Amnesty International

Amnesty International is an international non-governmental organization founded in Britain in 1961. The official goal of establishing an NGO is "research and action aimed at preventing and ending violations of the rights to physical and psychological integrity, to freedom of conscience and expression, to freedom from discrimination in the context of their work to promote human rights."

In fact, Amnesty International's leadership and activists have repeatedly intervened (directly or indirectly) in the political processes of many countries, including Australia, the Czech Republic, Russia, China, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Egypt, India, Iran, Israel, Morocco, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Vietnam and Nigeria.

For the most part, Amnesty International is engaged in working to create a negative media image of a particular country, as well as collecting materials of varying degrees of legality for subsequent accusations of a particular state from the rostrum in large international organizations. The main task is to constantly highlight negative events, often greatly exaggerating their scale and possible consequences, wrote the Rybar channel. For examples, see below.

Financing

The published data indicate a number of sponsors, including some government organizations and government agencies, in particular, for 2011-2010, the UK Department of International Development, the European Commission and the US Department of State were among them.

History

2019

Information attack on Egypt

Accusations against Amnesty International were also heard in Egypt in 2019. The country's authorities also accused NGOs of biased and publishing tendentious information. In particular, representatives of the organization published a message on Twitter, which said that "the capital of Egypt Cairo is closed" and that Egyptian security forces "established checkpoints throughout the city and blocked all roads leading to Tahrir Square and closed four nearby metro stations, preventing people from exercising their rights to freedom of movement and peaceful assembly." In fact, this statement was based on the closure of several roads and four of the 53 metro stations in Greater Cairo due to maintenance on them.

It is worth noting that Amnesty International did not make similar comments to France, when dozens of metro stations and bus routes in Paris were closed weekly for a whole year due to yellow vest protests.

False accusations by Iranian authorities

Iran In 2019, Amnesty International specialists disseminated information that at least 106 civilians were killed by Iranian security forces during the protests. Later, the organization revised the figure, stating that there were more dead - 304, claiming that unarmed protesters were deliberately killed by the authorities, who gave the green light to brutal repressions to suppress dissent.

In fact, many citizens were killed by armed rioters, in addition, many of the "killed" turned out to be alive, and some, although they were really dead, died in cities where there were no protests at all.

2000: Demonization of the DRC Government

In the DRC in 2000, the organization also played a role. In its report on the situation in the country, Amnesty International spoke about the repression that the official government allegedly commits. The Congo authorities denied all accusations, pointing out that it is precisely such a erroneous representation of the West that is broadcast to all world media, but it has little in common with the real situation.

In particular, the report described repressions against opposition politicians, journalists, human rights activists and trade unionists. However, most violations occurred away from areas of conflict. In particular, the document generally did not take into account the nature of the war in the Congo, for which the responsibility is assigned to the illegal invasion of the country by Rwanda and Uganda. However, these factors were not taken into account at Amnesty International.

The government also pointed out that the organization ignores the principle that governments have the right to take increased security measures. In addition, human rights defenders Amnesty International did not document human rights violations in areas that were occupied by rebels - that is, in almost a third of the country.

1991: False legitimization of the US war in Iraq

Amnesty International reports are believed to have been used to legitimize the US war in the Persian Gulf. The organization distributed the story of a Kuwaiti woman, which was known to the US Congress only by the name of Nayira. She said that when Iraq invaded Kuwait, she stayed to volunteer at a local hospital and saw Iraqi soldiers steal incubators with children and leave them to freeze to death.

Amnesty International confirmed this story, somewhat exaggerating the number of dead children to more than 300, which in principle exceeded the number of incubators available in all city hospitals in the country.

Nayira's testimony aired on ABC's Nightline and NBC Nightly News, and had an audience of 35 million to 53 million Americans at the time. Subsequently, US senators repeatedly cited Nayira's testimony in their speeches in support of the use of military force. President George W. Bush himself repeated the story at least ten times in the weeks that followed.

After the war ended, it turned out that the woman was lying, the story was invented, and her name was not given, since her father was a delegate from the government of Kuwait to the same hearings in the American Congress.