Category Archives: Human Rights

Amnesty International has raised awareness by calling for an immediate investigation into the human rights violations and state-sponsored violence in the Chittagong Hill Tracts (CHT) in Bangladesh.

Amnesty International calls on the government of Bangladesh to:

Carry out prompt, impartial, and independent investigation into these attacks and killings to identify individuals who set houses on fire and army personnel who may have used excessive force, and bring those responsible to justice in a fair trial without resort to the death penalty;
Ensure that the detainees have access to lawyers of their own choice, can challenge the legality of their detention, have access to family visits and medical treatment, and are not at risk of torture;
Compensate the victims and survivors of the attacks, rehabilitate the people who have lost their homes and belonging and provide them with medical treatment for their injuries;
Allow independent observers to visit the sites of the violence, and ensure the security of the Jumma indigenous people in the Chittagong Hill Tracts.

This is a cross-post of an article by the estimable Lucy Lips from Harry’s Place

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Michael Weiss writes (subscription required) in the Wall Street Journal:

Mr. Begg does not hide his own Islamist convictions. In his memoir, “Enemy Combatant,” he recalls his interrogation at Guantanamo, in which he credits his emigration to Afghanistan to his desire “to live in an Islamic state—one that was free from the corruption and despotism of the rest of the Muslim world.” The Taliban, Mr. Begg insists in his book, were “better than anything Afghanistan has had in the past twenty-five years.” Elsewhere he has cited and sold the works of the “charismatic scholar” Sheikh Abdullah Azzam, erstwhile mentor to Osama bin Laden.

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Amnesty continues to defend its affiliation with Mr. Begg and Cageprisoners. Last week, on a Canadian radio program, Amnesty’s interim Secretary General Claudio Cordone described Mr. Begg’s politics as benign, saying there was so far no evidence to suggest that the organization should severe ties with him.

This is an interesting comment from “Mircea” who blogs at Just Speculations, who was at first willing to reject Gita Sahgal’s claims regarding Cageprisoners and Amnesty’s decision to partner with them, not because the accusations lacked veracity but because some people, or often a single person, they loathed had chosen to publicly champion Sahgal, because, of course, their concerns for human rights were highly suspect. In this writer’s case, the bête noire happens to be the “evil” Salman Rushdie:

My reaction, especially after seeing Salman Rushdie’s spirited defence of Sahgal, was suspicion. I remember seeing Rushdie speak ca. 2004, just as my own views on the invasion of Iraq were changing, and realising with some chagrin that he had become in some important ways an apologist for neo-conservative neo-imperialism. But is Sahgal another Ayaan Hirsi Ali, an “establishment feminist” championed by the “enlightened” anti-Muslim literati, hiding a sinister agenda? A glance at the petition supporting her should dispel such doubts:
http://www.human-rights-for-all.org/spip.php?article15

A great interview of Gita by DNAIndia:

Given your experience with Amnesty after you tried to red flag its association with Begg, what are your concerns about the links between human rights groups such as Amnesty and radical groups such as Cageprisoners?

I’m afraid it is beginning to show that some human rights organisations have remained wilfully ignorant of the real agendas of a group like Cageprisoners. The reasons for this are still quite mysterious. One clear reason is that they want to promote an image of a ‘perfect victim’. If they did any research into that person’s ideology, or their institutional links with other jihadis, that would sully the idea of their standard bearer as being perfectly innocent. It might show that they are promoting violence and discrimination. That is why it is necessary to trash research into it as ‘innuendo and baseless allegations’. However, Amnesty International’s extensive PR for Begg still seems quite extraordinary. He is the director of an organisation and well able to defend himself.

Pahari demonstration against killings by Bengali-settlers

Saturday’s reports of the murders of five Pahari, an indigenous ethnic minority in the Chittagong Hill Tracts, arrived on Amar Ekushey, a national holiday to commemorate the killing of several patriots who fought their Pakistani overlords in 1952, to make Bengali the national language of East Pakistan. It is neither convenient nor easy for Muslim-majority Bangladesh to come face to face with the the contradiction of being both the victim of suppression and discovering that it has become a nation which brutally represses its own ethnic minorities.

Several hundred people, mostly members of the Pahari community gathered in Dhaka, effectively boycotting a national holiday, to protest the deaths of 200 Paharis, the destruction of hundreds of home, a Buddhist temple burnt and gutted and more than 20 people still missing, possibly dead. As Brian Palmer notes:

Here is the statement by Salman Rushdie in support of Gita Sahgal and against the Amnesty/Cagepisoners partnership:

Amnesty International has done its reputation incalculable damage by allying itself with Moazzam Begg and his group Cageprisoners, and holding them up as human rights advocates. It looks very much as if Amnesty’s leadership is suffering from a kind of moral bankruptcy, and has lost the ability to distinguish right from wrong. It has greatly compounded its error by suspending the redoubtable Gita Sahgal for the crime of going public with her concerns.

Another report in the Sunday Times covers Rushdie’s statement, with this disclaimer from Kate Allen, director of Amnesty UK:

Kate Allen, director of Amnesty UK, said it took criticism “seriously” but would continue to press for “universal respect” for human rights.

Gita Sahgal was on the Canadian radio show, The Current, yesterday discussing Moazzam Begg and Cageprisoners. Her boss, Claudio Cordone, Interim Secretary General at AI, was also on the programme.

“If a great organisation lies to itself, can it represent the truth of others?”

Listen here.