The New Right To Choose Amnesty International
I was amazed to hear on Triple-J an Amnesty representative suggesting Catholics donating to Amnesty put them in a conflict over abortion. That is, Amnesty has moved further toward right-to-choose away from right-to-life. This is my first conflict as I am definitely right-to-life, humans shouldn’t play god, plain and simple that is not a human right we are born with.
I’m not a Catholic but this shift was the final straw for me. After their concentrated effort for David Hicks I feel like Amnesty’s ability to operate in triage mode is all but lost so I’m diverting funds into other causes now instead. Triage would have you look at David Hicks and ruthlessly say well that isn’t a cause worth supporting.
Further you could be mathematical about it and say that there is a high probability that he’s guilty and thus leave Amnesty resources for causes that have much higher probability of being good causes to save 100% innocent people. It’s not that I don’t believe strongly enough in the right to a quick fair trial for everyone (including David Hicks) it’s just that I strongly believe in triage. A huge amount of resource cost seems to have gone into this one matter by my anecdotal evidence. Harder evidence is available.
Amnesty has 193 pages of info on David and his case in the Australian website as an example. Triage would have you use that resource differently, on a larger number of people in need. I think Amnesty has done some great work over the years and I hope they change their minds on this matter so I can start my direct debit again.
One of their best campaigns was Message in The Bottle by Digital Eskimo.
You could argue Amnesty needs the media profile that the David Hicks case brings to their organisation to help them get donations which then allows them to be a pillar and do good things but I think that is a bit of a sellout on the donators (like me) who give to Amnesty because in the past they were there for the low profile people in desperate need.
June 2nd, 2007 at 11:33 pm
Hi Marc. Not questioning your decision(s), and I can certainly see your point. But I just wanted to put forward one reason why Amnesty may have focused on David Hicks - to raise the issue of Guantanamo, an illegal prison that flouts international conventions and has no legal founding, by focusing on an Australian citizen held there.
According to the BBC, 375 people are still being held in Guantanamo - David was just one - but the only Australian citizen (another Australian citizen was previously released after the UK took them on board as a citizen).
As you mention, often Amnesty works to release prisoners of conscience in countries with dubious human rights records, and one of the tools they have is the moral imperative that comes from having a judicial and legal system in place both internationally and in countries like the US and Australia.
It is also often difficult to make headway in cases in some countries, but you would expect that a democratic country would uphold the basic principles of human rights.
So I personally see it as doubly important to make sure that Guantanamo is closed. Whilst it is open and flouting international law, it weakens our ability to call on other nations to respect those laws.
That’s my personal take on why the focus has been on David - if one of our own citizens is being held under the same conditions that in other countries we are condemning, should we not be calling our government(s) to account?
June 24th, 2007 at 2:18 am
Hey Marc, You and your readers might consider switching your AI donations to Human Life International!
Look at this:
Amnesty International: What Part of Murder Don’t You Understand?
http://www.hli.org/sl_2007-06-22.html
June 24th, 2007 at 8:24 am
Thanks Grant. I didn’t want to get into Guantanamo specifically because its a massive topic I’ve been following also. So to answer you properly I’ve posted my thoughts on the topic
June 24th, 2007 at 2:57 pm
Generally I wouldn’t recommend switching to a religious organisation because there are some good organisations doing good work without using resource to push a religious angle at the same time. No offense sorry, my triage view doesn’t allow for resources to be put into any matter other than the problem at hand. I like Kiva.org and Oxfam.org