A mockery of the universality of rights
Gita Sahgal states the problem.
The senior leadership of Amnesty International chose to answer the questions I posed about Amnesty International’s relationship with Moazzam Begg by affirming their links with him. Now they have also confirmed that the views of Begg, his associates and his organisation Cageprisoners, do not trouble them. They have stated that the idea of jihad in self defence is not antithetical to human rights; and have explained that they meant only the specific form of violent jihad that Moazzam Begg and others in Cageprisoners assert is the individual obligation of every Muslim…Unfortunately, their stance has laid waste every achievement on women’s equality and made a mockery of the universality of rights. In fact, the leadership has effectively rejected a belief in universality as an essential basis for partnership.
A dreadful thing to have to say about Amnesty International. It’s blood-chilling that even one of the pre-eminent human rights organizations doesn’t get it. If the Amnesty version of human rights prevailed, I would have no rights left. I resent that. I can’t begin to tell you how strongly I resent that.
Amnesty and it’s dwindling number of supporters have behaved disgracefully throughout this whole business. I honestly thought they’d wait a few weeks, discretely put some distance between themselves and Begg, Ridley and the rest then quietly take Gita back on but as soon as the came out in support of ‘defensive Jihad’ I had to accept they were a lost cause. At least when Index on Censorship abandoned free speech over the Motoons they didn’t take Islamists on tour to celebrate.
I saw Sunny Hundal, self-appointed voice of the Liberal Left call Gita ‘hysterical’ on Pickled Politics a few days back and when I pulled him up on the obvious sexism of the term he first deleted my post, then implied I must be racist for questioning him. Nick Cohen, Christopher Hitchens and Salman Rushdie are behind the whole thing, apparently. Sunny has just returned from touring the East: whatever he was doing there, it wasn’t seeking Enlightenment.
Amnesty used to do a lot of good as far as we who were members could tell. Sadly, the people doing human rights work tend to be very earnest activists who share some earnest cultural prejudices of activist political correctness.
Human Rights Watch was also embarrassed last year – http://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2009/07/fundraising-corruption-at-human-rights-watch/21345/
When I first read Cohen’s ‘What’s Left?’ I thought he was grossly overstating his case.
Okay, I knew that there were Islamist sympathies on the ‘anti-Imperialist’ Left like the SWP and within a particular branch of feminism which regards the burqua as a more acceptable alternative to lapdance clubs, but I thought the ‘Liberal’ Left were more guilty of equivocation or over-sensitivity about language than active support for Jihadist aims.
The viciousness of the Sahgal affair (I’ve also seen her attacked for ‘McCarthyism) has disabused me of this notion: whole swathes of the ‘Left’ are guilty of misogyny and homophobia by proxy.
What a pity that AI has been subsumed by establishment, which now uses it for sectuional political ends. Bye ‘bye Amnesty, it was nice knowing you, have a nice life.
I rather hope that when finer ninds than mine have studied Sam’s work on a scientific base to moral behaviour, we will be able to move beyond patronizing moral and cultural relativism towards the odd absolute from first principles, so to speak.
Yours sincerely,
from the mire of the moral madoffs.
This unfortunately has been the historic norm to which AI by this account is conforming. An organisation is set up and builds itself a reputation. So, as it inevitably seeks recruits, it is duly moved in on and taken over by barrow-pushers and ideologues of various persuasions. And so it becomes corrupted. So there is a breakaway organisation set up and the whole process begins over again.
It is all there in the history of Christianity, and of the various relgious orders of Catholicism. My choice example would be the history of the Franciscans.
“It’s blood-chilling that even one of the pre-eminent human rights organizations doesn’t get it.”
They are defending the right to liberty, free association and free speech
of people who are fighting tirelessly to deny those rights to far more people.
Ooh, an aporia! ;-)
Something has gone badly wrong with Sunny H.
I don’t quite understand what’s going on between Amnesty and Seghal and Begg. All the articles I’ve looked at have only given partial summaries. Does anyone here have any suggestions on where I can look to get a run-down of what happened?
Huamn Rights for All – that’s from Sahgal’s side, of course, but it has a lot of articles. Or just try a search on her name here – but be sure to spell it Sahgal.