Amnesty International was once a remarkable organisation that campaigned on behalf of prisoners of conscience. Many of those it adopted said its letter-writing campaigns pressured authorities into stopping their torture. Its work was unique, not least because it was apolitical. Its main criterion was that someone had been imprisoned for having a view, rather than what that view was.
Today, Amnesty is just another partisan NGO, with all the dreary hard-left obsessions — including the customary fixation on Israel. And the choice of prisoners on whose behalf it campaigns is … different.
On Sunday, Amnesty bemoaned the “death in custody of Walid Daqqa, a 62-year-old Palestinian writer who was the longest-serving Palestinian prisoner”. It was, Amnesty said: “A cruel reminder of Israel’s disregard for Palestinians’ right to life.”
• Migrants get phone calls about £3,000 Rwanda offer
Describing Daqqa, who died of cancer, as a writer is like calling Fred West a lorry driver. He was the commander of a terrorist group that, in 1984, kidnapped Moshe Tamam, a 19-year-old Israeli man, and over the course of four days castrated him, gouged his eyes out and mutilated his body before finally shooting him.
Advertisement
Amnesty’s embrace of Daqqa is no surprise. Last year it called Khader Adnan a “baker by trade” after his death in an Israeli prison following a hunger strike — which Amnesty said was a “reminder of the deadly cost that Palestinians pay for challenging Israel’s apartheid”. In 2007 this “baker by trade” was filmed encouraging suicide bombings: “Who among you will carry the next explosive belt? Who among you will fire the next bullets? Who among you will have his body parts blown all over?”
In 2015 Amnesty was exposed for having provided support to the prisoners’ rights group Cage, which was described last month by the communities secretary, Michael Gove, as Islamist. After the furore, Amnesty said it was “reviewing whether any future association … would be appropriate”. Apparently it was: in 2021 they united to attack a review into the government’s Prevent scheme for tackling radicalisation.
• Labour suspends candidate Wilma Brown over Gaza tweets
In August 2022, Amnesty highlighted a series of alleged breaches of international law in Ukraine. But in the Amnesty world-view the breaches were Ukraine’s, because its army operated in civilian areas to defend itself from Russia.
That same year, a report the group set up to investigate itself found Amnesty to be “institutionally racist”, “colonialist”, “a white saviour” and “privileged”. Whatever else it may be, Amnesty is an indecent, morally bankrupt sham that has nothing of value to contribute.
Advertisement
Stephen Pollard is editor at large of The Jewish Chronicle
