Gita Sahgal’s accusations were published in today’s Sunday Times, blowing the whistle on Amnesty’s unholy alliance with Moazzam Begg.
Martin Bright praised Sahgal for her bravery but also warned darkly of the repercussions she would suffer for taking a stand against the consensus of the “human rights community”:
It is difficult to make a stand on these issues and keep one’s friends on the left and in the human rights community, so I take my hat off to Gita. I have often discussed with her how best to raise these issues and she has been deeply frustrated by the way the British liberal intelligentsia gives house-room to right-wing Islamists.
She was one of the first people in Britain to warn of the dangers of the politics of Jamaat-i-Islami, the south Asian blood-brothers of the Muslim Brotherhood. She was instrumental in the making of a Channel 4 documentary on alleged Bangladeshi war criminals who had found safe haven in Britain (I can give you no further detail because the Spectator will get an immediate letter from Carter-Ruck solicitors who are representing a key individual in the film).
Sure enough, Amnesty has now suspended Gita Sahgal as noted on Martin Bright’s blog.
AI have issued this statement on its website:
One of those who was released without charge, and has never been convicted of terrorist-related offences, is Moazzam Begg. Following his release in 2005, Amnesty International met him to discuss his experiences. Moazzam Begg’s account is consistent with the testimony of other detainees about human rights violations. He has since spoken at Amnesty International events describing his experiences and highlighting the plight of detainees who remain in Guantánamo and the need for accountability for human rights violations.
A European tour is currently underway as part of a campaign to encourage more EU countries to accept former Guantánamo detainees.
The tour was initiated by Reprieve and the Centre for Constitutional Rights but a number of Amnesty International national sections are hosting the tour in different European countries.
Tomorrow, Moazzam Begg will speaking alongside Amnesty International, speaking specifically on behalf of those detainees in need of protection in a third country.
Today, Amnesty International is being criticised for speaking alongside him and for being “soft” on the Taleban, when our record is one of unreserved opposition to their abuses over the years.
Interestingly, the US and other governments that have violated human rights standards in the name of countering terrorism justify those violations by saying that our security can only be protected by violating the rights of others. Mr Begg is one of the people that the US government defined as “other.”
But there is no place for the “other” in human rights because to argue that some people are more ‘deserving’ than others of having their rights protected is to argue that some beings are less than human.
We understand why we are ethically obliged to take a human rights position against illegal detention, torture and renditions. What we don’t understand, and conspicuously absent in that statement, is how in doing so Amnesty International justifies partnering with supporters of Jihadi terrorism.
24 Comments
I well recall AI when it aligned itself with the Apartheid regime in SA’ s expressed posiiton: demanding that Nelson Mandela and other ANC political prisoners renounce violence before they could be released. I thought AI were duplicitous twerps then – and I still do.
One thing you can say about Mandela and violence is that they remained in practice opposed to acts of terrorism – and particularly those which targeted civilians.
Umkhonto we Sizwe was the ANC’s military wing. They mostly sabotaged things, rather than bombing places where there would be casualties. Their big operation was Magoo’s Bar, where SA police were known to hang out. They killed civilians.
Internally, it is well known that the ANC leadership were horrified by this bombing, and the perpetrators had to go before the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, along with the Apartheid murderers and torturers.
You wouldn’t get that from the Taliban. Or their supporters.
It appears the British Jihad industry’s been put into full damage-limitation mode this morning – Ridley’s also posting furiously indignant counter-spin at the Speccy – two so far…
David T
Or Israel and its.
I think women and non-Jewish people fair better in Israel than women and Jews do in Taliban Afghanistan, don’t you?
A Prize will be awarded for the first correct answer drawn out of a hat for this question:
Q. Who said this:
There is now, apparently, only a single Afghan Jew living in Afghanistan.
I met Afghan Jews in Tajikistan a few years ago, whose ancestors had fled the anti-Semitic pogroms in Afghanistan in the 1870s. They stood in the same crowd as me as we watched the Tajik authorities demolish the Old Synagogue in Dushanbe, thus depriving the ancient Tajik Jewish community of its last place of worship.
http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/vjw/Afghanistan.html
Faisal thanks for proving my point about Israel’s supporters
abdullah, I think you’ll find I disproved it.
http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/vjw/Tajikistan.html
“Sketchy” in Tajik governmental terms means “non-existent”.
Interesting to see Abu Faris’ condemnation of the Tajik government for closing a synanagogue. Not a word of condemnation for the self-same dictatorship slaughtering hundreds of thousands of Muslims who dared oppose it.
What an interesting level of priorities you have.
Faisal,
I know, I know!
Moazzem Begg in his deranged article “Jihad and Terrorism”, which appeared on the Cagedprisoners website, 15/07/2008, in footnote 15.
Begg goes on to elevate the status of jihad, in typical Islamist fashion, concluding that jihad is
which, of course, it most certainly is not.
http://www.cageprisoners.com/articles.php?id=25420
Yvonne Ridley’s response
Abdullah,
The fact that you know absolutely nothing of the Tajik government, nor of its origins in the Tajik Civil War is apparent. It might enlighten you to learn that the Tajik government includes elements of the former so-called Islamic opposition in Tajikistan.
A dear Tajik friend of mine, who lived through the Tajik civil war (including watching her father being used as sniper “bait” after he had been mortally shot on the streets outside her tower block in Dushnabe), described the difference between the “Islamic” and non-Islamic warlord bands that plagued the country in the early ’90s as follows:
Most Tajiks are not especially religious (at least not in your bigoted terms) – it must really bug you that they have repeatedly rejected Islamism as an option for their future.
Yeah, we already have had Yvonne “Stockholm Syndrome” Ridley scrawling with her big cyber crayons all over our site, Abdullah.
Funny you missed it.
Abu Faris
ROFLMAO. Abu “Front Page” Faris thinks Tajikstans elections are free and fair. LOL
And your implication that religious Muslims WOULD be interested in “Islamism” is an interesting confession
I made no such claim, you moron. Show me where I did. You are reaching.
In fact, I contributed background information countering the OSCE claims that the last Tajik parliamentary and presidential elections were fair. Opposition to the regime in Dushanbe is largely from democrats in Tajikistan – who make it perfectly clear that they want no truck with the Taliban warlords and other clerical fascist hyenas who hang about the edges of Tajik civil society (and are heavily involved in the heroin trade – very Islamic!).
Actually, I made exactly the opposite implication. Are you on drugs, or can you simply not read?
Abdullah,
An interesting implication actually is your equation of “Islamist” with “religious Muslims”.
You need to get out more, sunbeam.
Abu Faris 2.14pm
Abu Faris 1.55pm
Idiot
Abu Faris, you are the only answer in the hat and YOU ARE RIGHT!
An MP3 of “No Terrorist” by Dub Scientist is making its way to you now!
Illiterate.
Faisal,
Many thanks – I look forward to blasting it out this evening!
Abdullah,
I am not sure how you find a discrepancy between the quotes you make of my comments above – other than one conjured up in your mind in a desperate attempt to try to prove what ever deranged point you are trying to make.
Can I suggest adult literacy lessons?
Just to nail the point home, for the sake of challenged Abdullah:
Meaning: if they are religious, this does not mean that they are Islamists.
This point is then taken up when I suggest that you imply an equation between Islamism and Muslim religiosity.
I fail to see the contradiction. I am sure others will be puzzled too.
You might as well drop it now, Abdullah – as you really do not want to make yourself look any more ridiculous than you have already achieved; and secondly, because I really do hate to see people engaging in such blatant self-harm.