Amnesty
International is
40 years old this week
By TFF associate
JONATHAN
POWER
Penguin
published Power's history of Amnesty International
on May 31st
"Like
Water on Stone".
(See below).
May 29, 2001
LONDON - Amnesty International, founded forty years ago,
was almost immediately dubbed "one of the larger lunacies
of our time". The then bizarre idea was to collect
information on people incarcerated in prison solely for
their political views and then, by means of an army of
volunteer activists, bombard the offending governments
with massive numbers of letters, postcards and telegrams,
calling for the prisoner's swift release. Other critics
called it "subversive" and "an agent of Satan". Iran's
Ayatollah Khomieni, Uganda's Idi Amin, Iraq's Saddam
Hussein, Chile's Augusto Pinochet, Britain's Margaret
Thatcher and France's President Jacques Chirac are all
heavyweights who have gone into the ring to try and
squash it.
In the 1990s and the new century the criticism has
been subtler. The attacks came not only from government
leaders but from sceptics in the media as well. Some have
argued that Amnesty has become respectable, a part of the
international establishment. Others have claimed it has
lost its unique profile and been submerged in a plethora
of other human rights groups. Perhaps the unkindest cut
of all has been the allegation that Amnesty publicity
campaigns have resulted in the development of even more
insidious methods of torture and repression, designed to
avoid the calumny of global exposure.
But the prisoners, often enough, have been released.
The postcards, telegrams and parcels do get through.
Letters come back, many smuggled out of prison or past
airport censors. The same week that a young law student
was sentenced to three years' imprisonment in an eastern
European country- he had been arrested after collecting
signatures calling for the release of political prisoners
- his father wrote to Amnesty: "I have experienced the
blessing of your appeal for you have raised your voice in
defence of my son…. Amnesty International is a light
in our time, particularly for those on whose eyes
darkness has fallen, when the prison doors shut behind
them. By your selfless work this light shines on the
ever-widening circle of those who need it". Among the
many victims was a teacher in Latin America. While he was
being tortured by the police they opened a telephone line
between the torture chamber and the prisoner's home,
forcing his wife to listen to her husband's screams.
During the ordeal she died of a heart attack. The
prisoner himself survived and eventually he was allowed
to go into exile with his children. He told Amnesty:
"They killed my wife. They would have killed me too, but
you intervened and saved my life."
The most unexpected challenge came from the United
States. Successive post-Vietnam War governments, starting
with the administration of Jimmy Carter, took up human
rights as a geo-political crusade. Suddenly U.S.
officials around the world were brandishing Amnesty
International reports as they waged highly selective
campaigns against their enemies, whilst often enough
remaining tight-lipped or, at least reserved, about
torture and "disappearances" in the regimes they
supported for "reasons of state" in the Cold War age.
Famously, during his campaign to build up the
coalition against Saddam Hussein prior to the Gulf War in
1990, President George Bush Senior took to quoting
Amnesty reports on Iraq, even letting it be known he was
sharing them with his wife, who said they made her very
upset and angry. Yet at the same time, the U.S.
authorities were steadfastly ignoring Amnesty's critique
of the role of the Central intelligence Agency (CIA) in
torture in Guatemala or the use of capital punishment at
home. Amnesty was being used in one-sided, high profile
diplomatic war that threatened to poison international
human rights efforts. In what must surely be one of the
most extraordinary dialogues for a human rights
organization, Amnesty sent one of its top people to
Washington to plead with US officials to stop quoting
from the organization's reports.
By the beginning of the 1990s the question was not
whether Amnesty would survive, but whether it could adapt
to a changing world. On the economic front, growing
disparities of income, the severe impoverishment of a
number of countries and the danger of economic collapse
in some of the new states of Central and Eastern Europe
held the explosive potential for widespread political
instability. Armed conflicts in Europe and Africa were
seen to be spinning out of control, increasing tensions
in the surrounding countries and creating vast refugee
populations, while international peace-keeping efforts
were often proving impotent. Many observers both inside
and outside Amnesty were worried that Amnesty might be
becoming overstretched, perhaps even developing a
tendency in the face of large-scale atrocities to shoot
from the hip.
Some claimed that Amnesty was moving too quickly and
merely publishing rumours. Picking up the rumblings, the
New York Times charged that there was a new culture in
Amnesty which was " a response to CNN- members who see
atrocities on television demand to know what Amnesty has
to say about them - and to a growth in a number of rights
groups putting out reports in the middle of conflicts".
The mass killings in Rwanda brought the debate to the
boil.
Pierre Sane, Amnesty's Senegalese-born
Secretary-General, determined that the genocide in Rwanda
should not engulf the entire region, was passionate. "The
objective of our report is to force governments to
conduct their own investigations quickly". He sensed that
time was running out in Central Africa. And even without
all the research completed, as was the norm in a more
slow-moving situation, Amnesty had to fire all its
cannons. He was right.
Forty years on Amnesty remains on the front line, the
organization that has set the pace in making human rights
a central tenet, if not always the practice, of the
policy of democratic governments everywhere. Even
dictatorships often feel they have to, at least, take
notice of it. Its successes are often no more dramatic
than the constant dripping of water on stone. But if
Amnesty may not yet have changed the world, it has not
left it as it found it either.
I can be reached by phone +44
7785 351172 and e-mail: JonatPower@aol.com
Copyright © 2001 By
JONATHAN POWER
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Publication date:
31 May 2001
More information?
Please contact Ruth Killick
Head of Publicity
0207 416 3258
ruth.killick@penguin.co.uk
Visit the Online press office at
www.penguin.co.uk
Published to celebrate the 40th
anniversary of Amnesty International
"When the two hundred letters
came the guards gave me back my clothes.
Then the next two hundred letters came and
the prison director came to see me. When
the next pile of letters arrived, the
director got in touch with his superior.
The letters kept coming and coming: three
thousand of them. The President was
informed. The letters still kept arriving
and the President called the prison and
told them to let me go."*
Like Water on Stone:
The Story of Amnesty
International
By Jonathan
Power
In 1960, during the darkest days of the
Salazar dictatorship, two Portuguese students
were sentenced to seven years' imprisonment.
Their crime? Raising a glass to freedom in a
Lisbon café. In London, Peter
Benenson, a lawyer and human rights activist,
was shocked by the case. With two colleagues
he launched the "Appeal for Amnesty 1961" on
behalf of political prisoners worldwide. And
so Amnesty International was born.
Forty years on, the organisation labelled
"one of the larger lunacies of our time" is
one of the largest and most influential
non-governmental organisations in the world
with supporters in 160 countries and
territories. How did this happen? In Like
Water on Stone, published by Allen Lane on 31
May, Jonathan Power tells how, against all
the odds, Amnesty brought human rights onto
the international agenda.
Like Water on Stone acknowledges Amnesty's
extraordinary achievements. But Amnesty has
always been controversial, and Jonathan Power
doesn't shy away from asking awkward
questions. Do Amnesty's campaigns actually
work? Or can campaigning on behalf of
political prisoners lead to repressive
governments murdering their opponents rather
than locking them up? Is the organisation's
research always accurate? How can it
guarantee its reports are correct when, as in
Guatemala in the 70s and 80s, an entire
population is silenced by terror? Closer to
home, was Amnesty right to label British
methods of interrogation in Northern Ireland
as "torture"? Or did this simply give fuel to
Pinochet's lawyers who last year argued that
the General should not be singled out, for
"there is torture everywhere"? Was Amnesty
right to lobby for better prison conditions
for the notorious Baader-Meinhof group in
Germany in the 70s? And what of countries
like China which seem oblivious to any
attempts to push for human rights? Or the
USA, where decades of Amnesty lobbying on
prison conditions has had little impact?
Power shows how Amnesty has often got it
right. Its successes are truly inspiring. In
Nigeria President Obasanjo, (former AI
adopted prisoner of conscience and the first
civilian ruler for over a decade), is
beginning to tackle the appalling record of
his predecessors. Power describes how
Amnesty's discovery and exposure of child
murders in the Central African Republic led
the French government to drive the Emperor
Bokassa into exile. Amnesty pressure has
helped to pave the way to bring former human
rights abusers such as Augusto Pinochet to
justice. The book shows how 30 years of
Amnesty lobbying has helped to found the
International Criminal Court. And Power
describes how, in Northern Ireland in the
1970s, Amnesty's campaigning led to more
humane prison conditions and the end of cruel
and degrading methods of interrogation.
Power, himself a human rights activist,
has the inside track on Amnesty's activities.
He gives a fascinating account of a mission
to Nigeria where Obasanjo, (also a personal
friend) receives a visit from Amnesty
lobbyists. His account of research into
Guatemalan "disappearances" tells a moving
story of the courage and persistence of
Amnesty researchers as they painstakingly
pieced together the details of
atrocities.
Olusegun Obasanjo once described Amnesty
International as operating "like water on
stone". Jonathan Power's book tells the
moving story of an organisation which "may
not have changed the world; but hasn't left
it as it found it either".
About Jonathan Power,
TFF associate
"One of the finest journalistic talents
I"ve seen in thirty five years in the
business" ** Jonathan Power was for 17 years
a foreign affairs columnist for the
International Herald Tribune. He has written
regular columns for the New York Times, the
Washington Post and the Los Angeles Times. He
has also written for The Times and The
Guardian, Encounter, and Prospect, and his
column is presently syndicated
internationally to over 20 papers. In 1972 he
won the silver medal at the Venice film
festival for his documentary, It's Ours
Whatever They Say.
Jonathan will be in the UK at the time of
publication and is available for
interview.
Like Water on Stone by
Jonathan Power is published on 31 May, price
£12.99 Allen Lane paperback original,
ISBN 0713993197. For more information please
contact Ruth Killick, head of Publicity, on
0207 416 3258
(ruth.killick@penguin.co.uk)
* Former prisoner of conscience, Julio de
Pena Valdez, a Trade Union leader in the
Dominican Republic, on the impact of
Amnesty's letter-writing campaign.
** Murray Weiss, former Editor-in-Chief of
the International Herald Tribune.
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