From: MLuftmensch-AT-hubcap.mlnet.com (Michael Luftmensch)
To: marxism-digest-AT-jefferson.village.virginia.edu
Subject: re-amnesty
Date: 16 Mar 1996 02:44:49 GMT


re-amnesty

Chris wrote:

I will take this opportunity to share with you and the l'st what I 
undertook to report back on - the reply from Amnesty International
to my letter of concern about the superficiality of their reporting 
of an alleged massacre of Ashaninka's in 1993, which appeared not to 
have taken elementary precautions to screen the report against 
possibilities that the massacre was done by government forces.

Well, I have had no effective reply over 4 weeks. I have been passed 
>from one person to another. I really do not know what to make of this.
Internet is not well designed to ensure accountability, and trying
to look at it from their point of view, my letter perhaps would have
taken two or three hours work to respond to authoritatively. 
But also I have just had a report that ai.general has been closed for
some reason, so there may be some internal reorganisation. On the 
other hand I do not think it puts Amnesty International in the best of 
lights. I will update the l'st if I get anything more.


*
luftmensch: 

I was drawn to the thread on account of the AI reports. A bit less than 
ten years ago, I experienced AI first hand. I was involved in a 
Israeli-Palestinian alternative information centre, that was much 
concerned with political prisoners. At some point in the mid-eighties, 
an AI official began to include us on the itinerary. 

There were two or three occasions when I helped *brief AI on 
the situation.* This was something of a formality, owing to AI's 
policy on *terrorism*. The most that could be expected was that 
AI would hold the defence minister and interior minister 
internationally accountable for the inhuman conditions in the 
prisons. It was not until after a scandal in 1986/7 in the secret 
police, the Shin Bet, that the interrogation methods of the 
authorities came under international scrutiny. 

In 1987, two events brought me into closer contact with AI. One, 
the arrest and prosecution of Mordechai Vanunu, and two, the centre 
in which I was working was raided and closed down under the 
emergency defence regulations - one of the legacies of British 
Mandate Palestine - for six months. The authorities alleged that 
the centre was a terrorist front & owing to the regulations, they 
were not required to prove it in court. 

In the summer of that year, I went to London on behalf of the centre. 
I was not particularly suited for that role, but it was thrust upon me, as
the 
spokesperson was incarcerated & I could speak English. Fortunately, 
I went together with a journalist who was being prosecuted with a 
dozen others for defying the ban on Israelis meeting with the PLO. 
(This was in the mid-eighties.)

Among the stops on our itinerary was the Amnesty International 
headquarters. This was something of a formality, but we both
 wanted to exploit it on behalf of Mordechai Vanunu. 

Would AI adopt Vanunu as a prisoner of conscience?

The answer was no, they would not, but they would continue to 
remonstrate to the Israeli authorities about his trial and prison conditions.


This is not what we desired, but AI has persevered over the years in taking 
the Israeli government to task over the barbaric conditions in which 
Vanunu is being held. Although they have never formally adopted 
Vanunu as a prisoner of conscience, owing to his having signed a 
confidentiality oath, they now demand his unconditional release. 

AI, I expect, processed both our cases in the usual manner. It seemed a large
and bureaucratic organization. Hence, I am not surprised by the response you
report.

I think it will take much more than an email message to get a response 
on the matter you raised. 

I do think it is important. Being able to cite AI reports was helpful to 
both of us when we spoke to British journalists and various interested 
parties, i.e., in contributing to the climate of international public
opinion. The authorities eventually had to back down on both cases - but it
took years 
& bad times for many, and did not come as a direct result of AI's
intervention. 

During the intifada I once again  saw - at much greater remove - that AI 
was helping to sensitize international public opinion - nebulous as that 
may be - to the brutality of Israeli repression in the occupied territories. 

I am aware of AI's biases and narrow idea of human rights, and the
organization's attraction to *stars*. But I am also aware of the role AI can
play in international solidarity. 

In regard to the massacre of the Ashaninka, I assume that AI was 
relying on Peruvian sources. The type of screening you speak of calls for an
independent  inquiry into the dirty war waged by the Fujimori regime. 

On 30 June 1995, AI issued a statement condemning the second impunity law. 

AI stated: 

"This week's approval by the Peruvian Congress of a new law
preventing the judiciary from deciding on the legality or
applicability of the recently promulgated amnesty law, is
condemned by Amnesty International as a dismaying step backwards
and a further damaging blow to the independence of the judiciary
in Peru.   

"Peru's amnesty law, which came into effect on 16 June 1995,
is in fact an impunity law that closes all investigations and
judicial proceedings linked to past human rights violations and
renders ineffective the few court sentences handed down for such
crimes."

The prospects of *getting to the bottom* of the Ashashinka massacre 
seem slight. There is, however, the wider issue, namely, the dirty war.

The denunciations of AI on this l*st alerted me to the fact that what was
under discussion was not international solidarity but ideological conformity.


in international solidarity, 

luftmensch



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