[Peace-discuss] Amnesty International

[Morton K.Brussel]

Interesting, if rather long, interview with Francis Boyle about AI done 
about a year ago, but still relevant. FYI.

MKB

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Dear All,

Some of you maybe interested in this
Interview: Amnesty on Jenin
Dennis Bernstein and Dr. Francis Boyle Discuss the Politics of Human
Rights
CovertAction Quarterly Number 73 Summer 2002

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Editor's Note
It has often been said that Amnesty International's agenda tends to
fit nicely with the political needs of the United States and Great
Britain. Around the world, supporters of the Nicaraguan people's
struggle for self-determination were outraged by the timing of a 1986
Amnesty report critical of the Sandinista government, which helped
Reagan push another Contra Aid appropriation through a reluctant
congress, at exactly the moment when the anti-Contra movement was
beginning to get serious political traction.

With regard to South Africa's apartheid regime, AI was critical of
the human rights record of the South African government. However, as
you will see below, AI never condemned apartheid per se. By the time
Amnesty endorsed the Hill & Knowlton nursery tale concerning Kuwaiti
infants pulled from incubators by Iraqi soldiers, many otherwise
sympathetic observers of Amnesty's work became increasingly alarmed.

More than a decade of grassroots organization within Amnesty's
membership base finally succeeded just two years ago in moving the
organization to take a position critical of the genocidal sanctions
against the people of Iraq, sanctions which have killed approximately
a million and a half Iraqis, one third of them children. According to
Dr. Boyle, this was political, and it clearly served the interests of
the U.S. and Britain, the two governments on the Security Council
preventing the lifting of the sanctions.

A recent search of internet shows that AI Venezuela very quickly took
up the U.S. line by charging President Chavez with crimes against
humanity for the bloodshed during the recent failed coup attempt
against his administration. Amnesty's performance on the April
massacre at Jenin is another blot on its frequently laudable record.
As our readers are aware, the United Nations attempted to investigate
the Jenin massacre, but was prevented from doing so by Sharon and
Bush. The announcement on May 3[, 2002] by Human Rights Watch of "no
massacre at Jenin" effectively killed the story, although there was a
lot of argument about what constitutes a massacre. No such arguments
were heard when a suicide bomber turned a Passover dinner into a
tragedy.

This magazine will cover the topic of Human Rights Watch in a future
issue. For this issue, we were fortunate to be forwarded the
transcript of a June 13th [2002] interview with Dr. Francis A. Boyle,
professor of International Law and former board member of AI. What
follows is a shortened version of the transcript.


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PIWP Editor's note: we will attempt to obtain the photo for this
article.
Photo / caption by -- Jeff Guntzel, Voices in the Wilderness

Jenin, May 2002: View from the doorstep of a young Palestinian
medical relief worker. Standing in her doorway looking in disbelief
over the destruction, we asked if there had been a road there. "No,"
she replied, "just homes."


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Dennis Bernstein preface to interview
There has been much criticism of late about the role of Western Non-
Governmental Organizations (NGO's) in international politics.
Following the massacre in Jenin, a less-than-vigorous response from
Western NGOs helped make it possible for Sharon to delay and finally
derail a UN investigation. One NGO which seems to enjoy a kind of
teflon immunity to criticism, particularly regarding the illegal
Israeli occupation of Palestine, is Amnesty International, a human
rights organization so big and so influential that its reports and
investigations are cited everywhere, including the halls of Congress.
Yet in Jenin, its lackluster investigation -- a few initial press
releases, compared to a timely fifty page report by the much smaller
Human Rights Watch -- only added to the suffering there. It is indeed
troubling, that while respected forensic pathologist, Dr. Derrick
Pounder, who works with AI, reported, after a visit to Jenin, that
there was a "prima facie case for war crimes." Amnesty didn't follow
up. Without question, Amnesty does a great deal of crucial work,
which is relied on by journalists and activists around the world.
However, Amnesty has made huge mistakes in the Middle East and these
cannot be overlooked in any fair and balanced assessment of Amnesty's
role in international politics. For instance, as you will see below,
as the first Bush administration was maneuvering the nation toward
war in Iraq, Amnesty played a crucial role in preparing U.S. and
international public opinion by lending credence to the notorious
Hill & Knowlton "Kuwati dead babies" scam. To shed light on the
question of why Amnesty's record seems to be so uneven, I interviewed
longtime human rights activist and International Law scholar Francis
Boyle. Boyle has a long and shaky relationship with Amnesty. While
serving on the board of Amnesty USA in the late 1980s and early
1990s, Boyle repeatedly tried to get the group to investigate the
brutal Israeli treatment of Palestinians with little success.


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Dennis Bernstein: We are going to be talking about the restrictions
and hesitations that seem to be coming out of Amnesty International,
and I think before we get into the substance of the questions, why
don't you just talk a little bit about your own background and your
experience with Amnesty International over the years.

Francis Boyle: I got very actively involved in 1982. At that time I
was leading the legal charge against the Israeli invasion of Lebanon,
and I tried very hard to get Amnesty International USA to do
something.

You had massive death and destruction, carnage, ultimately 20,000
people in Lebanon were pretty much exterminated. And Amnesty
International USA refused to do anything at all because of the pro-
Israel bias that concerns that organization. And finally, I remember
when having given up getting them to do anything, calling the late
Irish Nobel Peace Prize winner Sean MacBride, a friend of mine, at
his home in Dublin, and explaining to him the situation and asking
him to intervene with Amnesty International in London at the
headquarters to get them to do something.

And it was curious of course -- they hadn't done anything either. But
Sean did place a call to the Amnesty secretary-general. He was on
their international board, Sean was, at the time. And I think they
put a half-researcher on it, which was pretty pathetic between you
and me. And I think if you go back and read the Amnesty report
for '82, it's pretty shameless given the death and destruction that
was inflicted in Lebanon.

Amnesty was no worse than any other so-called human rights
organization here in the United States at that time. None of them
said or did absolutely anything at all about 20,000 dead Arabs in
Lebanon except the American Friends Service Committee. They put
together a working group on Lebanon, asked me to join, I was
involved. And they did put out a very courageous, hard-hitting
report, spent a lot of time on it. It's very objective, very
thorough. They had people on the ground over there in some danger for
their lives to get this information for us.

But Amnesty wouldn't do anything. And eventually what happened --
members of Amnesty knew of my efforts and were very upset that they
refused to do anything about 20,000 dead Arabs in Lebanon. So they
ran me and a group of others for the board of directors by a petition
process, and we were all knocked off the ballot by pro-Israel members
of the board. So everyone else asked me to represent them with
Amnesty International, and I threatened a lawsuit on behalf of my
colleagues that, if we were not returned to this ballot, I would
invalidate all their elections. And not only did I threaten a
lawsuit, I had to go out to New York to file the lawsuit. And
finally, they settled on our terms on a Sunday afternoon before I was
to file the lawsuit Monday morning.

I was elected to the board of directors in 1988. I spent four years
on the Amnesty board for two terms and, you know, tried very hard to
get them to do something on behalf of Lebanese and Palestinians, as
well as many other issues. Amnesty is bad not just on Israel. I tried
to get them to do more on Northern Ireland, Puerto Rico, American
Indians, a lot of other subjects that are not necessary to go into
here. And then you know after four years on the board, I basically
figured I had done enough and it was time to move on.

DB-2: Let's talk about Amnesty International and the carnage of
Jenin. I'm thinking specifically of Jenin, but generally speaking,
how does Amnesty International decide what to focus on and what to
say and what not to say?

FB: Amnesty International is primarily motivated not by human rights
but by publicity. Second comes money. Third comes getting more
members. Fourth, internal turf battles. And then finally, human
rights, genuine human rights concerns. To be sure, if you are dealing
with a human rights situation in a country that is at odds with the
United States or Britain, it gets an awful lot of attention,
resources, man and womanpower, publicity, you name it, they can throw
whatever they want at that. But if it's dealing with violations of
human rights by the United States, Britain, Israel, then it's like
pulling teeth to get them to really do something on the situation.
They might, very reluctantly and after an enormous amount of internal
fightings and battles and pressures, you name it. But you know, it's
not like the official enemies list.

Amnesty International sent three people out there [to Jenin] and came
back with nothing more than a news release dated April 22 [2002],
saying well, we received credible evidence of serious human rights
violations, and they came up with a list of eight. And that was it.
It's pretty shameless that that's the best they could do. And indeed,
it seemed to me, given the way Amnesty works, this was a
typical "CYA" (cover your ass) operation, which is, they knew they
were going to have to do something on Jenin, so they did the least
amount possible in order to cover themselves.

DB-3: So they did a preliminary report and very little follow-up.

FB: Well this is not even a preliminary report, Dennis. This is
nothing more than a news release, it's a press release. There is no
preliminary report. As I said, I think more investigation must be
done in Jenin. As you know, the United States government headed off
the UN fact-finding commission.

Now we know in the massacre in Sabra and Shatila, certainly one of
the best reports was by a very courageous Israeli journalist, Amnon
Kapeliouk, and that was investigated ultimately by different
organizations that got over there, one of whom was not Amnesty
International. And eventually we did have a pretty good idea of
exactly what happened at Sabra and Shatila.

Amnesty does not have any report [on Jenin]. This is a press release,
that's all they have. There's absolutely nothing there that you know
you can really get your hands on. And again, my conclusion on this
was that this was a typical "CYA" operation, that they knew various
people were going to say to them, you know, 'What did you do on
Jenin?' So they sent this team out. They came back with very little,
put it on their web site and said, "There, that's what we did on
Jenin."


DB-4: And of course it is troubling because their own people -- for
instance Dr. Derrick Pounder a forensic pathologist whom I
interviewed -- have said there was a prima facie case for war crimes.
And yet Amnesty did not follow up.

FB: Let me say one thing. In fairness to Amnesty International, after
twenty years of not dealing with Israel, they finally are prepared to
use the word "war crimes." They've done the best they can for the
last twenty years to avoid using the term "war crimes" when it comes
to Israel. They'll use euphemisms like "human rights violations"
or "violations of international humanitarian law." If you're an
expert, you know a violation of international humanitarian law is a
war crime. But only recently, and with respect to Jenin, did they
finally come out and use the word "war crime." But it's taken them
about twenty years to get to that point with respect to Israel.

I understand there is some conflict here as to exactly what happened
and why and what were the circumstances, charges on both sides. I
know that it is emotional for people on both sides with attachments
to the different sides. But all I can say about Amnesty International
is, well after twenty years, at least they use the word war crimes. I
guess that's progress. Maybe twenty years from now, they might do
something more. I really don't know.

DB-5: Well I want to talk to you now a little about the connections
between the British and U.S. foreign policy circles and Amnesty
International. Again, I'm talking in the context of Jenin. We now
know, according to the Marine Corps Times (May 31, 2002) that the
U.S. military was with the Israeli military. They were there as the
Israeli military went into Jenin and went door to door and attacked
with helicopters, and they were they, they say, to study the way in
which Israelis do this kind of urban action. So could you talk a
little about Amnesty its relationship to the U.S. and British
government, and how perhaps the relationship between the U.S.
military and the Israeli military, particularly in working with them
in Jenin, might have something to do with Amnesty's reluctance to
thoroughly investigate what happened.

FB: Well, of course we know the U.S. military is over there and has
been over there, Special forces and whatever, working with the
Israelis. And we also know the whole place has been penetrated by the
CIA. So clearly this raises the question of U.S. complicity in what
happened at Jenin. Or it could be participation, I don't know. Again,
I'm a lawyer, I try to be cautious and careful in my
characterization. But certainly it raises the question of complicity
without any doubt at all. And this happened at, for example, Sabra
and Shatila. Eventually, it did come out that the United States
Embassy had been notified that a massacre was going on at Sabra and
Shatila, and despite that, did nothing for 48 hours so that the
massacre could be concluded before the U.S. embassy said anything at
all about it to the Israelis. And this despite the fact that Philip
Habib (then U.S. Envoy to the Middle East himself, on behalf of the
United States government) had personally promised Arafat that if the
PLO fighters abandoned the camps where they were protecting the
innocent civilians, from the Christian Phalange, from outright
massacres that the Phalange had said they were going to perpetrate,
as well as [from] the Israeli Army, that the U.S. would guarantee
their protection. And yet we knew, the U.S. government knew for a
fact, that the massacre was going on. Apparently they had an
intelligence source there at the scene -- we're not sure who it was --
  and they let it happen anyway.

So it would not surprise me if we were in a similar situation here,
I'm not surprised at all that the United States government knew
exactly what was going on. They very well might have coordinated, I
don't know. But certainly that aspect needs to be investigated as
well.

DB-6: Now, having said that about these connections between the U.S.,
British and Amnesty International foreign policy…

FB: Sure, you'll see a pretty good coincidence of the enemies that
Amnesty International goes after and the interests of both the United
States and British governments. Let's take an older example --
apartheid in South Africa under the former criminal regime in South
Africa. Amnesty International refused adamantly to condemn apartheid
in South Africa. Despite my best efforts while I was on the board,
and other board members, they would not do it. They are the only
human rights organization in the entire world to have refused to
condemn apartheid in South Africa. Now they can give you some cock-
and-bull theory about why they wouldn't do this. But the bottom line
was that the biggest supporter, economic and political supporter of
the criminal apartheid regime in South Africa was the British
government, followed by the United States government. And so no
matter how hard we tried, no matter what we did, they would not
condemn apartheid in South Africa. Now I just mention that as one
among many examples.

When I tried to work with the Amnesty International chapter down in
Puerto Rico, they had invited me to go down there to speak -- they're
separate from AI USA -- they invited me, I met them, they came to our
convention, I worked with them. I helped get the AI USA general
meeting to adopt two resolutions dealing with the human rights
situation in Puerto Rico, as well was the deplorable condition of
Puerto Rican political prisoners in U.S. jails. They then asked me
down there to give the keynote address on the right of Puerto Rican
political prisoners to be treated as prisoners of war. Amnesty
International London and New York did everything humanly possible to
sabotage and prevent and interfere with my trip to Puerto Rico, and
my ability to get up there and give that keynote address.

So again, on Israel, I could give you twenty years of what they've
done to try to sabotage, interfere with, prevent, cover up on Israel.
Of course the worst instance is well known, and that's the Kuwaiti
dead babies report. I was on the Amnesty International USA board at
that time, it was the late Fall of 1990 and, as you know, we were on
the verge of going to war. There was going to be a debate coming up
in the United States Congress, and a vote. And at the end of November
or so, mid-November, since I was a board member, I got a pre-
publication copy of the Amnesty report on the Iraqi invasion of
Kuwait. So I immediately read through this report and it was sloppy,
it was inaccurate even its statement of applicable law. It did not
seem to me that it had gone through the normal quality control
process.

As for the allegation about the Iraqi soldiers taking babies out of
incubators and putting them on the floor of the hospital where they
did, I didn't know if that was true or not, but it certainly sounded
very sensationalist to me. And as a result of that, I made an effort
to hold that report back for further review, on those grounds that I
gave to you. And indeed I also enlisted a fellow board member for the
same reason, and he and I both tried, and I made the point, even if
this story about the dead babies is true, it's completely
sensationalist, and it is simply going to be used in the United
States to monger for war, and could turn the tide in favor of war.
And so you know, we really need to pull back on this, further review,
more study.

They wouldn't do it. It was clear it was on the fast track there in
London. This was not AI USA, this was in London. And it had been put
on the fast track, they were ramming it through. They didn't care.
Finally, I said look, let us at least put out an Errata report to
accompany it on those aspects that are clearly wrong. They refused to
do that either. They then put the report out, and you know what a
terrible impact that had in terms of war propaganda. Of the six votes
in the United States Senate that passed the resolution to go to war,
several of those senators said that they were influenced by the
Amnesty report. Now I want to make it clear this was not a job by
Amnesty International but by London, and what happened then, when the
war started, at the next AI USA board meeting, I demanded an
investigation. By then it had come out that this was Kuwaiti
propaganda put together by the PR firm, Hill & Knowlton, and I
demanded an investigation.

Absolutely nothing happened. There was never an investigation, there
was total stonewalling coming out of London. They refused ever to
admit that they did anything wrong. There has never been an
explanation, there has never been an apology. It's down the memory
hole like 1984 and Orwell. My conclusion was that a high-level
official of Amnesty International at that time, whom I will not name,
was a British intelligence agent. Moreover, my fellow board member,
who also investigated this independently of me, reached the exact
same conclusion. So certainly when I am dealing with people who want
to work with Amnesty in London, I just tell them, "Look, just
understand, they're penetrated by intelligence agents, U.K., maybe
U.S., I don't know, but you certainly can't trust them."

DB-7: Now, is Amnesty International a democratic organization whose
leadership is accountable to its members?

FB: Well, I can only speak of AI USA, in theory it's supposed to be,
in theory it's elected. But what you have is a board that is
basically selected by a process of co-optation. That is, it's
basically a small clique of people who have been in power for a good
twenty years, or their friends and their buddies that they co-opt
through a bogus nominating process to put on there. Now there is a
kind of petition process from the grassroots to have other voices on
there. That's how I got on that board -- so many members were
disgusted with the fact that Amnesty would not do anything on Israel
that I was nominated by means of the petition process. It's not easy
to do, you have to get at least a hundred signatures and they're all
very carefully scrutinized and this, that and the other thing. And
even then, I and my colleagues were disqualified by the little clique
who sits on this board, and then I had to threaten a lawsuit. And as
I said, not just threaten a lawsuit, but fly out to New York to file
the lawsuit. And only then did my name appear on the ballot and then
I was elected.

Moreover, another interesting point back in 1982, because of my
efforts to try to raise what Israel was doing in Lebanon, I was asked
to attend the first meeting of what later became the Amnesty
International USA Middle East coordination group that's supposed to
coordinate human rights work on the Middle East, which I did. So in
other words, I was one of the founders of the Amnesty International
Mideast coordination group. Shortly thereafter, I gave a speech here
in town condemning what Israel was doing in Lebanon that was reported
in the local news media. And I made it clear I wasn't speaking on
behalf of Amnesty International or anyone else but myself, but it was
an Amnesty meeting. And immediately thereafter, the chair of the
board of directors of Amnesty International ordered no one to have
anything more to do with me. And they didn't. It was a total cutoff.

DB-8: Was this order put in writing?

FB: It was verbal, for sure. So even though I was on their committee
and even though I was one of the founders of their committee,
thereafter they would have nothing at all to do with me, except that
when I got elected to the board, then they had to deal with me.
That's the way they certainly worked when it came to Israel, sure.
And that continued. As I said, in 1992 or so, I figured I had better
things to do with my time.

I keep my membership and I do keep an eye on the reports that come
out to see what they're saying, what position they're taking. Indeed,
I've gone on the Internet [and read] dissections of some of their
reports when it comes to Israel, and the people who do these reports
over in London and here in the United States, they're very clever,
shar, and sophisticated people. They know exactly what they're doing.
And if you go through it, you'll see that basically , it supports the
Israeli party line on whatever the issue is. Or finally, after many
years of outing them on this, now they're no longer supporting it but
they're not doing much. At least the thing on Jenin here is not
supporting any Israeli party line. But previous reports in the not
too distant past, if you go through them carefully, you'll see that
their legal characterizations of the nature of the conflict, the
status of these territories, the status of Jerusalem, tracks the
Israeli party line.

DB-9: How does the leadership reconcile its stated objectives with
its actual practice? How do they go about rationalizing their
actions?

FB: They don't care. They're completely and totally arrogant. "We are
Amnesty International. We are the world's largest and most powerful
human rights organization. We won the Nobel Peace Prize for our work.
So we do whatever we want." And again, if you don't believe me, go
search your Lexis-Nexis database and see if there has ever been an
apology by Amnesty International for the Kuwaiti dead babies report.
To the best of my knowledge, there was no official apology or
investigation or explanation. They just toughed it out.

DB-10: Now we know that at the end of that war, the United States was
responsible for killing perhaps as many as 100,000 people who were
trying to flee at the end of the Gulf War. Did Amnesty ever do a
report on that?

FB: I don't know. After a certain point, I realized that I was
wasting my time worrying about what Amnesty International was doing
on that.

DB-11: So just to be clear Professor Boyle, in terms of Jenin, are
you suggesting that it is because of those close connections between
Amnesty International, British-U.S. intelligence, the Israelis, the
fact that the U.S. plays such a closer role with the Israelis,
there's so much CIA and military intelligence on the ground, that
that would be the reason that Amnesty International would step back
and not touch it.

FB: Well that, and in addition, you have here in the United States
the very powerful rule played by the Israel lobby on Amnesty
International USA. They are very powerful; they apply enormous
pressure on Amnesty International USA, headquartered in New York.
Amnesty International USA pretty much kowtows to them, and they use
contributions to make sure that Amnesty International USA tows the
line on Israel, and Amnesty International USA pays about 20% of the
London budget. So that has an impact over in London too. I do not
know about direct lobbying with the London Amnesty International
office by the British equivalent of the Israel lobby here. I don't
know personally about that, but I do know AI USA pays 20% of their
budget.

And I remember once -- this was when I was on the board -- I got the
agenda of, the Amnesty International secretary general was coming
over to the United States for a trip, and I got his agenda and he was
meeting with just about every pro-Israel group and leader you could
possibly imagine on that list here in the United States, and
undoubtedly, they were all going to claim that Amnesty was even doing
too much with respect to Israel.

And if I remember, on that list, they might have scheduled time to
meet with one or two Arab American leaders. And internally, this is
the way it's done. And you have large numbers of people on that board
of directors here in the United States who are pro-Israel and do
everything possible to prevent, sabotage, obstruct effective work on
Israel, up to and including getting rid of a former executive
director here in the United States because, I hate to say this but,
under my influence and one or two others, we did try to get him and
some others to do more effective work on Israel and finally, when I
was off the board, there was a purge. So that's the way it works and
it's highly political, highly coercive, and eventually if you get out
of line, they'll get rid of you.


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Further Reading
For extensive discussion of the role of public relations in preparing
public opinion for the Gulf War and other crimes against humanity,
see: CovertAction Quarterly, Number 44, Spring 1993.
For full coverage of the Gulf War, see CovertAction Information
Bulletin, Number 37, Summer 1991.
"Physicians for Human Rights Forensic Team Preliminary Assessment,
Jenin", April 21-23, 2002".
"Jenin: IDF Military Operations," Human Rights Watch Report, Vol. 14,
No. 3, May 2002.
Charmaine Seitz, "Excavating the Crimes of War; What really happened
in Jenin?" In These Time, May 27, 2002.
For the forthright, uncensored views of Israeli peace activists
living in Israel see: Gush Shalom.