Full Employment For Stoppists!
Iran's president has urged the UN to launch an investigation into the aims of Western military actions in Afghanistan and Iraq.The office of Secretary General Ban ki-Moon said that it was studying the letter from Mahmoud Ahmadinejad but had no comment. Mr Ahmadinejad asked the UN to set up a fact-finding team.
Outsource the entire enterprise to Amnesty International:
"I can testify to the fact that over the past 25 years I have talked to various senior staff members of Amnesty International. I have talked to them about the imbalance in their reports on Algeria; about the way they constructed fundamentalists solely as victims of state repression and not as perpetrators of violence and violations against people in general and women in particular; about the way victims of fundamentalists were ignored and not defended; about the way supporters of fundamentalists were invited to AI functions as victims of state repression and then used this platform not just to denounce violations that were committed against them but to voice their political analysis of the situation; about the way the defence lawyer of fundamentalists belonging to the FIS (Islamic Salvation Front) in Algeria was repeatedly invited to AI’s functions and introduced as ‘a human rights lawyer’ without any reference to the fact that he was not defending their victims; about the fact that AI induced a hierarchy among victims, in which fundamentalists were privileged as victims of the state while women, the vast majority of whom were victims of the fundamentalists, disappeared from the scene; about the fact that AI also induced a hierarchy of rights, in which minority rights, cultural rights, religious rights (and fundamentalist interpretations of these rights were accepted) came first and women’s rights came last. . . "
A Job Opening: "I invite you to join me as I continue to campaign for public accountability at this moment, which comes but rarely in history, when a great organisation must ask: if it lies to itself, can it demand the truth of others?"
Gita Sahgal is now the former Interim Head of the Gender, Sexuality and Identity Unit of Amnesty International.
Outsource the entire enterprise to Amnesty International:
"I can testify to the fact that over the past 25 years I have talked to various senior staff members of Amnesty International. I have talked to them about the imbalance in their reports on Algeria; about the way they constructed fundamentalists solely as victims of state repression and not as perpetrators of violence and violations against people in general and women in particular; about the way victims of fundamentalists were ignored and not defended; about the way supporters of fundamentalists were invited to AI functions as victims of state repression and then used this platform not just to denounce violations that were committed against them but to voice their political analysis of the situation; about the way the defence lawyer of fundamentalists belonging to the FIS (Islamic Salvation Front) in Algeria was repeatedly invited to AI’s functions and introduced as ‘a human rights lawyer’ without any reference to the fact that he was not defending their victims; about the fact that AI induced a hierarchy among victims, in which fundamentalists were privileged as victims of the state while women, the vast majority of whom were victims of the fundamentalists, disappeared from the scene; about the fact that AI also induced a hierarchy of rights, in which minority rights, cultural rights, religious rights (and fundamentalist interpretations of these rights were accepted) came first and women’s rights came last. . . "
A Job Opening: "I invite you to join me as I continue to campaign for public accountability at this moment, which comes but rarely in history, when a great organisation must ask: if it lies to itself, can it demand the truth of others?"
Gita Sahgal is now the former Interim Head of the Gender, Sexuality and Identity Unit of Amnesty International.
posted by Terry Glavin at 8:01 PM
1 Comments:
Hi Terry: I wasn't aware of AI's shameful position on Algeria in the 1990s. At that time I often was acting world editor at a large canadian daily, and stories about Algeria were commonplace. For AI to ignore the fundies and focus on the state was reprehensible, given the number of atrocities again innocents they committed. Next time the AI kids (well intentioned, no doubt) are standing at the corner of main and king edward, I am going to tell them exactly what sort of an organization they are peddling.
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