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Pastimes : Let's Talk About Our Feelings!!! -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Grainne who wrote (90491)	12/3/2004 8:27:32 AM
From: Jagfan	Respond to of 108807

Criticism of Amnesty International Some critics have noted that in nations that have relatively open and free societies, in which political opposition and freedom of speech are comparatively protected, AI has greater opportunity to compile and report on allegations of human rights abuse. In nations where international human rights monitors are completely banned, for example, or in which the press and individual speech critical of the government are nonexistent or heavily censored, it is relatively difficult for AI to report on the same. This potential tendency to over-report allegations of human rights abuse in nations that are comparatively lessor violators of human rights has been called "Moynihan's Law," after the late American Senator and former Ambassador to the United Nations Daniel Patrick Moynihan, who is said to have stated that at the United Nations, the number of complaints about a nation's violation of human rights is inversely proportional to their actual violation of human rights. Critics who allege AI suffers from this problem point out what they describe as a disproportionate focus on allegations of human rights violations in for example Israel, when compared with North Korea or Cambodia. One such example is the allegation of NGO Monitor, a publication of the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs, which noted that between 2001 and 2004 AI issued 52 reports on the human rights abuses in the Sudan, which has claimed tens of thousands of lives through starvation and ethnic violence, as well as creating 1.2 million refugees (according to the World Health Organization), while AI concurrently issued 192 reports on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.[1] (http://www.ngo-monitor.org/editions/v2n10/v2n10-4.htm) Conservative commentators in various publications have alleged that AI's reporting reflects ideological bias toward a liberal political viewpoint in opposition to the foreign policy of the United States. To support this they point to AI's treatment of the human rights implications of the U.S.-led war in Iraq. Critics of AI have suggested that AI's concern for the human rights implications of this war disproportionately criticize the effects of U.S. military action while in comparison they were less vociferous about the abuses of the Hussein regime and the human rights implications of the continued rule of this government. en.wikipedia.org

To: Grainne who wrote (90491)	12/3/2004 8:29:38 AM
From: Jagfan	Respond to of 108807

Calling It Like They See It Amnesty International looks at the war in Iraq and sees atrocities on both sides. Of course some atrocities are worse than others . . . by Jonathan V. Last LAST SUNDAY on "Meet the Press," Tim Russert confronted Iraq's ambassador to the United Nations, Mohammed Al-Douri, with evidence of Iraqi human-rights abuses documented by Amnesty International. Asked for comment, Al-Douri demurred, saying, "Amnesty International is not reliable for me. . . . They are a part of the war propaganda of United States and Britain. They are not neutral so I cannot accept their witnesses, what they are saying." Whatever you think of Al-Douri's comments, he's right about one thing: Amnesty International certainly isn't neutral. They are quite biased--against the United States. A visit to Amnesty International USA's website reveals this astonishing headline: "Iraq: Fear of War Crimes By Both Sides." The accompanying March 26 press release spends five paragraphs castigating coalition forces for "war crimes" on account of the U.S. effort to take Iraq's state-run television station off the air. Claudio Cordone, a senior director for international law at Amnesty International, says, "The bombing of a television station simply because it is being used for purposes of propaganda is unacceptable." One supposes that reasonable people could disagree on whether or not Iraqi TV constituted a real threat and deserved to be targeted. But Amnesty International goes further. Cordone accuses the United States of accepting the doctrine of "total war." This despite mountains of evidence that coalition commanders have planned every single aspect of the war around the pillar of protecting civilians. You would think that if bombing Iraqi TV gets Cordone that fired up, he would be in a state of apoplexy about what the Iraqi military has done: shooting and hanging civilians; using hospitals, mosques, and homes to hide soldiers; executing and abusing prisoners of war. You would, of course, be wrong. After five paragraphs excoriating the United States, Amnesty International spends exactly four sentences on Saddam Hussein's regime. Their denunciation reads in full: Iraqi forces are reported to have deliberately shelled civilians in Basra and to placing [sic] military objectives in close proximity to civilians and civilian objects. There have also been reports of Iraqis dressed in civilian clothes in order to allow surprise attacks on coalition troops. weeklystandard.com