Criticism of Amnesty International

Criticism of Amnesty International includes claims of selection bias, as well as ideology and foreign policy biases. Various governments criticised by Amnesty International have in turn criticised the organization, complaining about what they assert constituted one-sided reporting.

Separate to its human rights reporting, Amnesty has been criticised for the high salaries of some of its staff, as well as its workplace environment, including the issue of institutional discrimination within the organization.

Criticism by country

Allegations of pro-Western bias

This includes non-Western governments claiming Amnesty is ideologically biased against them, such as those of the Democratic Republic of the Congo, the People's Republic of China, Vietnam, and Russia who have criticised Amnesty International for what they assert constituted one-sided reporting or a failure to treat threats to security as a mitigating factor. The actions of these governments—and of other governments critical of Amnesty International—have been the subject of human rights concerns voiced by Amnesty.

Allegations of anti-Western bias

United States

In 2005, Amnesty International claimed that the United States was a human rights offender. The White House rejected these allegations, stating that they were unsupported by facts.

Russian dissident Pavel Litvinov has said of AI's criticism of the US: "[B]y using hyperbole and muddling the difference between repressive regimes and the imperfections of democracy, Amnesty's spokesmen put its authority at risk. U.S. human rights violations seem almost trifling in comparison with those committed by Cuba, North Korea, Pakistan or Saudi Arabia."

Guantánamo Bay comments

Protest against human rights violation at Guantánamo Bay prison (June 2006)

In the foreword to Amnesty International's Report 2005, the Secretary General, Irene Khan, referred to the Guantánamo Bay prison as "the gulag of our times, entrenching the practice of arbitrary and indefinite detention in violation of international law. Trials by military commissions have made a mockery of justice and due process." In the subsequent press conference, she added

"If Guantanamo evokes images of Soviet repression, 'ghost detainees' – or the incommunicado detention of unregistered detainees – bring back the practice of 'disappearances' so popular with Latin American dictators in the past. According to US official sources there could be over 100 ghost detainees held by the US. In 2004, thousands of people were held by the US in Iraq, hundreds in Afghanistan, and undisclosed numbers in undisclosed locations. AI is calling on the US Administration to close Guantanamo and disclose the rest".

Former U.S. Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld believed the comments were "reprehensible", Vice President Dick Cheney said he was "offended", and President Bush said he believed the report was "absurd". The Washington Post editorialized that "lately the organization has tended to save its most vitriolic condemnations not for the world's dictators but for the United States." The human rights organization Human Rights Watch also criticised the Bush administration over the camp in its 2003 world report, stating: "Washington has ignored human rights standards in its own treatment of terrorism suspects."

Edmund McWilliams, a retired senior US Foreign Service Officer who monitored Soviet and Vietnamese abuse of prisoners in their "gulags", defended Amnesty International's comparison. "I note that abuses that I reported on in those inhumane systems parallel abuses reported in Guantanamo, at the Bagram air base in Afghanistan and at the Abu Ghraib prison: prisoners suspended from the ceiling and beaten to death; widespread 'waterboarding'; prisoners 'disappeared' to preclude monitoring by the International Committee of the Red Cross — and all with almost no senior-level accountability."

Pavel Litvinov, a human rights activist and former Soviet-era "gulag" prisoner, criticised the analogy saying, "By any standard, Guantanamo and similar American-run prisons elsewhere do not resemble, in their conditions of detention or their scale, the concentration camp system that was at the core of a totalitarian communist system."

John Podhoretz, writing in the New York Post on the difference between Guantanamo and a Soviet gulag, said, "Maybe the people who work at Amnesty International really do think that the imprisonment of 600 certain or suspected terrorists is tantamount to the imprisonment of 25 million slaves. The case of Amnesty International proves that well-meaning people can make morality their life's work and still be little more than moral idiots."

William F. Schulz, executive director of Amnesty International USA, defended the statement, saying, "What is 'absurd' is President Bush's attempt to deny the deliberate policies of his administration." and "What is 'absurd' and indeed outrageous is the Bush administration's failure to undertake a full independent investigation." Secretary General Irene Khan also responded saying, "The administration's response has been that our report is absurd, that our allegations have no basis, and our answer is very simple: if that is so, open up these detention centres, allow us and others to visit them."

Since the U.S. administration originally claimed that these prisoners were not entitled to the protections of the Geneva Conventions, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled against this interpretation in 2006. Following this, on 7 July 2006, the Department of Defense issued an internal memo stating that prisoners will in the future be entitled to protection under the Geneva Conventions.

In 2010, Gita Sahgal, an Amnesty senior official, publicly condemned the organization for its collaboration with former Guantanamo detainee Moazzam Begg of Cageprisoners. In a letter to Amnesty's leadership, she wrote: "To be appearing on platforms with Britain's most famous supporter of the Taliban, whom we treat as a human rights defender, is a gross error of judgment." She warned that it "constitutes a threat to human rights". Begg has toured Europe with Amnesty officials. In 2010, Claudio Cordone asserted that Begg's views on holding talks with the Taliban or the role of jihad in self-defence were not antithetical to human rights, even though he may disagree with them. Cordone's assertion was criticised by Amrita Chhachhi, Sara Hossain, and Sunila Abeysekera who said that "defensive jihad" or "defence of religion" is often used as an excuse to violate human rights by Muslim, Christian and Hindu extremists.

Amnesty International's abortion policies

Since 2020, Amnesty International’s policy on abortion calls for full decriminalization of abortion and universal access to safe abortions for all people who need them.

In April 2007, Amnesty International changed its neutral stance on abortion to supporting access to abortion in cases of rape and incest, and when the life or the health of the mother might be threatened. In 2007, Amnesty's official policy was that they "do not promote abortion as a universal right" but "support the decriminalisation of abortion". According to deputy secretary general Kate Gilmore, the debate over the change was difficult, but eventually the overwhelming majority of national Amnesty chapters supported the change. The change was opposed by several organizations, notably by senior figures in the Catholic Church, traditionally a strong supporter of Amnesty International, and a group of US legislators. Amnesty spokeswoman Suzanne Trimel estimated that a "handful, probably less than 200" of over 400,000 members had quit over the issue.

The Catholic Church's Pontifical Council for Justice and Peace in June 2007 issued a statement urging Catholics not to donate to Amnesty because of its abortion stance. Cardinal Renato Martino said that abortion was murder, as was "to justify it selectively, in the event of rape, that is to define an innocent child in the belly of its mother as an enemy, as 'something one can destroy'". In an interview with the National Catholic Register, the Cardinal said he believed that "if in fact Amnesty International persists in this course of action, individuals and Catholic organizations must withdraw their support, because, in deciding to promote abortion rights, AI has betrayed its mission." The Church withdrew funding globally for Amnesty, and churches in various locations took other steps to sever their ties with the group.

Decriminalisation of sex work

See also: Decriminalization of sex work

Since 2016, Amnesty International’s policy calls for the decriminalization of all aspects of consensual adult sex work. This is based on evidence and the real-life experience of sex workers themselves that criminalization makes them less safe.

In June 2013, confusion arose when a local chapter of Amnesty UK called Paisley Branch endorsed a Scottish bill that sought to criminalise sex work. Amnesty UK had its name removed from the list of supporters of the bill, stating that it ran contrary to its international policy not to criminalise 'the sex worker herself or himself' nor 'consensual sex between adults', and 'no conflating trafficking and sex work'. The issue forced Amnesty International to clarify its position on the legal status of sex work.

When a draft copy of the policy appeared in early 2014, several abolitionist feminists and former sex workers condemned the proposal.

On 7 July 2015 an updated draft was released to Amnesty International members. The New York Times reported that, although 'some complain[ed] that it was conceived at Amnesty's headquarters in London', 'various versions have been reviewed by the organization's national chapters, and a consensus emerged supporting decriminalization for just the prostitutes, according to minutes of organizational meetings.' The July 2015 draft policy was the result of two years of research and consultations with its members, and proposed to decriminalise both sellers and buyers of sex; it was scheduled to be put to a vote by about 500 Amnesty delegates from more than 80 countries at an Amnesty International conference in Dublin in August 2015. The proposal was criticised by abolitionist feminist organisations, including The Coalition Against Trafficking of Women (CATW), who published an open letter signed by over 400 advocates and organisations, condemning "Amnesty's proposal to adopt a policy that calls for the decriminalization of pimps, brothel owners and buyers of sex – the pillars of a $99 billion global sex industry". Contrary to claims that decriminalisation would make prostituted people safer, CATW pointed to research which alleged that deregulation of the sex industry had produced catastrophic results in several countries: "the German government, for example, which deregulated the industry of prostitution in 2002, has found that the sex industry was not made safer for women after the enactment of its law. Instead, the explosive growth of legal brothels in Germany has triggered an increase in sex trafficking." CATW instead asked Amnesty to support the so-called Nordic model, in which sex buyers and pimps are criminalized, while prostituted people are decriminalized.

In early August 2015, a large number of NGOs published an open letter in support of the decriminalization proposal. The organizations supporting Amnesty International's position included the Global Network of Sex Work Projects (NSWP), the Committee on the Rights of Sex Workers in Europe (ICRSE), Sex Workers' Rights Advocacy Network in Central and Eastern Europe and Central Asia (SWAN), Human Rights Watch, and the Global Alliance Against Traffic in Women.

On 11 August 2015, the International Council Meeting (ICM) voted in favour of a resolution which authorised the International Board to develop and adopt the decriminalisation policy. The New York Times described it as the result of 'days of emotional debates and intense lobbying', reporting that the abolitionist camp's lobbying was particularly 'aggressive', but a majority voted for the decriminalisation proposal as 'the best way to reduce risks for prostitutes' against 'arbitrary arrest and detention, extortion and harassment, and physical and sexual violence'. After the vote, a French abolitionist group announced it would no longer work with Amnesty in the future.

In May 2016, Amnesty published its policy calling on governments around the world to decriminalise consensual sex work as the best way to improve the human rights of sex workers, and rejecting the 'Nordic model'; some abolitionist groups criticised the move.

Reports on the 2014 Gaza War

In 2015, Amnesty published the report titled "Unlawful and Deadly: Rocket and mortar attacks by Palestinian armed groups during the 2014 Gaza/Israel conflict" describing human rights violations during the 2014 Gaza War. The scholar Norman Finkelstein, in Gaza: An Inquest into Its Martyrdom writes that the report disproportionately focused on the actions of Palestinian armed groups while under-reporting and under-emphasizing the scale and context of Israeli military actions.

Finkelstein criticised the report for its heavy reliance on Israeli sources and a narrative which downplayed Israeli actions while highlighting those of the Palestinian armed groups. By focusing on the Palestinian armed groups' use of unguided rockets, Finkelstein writes that the report failed to adequately address the asymmetry of power between Israel and Gaza's armed groups and the resulting disparity in the impact of their respective offensives. As a particular example, the report describes the Hamas arsenal without citing sources for these claims:

The majority of Israel's 8.3 million people, and all 2.8 million Palestinians in the occupied West Bank... are now within range of at least some of the rockets held by Palestinian armed groups in the Gaza Strip

The report also cited the Israeli allegation that it had intercepted a vessel carrying Iranian rockets "bound for Gaza" but failed to mention that a UN expert panel found that the Iranian weapons were in fact bound for the Sudan. Finkelstein also points out that the report cited the Israeli claim that the ground invasion had been launched to "destroy the tunnel system..., particularly those with shafts discovered near residential areas located in Israel" but failed to cite the official Israeli documentation demonstrating that these tunnels had only been used for military operations.

Finkelstein also stated that the report shifted culpability of Israel's attacks on mosques, schools, hospitals, ambulances and the power plant from Israel to Hamas by citing statements from Israeli officials denying that, for example, the power plant had been intentionally targeted. Finkelstein accused Amnesty of whitewashing Israel's attacks by assuming the presence of a valid military objective when no evidence suggesting the presence of a military objective had been presented.

Finkelstein's book also questioned the report’s legal analysis, claiming that it applied international law in a biased manner that favored Israeli interpretations. He asserted that Amnesty International had adopted a distorted understanding of concepts such as proportionality and distinction which, as he argued, effectively whitewashed potential war crimes committed by the IDF.

Amnesty later published a second report titled "'Black Friday' Carnage in Rafah during 2014 Israel/Gaza conflict" on the 4 day bombing of Rafah. The report describes the attack as disproportionate, indiscriminate and accuses the Israeli military of failing to take all reasonable precautions. Finkelstein writes that the principle of proportionality is only relevant when a valid military objective is being pursued. In this case, testimonies from IDF soldiers reveal that the bombing campaign was an invocation of the Hannibal Directive in response to the kidnapping of IDF Lieutenant Hadar Goldin where the objective was to prevent his capture by ensuring he would not survive the bombing. Finkelstein claims that the targeting of Goldin in order to prevent a prisoner swap cannot be considered to be a valid military objective and thus the appropriate legal principle is the deliberate targeting of civilians and civilian objects. The report presents evidence which, according to Finkelstein, Amnesty fails to appropriately analyze from a legal perspective. For example, Finkelstein quotes from the report:

On 1 August, amid "heavy bombardment of a civilian area," a drone-launched missile killed a 20-year-old man. Multiple witnesses recalled relentless bombing, shelling, and missile attacks, while "people were running... all raising white flags."

The report observes that this attack "appeared to be indiscriminate," while Finkelstein writes that the lack of a plausible military target indicates a deliberate attack on civilians.

Israel

In 2010 Frank Johansson, the chairman of Amnesty International-Finland called Israel a nilkkimaa, a derogatory term variously translated as "scum state", "creep state" or "punk state". Johansson stood by his statement, saying that it was based on Israel's "repeated flouting of international law", and his own personal experiences with Israelis. When asked by a journalist if any other country on earth that could be described in these terms, he said that he could not think of any, although some individual "Russian officials" could be so described. According to Israeli professor Gerald M. Steinberg of NGO Monitor, a pro Israel campaign group: "Amnesty International has promoted an intense anti-Israel ideology, resulting in statements like these."

The Israel Ministry of Foreign Affairs criticised the May 2012 report on administrative detention saying it was "one sided", and "not particularly serious", and "that it seemed little more than a public relations gimmick". The Israeli embassy in London called Amnesty "ridiculous". Amnesty said that this report "is not intended to address violations of detainees' rights by the Palestinian Authority, or the Hamas de facto administration. These violations have been and will continue to be addressed separately by the organisation".

In November 2012, Amnesty UK began a disciplinary process against staffer Kristyan Benedict, Amnesty UK campaigns manager, because of a posting on his Twitter account, said to be anti-semitic, regarding three Jewish members of parliament and Operation Pillar of Defense where he wrote: "Louise Ellman, Robert Halfon and Luciana Berger walk into a bar ... each orders a round of B52s ... #Gaza". Amnesty International UK said "the matter has been referred to our internal and confidential processes." Amnesty's campaigns director Tim Hancock said, "We do not believe that humour is appropriate in the current circumstances, particularly from our own members of staff." An Amnesty International UK spokesperson later said the charity had decided that "the tweet in question was ill-advised and had the potential to be offensive and inflammatory but was not racist or antisemitic."

In the April 2015 annual Amnesty International UK AGM, delegates voted (468 votes to 461) against a motion proposing a campaign against antisemitism in the UK. The debate on the motion formed a consensus that Amnesty should fight "discrimination against all ethnic and religious groups", but were divided over the issue of an anti-racism campaign with a "single focus". The Jewish Chronicle noted that Amnesty International had previously published a report on discrimination against Muslims in Europe. NGO monitor released a statement saying the decision "highlights the hypocrisy and moral bankruptcy of what was once a leader in human rights advocacy."

In November 2016, Amnesty International conducted a second internal investigation of Benedict for comparing Israel to the Islamic state.

In April 2021, Amnesty International distanced itself from a tweet written in 2013 by its new Secretary General, Agnes Callamard, which read: ""NYT Interview of Shimon Perres [sic] where he admits that Yasser Arafat was murdered"; Amnesty responded by saying: "The tweet was written in haste and is incorrect. It does not reflect the position of Amnesty International or Agnès Callamard." Callamard herself has not deleted the tweet.

On March 11, 2022, Paul O'Brien, the Amnesty International USA Director stated at a private event: "We are opposed to the idea — and this, I think, is an existential part of the debate — that Israel should be preserved as a state for the Jewish people", while adding "Amnesty takes no political views on any question, including the right of the State of Israel to survive." He also rejected a poll that found 8 in 10 American Jews were pro-Israel, saying: "I believe my gut tells me that what Jewish people in this country want is to know that there's a sanctuary that is a safe and sustainable place that the Jews, the Jewish people can call home." On March 14, 2022, all 25 Jewish Democrats in the House of Representatives issued a rare joint statement rebuking O'Brien, saying that he "has added his name to the list of those who, across centuries, have tried to deny and usurp the Jewish people's independent agency" and "condemning this and any antisemitic attempt to deny the Jewish people control of their own destiny." On March 25, 2022, O'Brien wrote to the Jewish congressmen: "I regret representing the views of the Jewish people."

Alleged ties to Muslim Brotherhood and Islamists

In August 2015, The Times reported that Yasmin Hussein, then Amnesty's director of faith and human rights and previously its head of international advocacy and a prominent representative at the United Nations, had "undeclared private links to men alleged to be key players in a secretive network of global Islamists", including the Muslim Brotherhood and Hamas. Ms. Hussein's husband, Wael Musabbeh and a Bradford community trust, of which both Mr Musabbeh and Ms Hussein were directors, were alleged by the United Arab Emirates to be part of a financial and ideological network linking the Muslim Brotherhood to its affiliate in the UAE, which the UAE government in 2013 accused of trying to overthrow the government. Amnesty said it knew in 2013 of the alleged links between the Muslim Brotherhood, Mr Musabbeh, and the Bradford trust, but did not realize there was any connection to Ms Hussein, Musabbeh's wife of 20 years; it also challenged the fairness of the trial. Mr Musabbeh said he had no connection to the Muslim Brotherhood and was not an Islamist.

The Times also detailed instances where Hussein was alleged to have had inappropriately close relationships with the al-Qazzaz family, members of which were high-ranking government ministers in the administration of Mohammed Morsi and Muslim Brotherhood leaders at the time. In 2012, Amnesty staff alerted authorities in the organization after Ms Hussein held a private, unofficial meeting in Egypt with Adly al-Qazzaz, a ministerial education adviser blamed by a teachers' union for undertaking the "Brotherhoodisation" of Egypt's education system; shared an evening meal with his family; and stayed overnight in their home. Amnesty International's policies strictly forbid it from siding with any government or political party, and Amnesty staff are asked to declare links that may produce a real or perceived conflict of interest with its independence and impartiality. Amnesty International said that conducted an internal inquiry and told Ms Hussein that her overnight stay with the al-Qazzaz family was inappropriate. Ms Hussein apologized and denied supporting the Muslim Brotherhood, saying that "any connections are purely circumstantial".

Iranian government's protest of Amnesty's claims about the death toll in the 2019 fuel protests in Iran

On 19 November 2019, Amnesty International reported that at least 106 civilians had been "unlawfully killed" by Iranian security forces during the 2019 Iranian protests which were triggered by outrage over a sudden increase in gasoline prices. Amnesty later revised the figure upwards to 304, claiming that unarmed protesters had been deliberately massacred by the authorities who had "green lighted" a brutal crackdown to suppress dissent. The Iranian authorities, whilst acknowledging that some armed rioters had been shot by police, rejected Amnesty's figure as "sheer lies" and part of a "disinformation campaign waged against Iran from outside the country".

Judiciary spokesman, Gholamhussein Esmayeeli, countered that it was armed rioters who had actually killed many people, but that Amnesty and other organizations had nonetheless, "named people who have died in other incidents that are different from the recent riots and many of those people claimed to be killed are alive". In a thinly veiled rebuttal to Amnesty, Prosecutor-General Mohammad Montazeri retorted that, "people, who are outside the country, have no access to exact information and accurate figures. They provide different figures which are invalid." In its 16 December press release, Amnesty's research director for MENA, Philip Luther, moreover, did not acknowledge the widespread arson, vandalism and looting apparent during the protests/riots, that led to the forceful response, or the reported killing of security officers either. He also appeared to misquote supreme Leader, Ayatollah Khamenei, as stating that all those protesting in the streets were "villains". The Iranian leader had, in fact, distinguished between those peacefully objecting to the govermmemt policy and those who destroyed property: "Some people are no doubt worried by this decision (to raise the price of gasoline) ... but sabotage and arson is done by villains, not our people." Ayatollah Khamenei further elaborated that those killed in any crossfire between the security forces and armed rioters/saboteurs were to be regarded as "martyrs".

On 20 May 2020, Amnesty published a final report on the protests where, for the first time, it named 232 out of the 304 alleged victims. Amnesty also acknowledged that many of those killed were bystanders who were not even protesting at the time of their death. The report was itself heavily criticised by two independent analysts who accused Amnesty of distorting many facts, making unsupported claims and ignoring key evidence. On 1 June 2020, an Iranian lawmaker, Mojtaba Zolnour, made it known that 230 persons had been killed, including 6 security officers and 40 from the Baseej volunteer force. More than a quarter were bystanders who he alleged were killed by rioters.

2019 report on workplace bullying within Amnesty International

In February 2019, Amnesty International's management team offered to resign. The offer came after an independent report by Konterra group found what it called a "toxic culture" of workplace bullying, as well as numerous evidences of bullying, harassment, sexism and racism. The report was commissioned by Amnesty after the investigation of the suicides of 30-year Amnesty veteran Gaëtan Mootoo in Paris in May 2018 (who left a note citing work pressures), and 28-year-old intern Rosalind McGregor in Geneva in July 2018. The Konterra report found that: "39 per cent of Amnesty International staff reported that they developed mental or physical health issues as the direct result of working at Amnesty". The report concluded, "organisational culture and management failures are the root cause of most staff wellbeing issues.".

The report said that efforts by Amnesty to address its problems had been "ad hoc, reactive, and inconsistent," and that staff described the senior leadership team as out-of-touch, incompetent and callous. Those signing a letter offering to resign were the senior directors of research, the Secretary General's office, global fundraising, global operations, people and services, law and policy and campaigns and communications. However, Amnesty International's Secretary General Kumi Naidoo did not accept resignations and instead offered generous redundancies to managers concerned, including to Mootoo's senior director Anna Neistat directly implicated in the report on Mootoo's death. Naidoo stated that his priority was "to rebuild trust at a dangerous time when Amnesty was needed more than ever".

After none of the managers were held accountable, a group of workers petitioned for Amnesty's chief to resign. On 5 December 2019 Naidoo resigned from his post of Amnesty's Secretary General, citing ill health. Julie Verhaar was appointed as interim Secretary General the same day.

2019 budgetary crisis controversy

In 2019 Amnesty International's Secretary General Kumi Naidoo admitted to a hole in the organization's budget of up to £17m in donor money to the end of 2020. In order to deal with the budgetary crisis Naidoo announced to staff that the organization's headquarters would have cut almost 100 jobs as a part of urgent restructuring. Unite the Union, the UK's biggest trade union, said the redundancies were a direct result of "overspending by the organisation's senior leadership team" and have occurred "despite an increase in income". Unite, which represents Amnesty's staff, feared that cuts would fall heaviest on lower income staff. It said that in the previous year the top 23 highest earners at Amnesty International were paid a total of £2.6m – an average of £113,000 per year. Unite demanded a review of whether it is necessary to have so many managers in the organisation.

2020 secret payout controversy

In September 2020 The Times reported that Amnesty International paid £800,000 in compensation over the workplace suicide of Gaëtan Mootoo and demanded his family keep the deal secret. The pre-trial agreement between London-based Amnesty's International Secretariat and Motoo's wife was reached on the condition that she keeps the deal secret by signing NDA. This was done particularly to prevent discussing the settlement with the press or on social media. The arrangement led to criticism on social media, with people asking why an organisation such as Amnesty would condone the use of non-disclosure agreements. Shaista Aziz, co-founder of the feminist advocacy group NGO Safe Space, questioned on Twitter why the "world's leading human rights organisation" was employing such contracts. The source of the money was unknown. Amnesty stated that the payout to Motoo's family "will not be made from donations or membership fees".

India

On 29 September 2020, the Indian offshoot of Amnesty International released a statement announcing suspension of its operations in the country after the Enforcement Directorate, which investigates financial crimes and irregularities in India, ordered the freezing of its bank accounts. In a statement, the Indian Ministry of Home Affairs said that Amnesty had contravened Indian laws by receiving funds from abroad. Amnesty, which said it had been harassed by the Indian government for its actions on human rights, particularly for its call for accountability in the Indian state of Kashmir, denied the charges and stated that it would appeal in Indian courts.

Earlier, in 2009, Amnesty's Indian offshoot suspended its India operations as the UPA government rejected its application for receiving foreign funding.

Alexei Navalny

On February 24, 2021, Amnesty announced that it would strip Alexei Navalny of his status as a prisoner of conscience on account of comments he had made about migrants in 2007 and 2008. Amnesty said that the statements by Navalny, who had been poisoned by Novichok in 2020 and imprisoned by Russia in February 2021, could amount to incitement to discrimination, violence or hostility, met the level of "hate speech", and were thus incompatible with the label "prisoner of conscience".

Amnesty's decision was met by criticism from supporters, British parliamentarians, and opposition figures in Russia. Critics noted that many of the original complaints that led Amnesty to rescind its designation had cited material that originated with a Twitter account that appeared to be linked to the Russian state, and Amnesty's Russia media manager asserted that there appeared to be a coordinated campaign by pro-Kremlin forces to discredit Navalny; in celebrating the decision, the head of Russia's state-funded TV network RT, Margarita Simonyan, referred to the source of the original allegations against Navalny as "our columnist." The decision appeared to have been made by Amnesty's London Headquarters without the consultation of its Moscow branch; on February 27, 2021, Julie Vahaar, Amnesty's secretary-general, announced an internal inquiry into the process by which Amnesty had redesignated Navalny, saying that Amnesty had been targeted by a "Russian government smear campaign." In a private Zoom call with pro-Russian pranksters posing as Navalny's associates, members of Amnesty's leadership, including Vahaar, admitted that the move had "done a lot of damage."

On May 7, 2021, Amnesty redesignated Navalny as a Prisoner of Conscience. It released a public statement that said some of Navalyn's past comments were "reprehensible" and that it does not approve of them. However, it also believed that people shouldn't be "forever trapped by their past conduct" and why it has altered its rules to no longer automatically refuse people the status of Prisoners of Conscience "solely based on their conduct in the past", as people's "opinions and behaviour may evolve over time". Amnesty apologized, saying it had "made a wrong decision" and apologizing personally to Navalny "and the activists in Russia and around the world who tirelessly campaign for his freedom" for the negative impacts their decision had had; Amnesty also observed that their actions had been used to "further violate Navalny's rights." It also clarified that in redesignating Navalny a POC, Amnesty was not implying any endorsement of his political programme but "highlighting the urgent need for his rights, including access to independent medical care, to be recognised and acted upon by the Russian authorities". Leonid Volkov, Navalny's chief of staff, responded on Twitter that "the ability to recognize mistakes and move on is the most important thing that distinguishes normal people from Putins [sic]". Amnesty also stated that it would reconsider the process by which it designated individuals as Prisoners of Conscience.

2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine

Dissolution by the Russian government

In early March 2022, during the 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine, Roskomnadzor blocked the Russian-language website of Amnesty International. In early April 2022, the Russian Ministry of Justice announced that it would forcibly shut down the Russian branch of Amnesty International, saying that the organisation had committed "violations of the current legislation of the Russian Federation."

Report on placement of Ukrainian forces in civilian areas

On 4 August 2022, Amnesty International published a report saying that it had found evidence that the Armed Forces of Ukraine had based forces and weapons in residential areas on several occasions when there were viable alternatives nearby. Amnesty further stated that, while these cases did not justify Russian attacks on civilians, and that in a number of cases it had investigated Ukrainian forces had not acted similarly, these tactics risked endangering civilians. The Amnesty report followed a report from the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights in June that had warned that both Russian and Ukrainian forces had established themselves "either in residential areas or near civilian objects, from where they launched military operations without taking measures for the protection of civilians present, as required under international humanitarian law" and a report from Human Rights Watch in July that said it had found evidence of three cases where "Ukrainian forces based forces among homes where people were living but took no apparent action to move residents to safer areas" and four cases of Russian forces doing the same.

The Amnesty report sparked significant outrage in Ukraine. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy accused Amnesty of trying to "amnesty the terrorist state and shift the responsibility from the aggressor to the victim", while Ukrainian Minister of Foreign Affairs Dmytro Kuleba stated that the report creates "a false balance between the oppressor and the victim, between the country that is destroying hundreds and thousands of civilians, cities, territories and [a] country that is desperately defending itself". The Kyiv Independent editorial team strongly criticised the report, pointing out flaws in reasoning and stating that "Amnesty [International] could not properly articulate who the main perpetrator of violence in Ukraine was".

The report also generated significant controversy within other Western countries. An editorial published by British newspaper The Times described Amnesty International as "Putin's propagandists", noting that the organization already has a "previous form in abasing itself before the Kremlin" by refusing to recognize Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny as a prisoner of conscience, and stating that "Amnesty evidently learnt nothing from that fiasco". British conservative journalist Stephen Pollard wrote on The Daily Telegraph that Amnesty was "utterly morally bankrupt" and that it was driven by an "anti-Western obsession".

Amnesty's report was criticised by military and legal experts such as John Spencer, a specialist in urban warfare studies, who stated that advising Ukrainian forces not to be in urban areas did not make sense, as the circumstances of the war necessitated that. United Nations war crime investigator Marc Garlasco stated that the Amnesty report got the law wrong, and also that Ukraine was making efforts to protect civilians, including helping them to relocate. Further criticism came from French philosopher Bernard-Henri Lévy and by Italian journalist Lorenzo Cremonesi.

The report, however, was praised by several Russian and pro-Russian figures, including the Russian embassy in London, causing further criticism against the organization.

Following the publication of the report, Oksana Pokalchuk, head of Amnesty International in Ukraine, resigned from her post, left the organization and published an explanation in The Washington Post on 13 August. Amnesty International Sweden cofounder Per Wästberg also terminated his relationship with the organization in protest to the report. Amnesty's Canadian branch issued a statement expressing regret for among other things the "insufficient context and legal analysis". On 12 August, Amnesty's German branch issued a statement apologizing for aspects of the report's release and its effect, saying that it would be examined through a process initiated at the international level to determine what went wrong, and condemning its instrumentalization by Russian authorities.

Amnesty commissioned an independent review into the report, that was leaked to The New York Times in mid-April 2023 and was published publicly by Amnesty in mid-May 2023. The review found that the "principal factual finding" of the report was "reasonably substantiated by the evidence presented," but that the report had a number of shortcomings, including overstating the legal interpretation that Ukrainian forces has violated humanitarian law, using "ambiguous, imprecise and in some respects legally questionable" language in the press release, and that there was a "failure to proactively seek Amnesty Ukraine's viewpoint and contextual understanding."

Artificial images

A report about the repression in the Colombian protests of 2021 was illustrated with pseudo-realistic images generated by artificial intelligence. Although they were labelled as such, AI was criticised for undermining its credibility. The organisation explained the change from earlier use of photographs as an attempt to protect protesters. In response to criticism, it removed the images from its social media postings.

See also

• Criticism of Human Rights Watch

Further reading

• American Gulag at National Review Online, (27 May 2005). [1]
• Jonathan V. Last, Calling It Like They See It, The Weekly Standard, 3 April 2003.
• Nabeel Abraham, Torture, Anyone? Archived 13 May 2008 at the Wayback Machine, Lies of Our Times, May 1992, pp. 2–4. Claims AI and other groups are reticent in describing alleged torture on the part of Israel.