{"id":454,"date":"2010-02-06T23:13:29","date_gmt":"2010-02-06T23:13:29","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/ondrocks2000.com\/standpoint\/2010\/02\/06\/amnesty-official-questions-partnership-with-begg\/"},"modified":"2010-02-06T23:13:29","modified_gmt":"2010-02-06T23:13:29","slug":"amnesty-official-questions-partnership-with-begg","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/ondrocks2000.com\/standpoint\/2010\/02\/06\/amnesty-official-questions-partnership-with-begg\/","title":{"rendered":"Amnesty Official Questions Partnership with Begg"},"content":{"rendered":"

ALEXANDER MELEAGROU-HITCHENS<\/strong><\/p>\n

For some years, CagePrisoners (CP)\u00a0has enjoyed a very useful relationship with Amnesty International.\u00a0 The Sunday Times<\/em> has an exclusive story<\/a> about one of Amnesty\u2019s senior official raising serious concerns about the group\u2019s \u2018jihadi\u2019 nature.<\/p>\n

In 2007, Amnesty signed CP<\/a> up as research partners and\u00a0in early January sponsored a CP event<\/a> in Parliament.\u00a0 For more on CP extremism see here<\/a>, here<\/a> and here<\/a>.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

According to the story<\/a>:<\/p>\n

\n

A SENIOR official at Amnesty International has accused the charity of putting the human rights of Al-Qaeda terror suspects above those of their victims.<\/p>\n

Gita Sahgal, head of the gender unit at Amnesty\u2019s international secretariat, believes that collaborating with Moazzam Begg, a former British inmate at Guantanamo Bay, \u201cfundamentally damages\u201d the organisation\u2019s reputation.<\/p>\n

In an email sent to Amnesty\u2019s top bosses, she suggests the charity has mistakenly allied itself with Begg and his \u201cjihadi\u201d group, Cageprisoners, out of fear of being branded racist and Islamophobic.<\/p>\n

Sahgal describes Begg as \u201cBritain\u2019s most famous supporter of the Taliban\u201d. He has championed the rights of jailed Al-Qaeda members and hate preachers, including Anwar al-Awlaki, the alleged spiritual mentor of the Christmas Day Detroit plane bomber.<\/p>\n

Amnesty\u2019s work with Cageprisoners took it to Downing Street last month to demand the closure of Guantanamo Bay. Begg has also embarked on a European tour, hosted by Amnesty, urging countries to offer safe haven to Guantanamo detainees. This is despite concerns about former inmates returning to terrorism.<\/p>\n

Sahgal, who has researched religious fundamentalism for 20 years, has decided to go public because she feels Amnesty has ignored her warnings for the past two years about the involvement of Begg in the charity\u2019s Counter Terror With Justice campaign.<\/p>\n

\u201cI believe the campaign fundamentally damages Amnesty International\u2019s integrity and, more importantly, constitutes a threat to human rights,\u201d Sahgal wrote in an email to the organisation\u2019s leaders on January 30. \u201cTo be appearing on platforms with Britain\u2019s most famous supporter of the Taliban, whom we treat as a human rights defender, is a gross error of judgment.\u201d<\/p>\n

Amnesty is the world\u2019s biggest human rights organisation with 2.2m members and a galaxy of celebrity supporters, including Bono, John Cleese, Yoko Ono, Al Pacino and Sinead O\u2019Connor. Its decision to work with Begg poses liberal backers with a moral dilemma and raises questions about the direction in which Amnesty has travelled since it was set up in 1961 to support \u201cprisoners of conscience\u201d.<\/p>\n

\u201cAs a former Guantanamo detainee it was legitimate to hear his experiences, but as a supporter of the Taliban it was absolutely wrong to legitimise him as a partner,\u201d Sahgal told The Sunday Times.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

<\/i><\/a><\/i><\/a><\/i><\/a><\/i><\/a><\/i><\/a><\/p>\n

<\/h3>\n

No related posts.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

For some years, CagePrisoners (CP) has enjoyed a very useful relationship with Amnesty International. The Sunday Times has an exclusive story about one of Amnesty’s senior official raising serious concerns about the group’s ‘jihadi’ nature.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":6694,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-454","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ondrocks2000.com\/standpoint\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/454","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/ondrocks2000.com\/standpoint\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/ondrocks2000.com\/standpoint\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ondrocks2000.com\/standpoint\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ondrocks2000.com\/standpoint\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=454"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/ondrocks2000.com\/standpoint\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/454\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ondrocks2000.com\/standpoint\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/6694"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ondrocks2000.com\/standpoint\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=454"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ondrocks2000.com\/standpoint\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=454"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ondrocks2000.com\/standpoint\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=454"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}