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Politics : Sharks in the Septic Tank -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Greg or e who wrote (5874)	2/16/2001 2:26:28 AM
From: E	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 82486

Greg, you write "Amnesty international doesn't come off looking too great either. " But this is what the article said about that AI person's comment: The human rights organization Amnesty International said while it did not have a position of the "one-child policy" itself, it was opposed to the resulting human rights violations. "We believe the Chinese government should take action to ensure that its family planning officials do not commit human rights violations by making women have abortions, even physically detaining them to have abortions," said Amnesty's Isabel Kelly. From the AI website, just now: China in 2000 annual report View all China documents (please note this index may be large and take a while to download) AI-index: ASA 17/003/2001 12/02/2001 Embargoed for : 12/02/2001 16:00 GMT China: Extensive use of torture - from police to tax collectors to birth control officials When officials from a township birth control office got a hold of Zhou Jiangxiong in May 1998, they hung him upside down, repeatedly whipped and beat him with wooden clubs, burned him with cigarette butts, branded him with soldering irons, and ripped his genitals off. The 30-year-old farmer from Hunan province was tortured to death because the officials were trying to make him reveal the whereabouts of his wife, suspected of being pregnant without permission.... Here is what you don't understand, Greg. Amnesty International has what's called a "mandate." This mandate has been changed by the membership rather little since it was written by AI's founders. Having a mandate simply shows that the organization, unlike Superman, recognizes that it can not fight ALL INJUSTICE. To operate effectively, it narrows its focus to those agreed-upon issues within its mandate. Let me give you an historical example: AI's mandate regarding "Prisoners of Conscience" limits those receiving that particular label to those who have "neither used nor advocated violence." Now, many AI people believe that there are occasions on which violence is warranted. Many believed, for example, that Nelson Mandela was a Prisoner of Conscience-- POC. He was, too, in the standard sense. I believe that. But... while the mandate of AI is to work for fair and prompt trials for ALL prisoners, for no torture or killing of any prisoner... it is to designate as POC's ONLY those who have neither used nor advocated violence. Which Nelson Madela had done. So AI got a lot of flack for not violating its mandate on that issue. Because people unsophisticated in the way the world works believe that a "good" organization should work for all "good." But an effective organization focuses on a few, well-defined, widely agreed on, egregious causes and casts a wide net to get as many people who are in agreement about those issues to work together on them. For AI to say "We can not oppose a "one-child policy" per se -- but any violations of our mandate (see the hideous example above) we can and do oppose," is consistent, is responsible, and is effective. BTW -- remember that AI has much overlapping membership with other groups. I was the head of a county AI chapter for over two years, and we had in our group two nuns and some Catholic members who were active in right-to-life groups, and also some NARAL members. I forbade promotions of other meetings at ours. Because... we were all there to work as effectively as possible on our mandate. So the nuns and the pro-choicers worked together, not on "all good," (there could be no agreement on what that meant) but on the "good" as articulated in our mandate; and our group accomplished absolutely wonderful things.