Agreement, and also for politicized “lawfare” cases against Israeli officials in the International Criminal Court.

(Read full letter)

If you enjoy "Love of the Land", please be a subscriber. Just put your email address in the "Subscribe" box on the upper right-hand corner of the page.
.