No Amnesty on ineffectual organisations
I've come down hard on the UN in past blog posts because they're just a brand and actually do nothing to achieve their objectives. Amnesty International suffers from the same problem. Purely because I expect organisations that size to do more.
Amnesty was set up by lawyer Peter Benson after the furore that Observer article on The Forgotten Prisoners caused in 1961. Its objective was to inform the public who will, in turn, put pressure on governments to change their ways.
So let your average Joe take responsibility for a tyrannical government's misgivings. I can write all the letters in the world to the Chinese Ambassador in London, it's not going to make the slightest bit of difference. If I was a powerful businessman or a clever diplomat or a charismatic leader, perhaps. But me, a marketeer/copywriter who lives in a 2-bed terrace in Reading, no chance.
It's not just these "rogue" nations that need activism. Michael Gove's first step in power as Justice Secretary was to mention that the Tory party wants to abolish the Human Rights Act. Of course they can't do this fully, as we're still subject to international and European law. It's more a bid to restore judicial sovereignty and tighten up terror laws. But where is Amnesty in all of this?
Why aren't Amnesty one of the bodies that governments use in order to legislate effectively? They should be in think-tanks, they should be lobbying by holding meetings with MPs/people of influence, submit white papers and conduct independent inquiries into government practices and legislation. What they do is report on human rights violations with paper thin facts and hyperbole. Check out their website, it doesn't really say anything - it's just a glorified blog that collects huge amounts of money. Amnesty had a turnover of £26 million in the first quarter of 2015 . Let's breakdown what they use it for:
Does all this really cost £26 million plus?
Even the name Amnesty is passive aggressive. It suggests that innocent dissidents (or prisoners of conscience as Amnesty pompously call them) should rightly be pardoned. It's an order to power-drunk governments who might look at this with disdain in a 'you can't tell me what to do and then be magnanimous about it by showing me mercy' type of way. I bet that would get a 'feck off' from most moral bastions too.
These people think nothing of driving tanks towards students armed with nothing but shopping bags, they're not going to listen to Western organisation that does... well, not very much. And these Western nations who fly the humanitarian flag are normally the cause of such regimes, so putting Saddam in power, arming him and giving his regime full backing, then chastising him for genocide is a bit rich.
However, Amnesty pride themselves on being politically impartial, as they should be (despite being caught up in several cases where they've been accused of working for various national security agencies). So they use this an excuse for only just registering to become non-party lobbyists. Probably because the high-profile bill announced by Mr Gove would put their ineffectual unimportance in the spotlight.
Lobbying is crucial to pushing through change and the best way to do this if from the inside. Winston Churchill was a lobbyist for BP, the suffragettes got what they wanted by going to extremes to piss off people in power and Wilberforce lobbied for the abolition of slavery while he was an MP. Amnesty have achieved no such feats. We can't even attribute the omission of the HRA from the Queen's speech to them, as so many Lords and MPs were opposed to it anyway.
Pressure groups and lobbyist are only effectual when they're on the inside. Petitions, letters and protests can be ignored, but influential public figures can make a difference - think about Joanna Lumley and the Gurkhas or Tony Blair and the illegal Iraq war. These organisations have no influence, they're a government box ticking exercise. That's why when Amnesty says 'we'd quite like to you jump, but if you can't and won't that's ok too', everyone else asks 'did someone say something'.
First published 01/06/2015
To conduct research and generate action to prevent and end grave abuses of human rights, and to demand justice for those whose right have been violated.
Amnesty International objective
Amnesty was set up by lawyer Peter Benson after the furore that Observer article on The Forgotten Prisoners caused in 1961. Its objective was to inform the public who will, in turn, put pressure on governments to change their ways.
So let your average Joe take responsibility for a tyrannical government's misgivings. I can write all the letters in the world to the Chinese Ambassador in London, it's not going to make the slightest bit of difference. If I was a powerful businessman or a clever diplomat or a charismatic leader, perhaps. But me, a marketeer/copywriter who lives in a 2-bed terrace in Reading, no chance.
It's not just these "rogue" nations that need activism. Michael Gove's first step in power as Justice Secretary was to mention that the Tory party wants to abolish the Human Rights Act. Of course they can't do this fully, as we're still subject to international and European law. It's more a bid to restore judicial sovereignty and tighten up terror laws. But where is Amnesty in all of this?
Why aren't Amnesty one of the bodies that governments use in order to legislate effectively? They should be in think-tanks, they should be lobbying by holding meetings with MPs/people of influence, submit white papers and conduct independent inquiries into government practices and legislation. What they do is report on human rights violations with paper thin facts and hyperbole. Check out their website, it doesn't really say anything - it's just a glorified blog that collects huge amounts of money. Amnesty had a turnover of £26 million in the first quarter of 2015 . Let's breakdown what they use it for:
- Campaigning - they rely on their 200,000 members to do this by sending emails with a pre-written letter to be sent to someone in office.
- Research - this does take up a lot of time and you need people to write up their findings. From what I've seen on the site, they just have a bunch of office workers who surf the net or calling up public bodies for info, unlike Vice that has actual journalists on the ground. So, like the UN, they have people in absolutely safety and comfort reporting on people going through the most horrific time of their uncertain lives.
- Everything else - centers around gaining and maintaining their money streams.
Does all this really cost £26 million plus?
Even the name Amnesty is passive aggressive. It suggests that innocent dissidents (or prisoners of conscience as Amnesty pompously call them) should rightly be pardoned. It's an order to power-drunk governments who might look at this with disdain in a 'you can't tell me what to do and then be magnanimous about it by showing me mercy' type of way. I bet that would get a 'feck off' from most moral bastions too.
These people think nothing of driving tanks towards students armed with nothing but shopping bags, they're not going to listen to Western organisation that does... well, not very much. And these Western nations who fly the humanitarian flag are normally the cause of such regimes, so putting Saddam in power, arming him and giving his regime full backing, then chastising him for genocide is a bit rich.
However, Amnesty pride themselves on being politically impartial, as they should be (despite being caught up in several cases where they've been accused of working for various national security agencies). So they use this an excuse for only just registering to become non-party lobbyists. Probably because the high-profile bill announced by Mr Gove would put their ineffectual unimportance in the spotlight.
Lobbying is crucial to pushing through change and the best way to do this if from the inside. Winston Churchill was a lobbyist for BP, the suffragettes got what they wanted by going to extremes to piss off people in power and Wilberforce lobbied for the abolition of slavery while he was an MP. Amnesty have achieved no such feats. We can't even attribute the omission of the HRA from the Queen's speech to them, as so many Lords and MPs were opposed to it anyway.
Pressure groups and lobbyist are only effectual when they're on the inside. Petitions, letters and protests can be ignored, but influential public figures can make a difference - think about Joanna Lumley and the Gurkhas or Tony Blair and the illegal Iraq war. These organisations have no influence, they're a government box ticking exercise. That's why when Amnesty says 'we'd quite like to you jump, but if you can't and won't that's ok too', everyone else asks 'did someone say something'.
First published 01/06/2015
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