Amnesty International: Navalny a Prisoner of Conscience. But not Manning,
Assange or Mandela
Amnesty International has a long and sordid history with its prisoner of
conscience designation, denying it to enemies of the US government and
granting it to some less than savory characters.
by Alan Macleod
Mint Press News
January 27th, 2021
By Alan Macleod
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Russian politician Alexei Navalny remains under arrest in Russia after
returning to his homeland earlier this month. The event generated worldwide
headlines as the 44-year-old lawyer was immediately detained at a Moscow
airport, with Western figures hailing his bravery. "Navalny's heroic
struggle is no different from what Gandhi, King, Mandela and Havel fought
for. While Navalny has not succeeded yet, there should be no doubt that his
cause is good and just," wrote former U.S. Ambassador to Russia Michael
McFaul. President Biden also pressed Putin on the issue in a meeting
yesterday.
Navalny had spent five months in Germany recovering from an alleged
poisoning which he attributes to government agents, although a recent poll
suggested that only 15 percent of Russians agreed with him. Prosecutors
allege the leader of the Russia of the Future Party violated his parole
terms of a suspended sentence for embezzlement, with Navalny and his allies
claiming the charges are politically motivated.
Regardless, his arrest triggered protests in over 100 Russian towns and
cities, many of them extremely large. Over 3,700 people were reportedly
arrested, including more than 1,400 in Moscow alone, as tensions threaten to
spill over. Amnesty International declared Navalny a "prisoner of
conscience," demanding that "authorities must immediately and
unconditionally release" the prominent Kremlin critic.
A dubious designation
However, "prisoner of conscience" is a designation the London-based human
rights organization has refused to apply to Western dissidents like Chelsea
Manning and Julian Assange. A representative of the organization told
journalist Joe Emersberger that it would not recognize Manning as such
because they were unsure if the military whistleblower leaked the
information in a sufficiently "responsible manner," claiming to be equally
uncertain that she was being punished because she revealed evidence of
widespread human rights abuses.
Likewise, while Amnesty has criticized Assange's trial (one that they have
been blocked from observing), in 2019, it told the defense team of the
Wikileaks cofounder that his is, "a case we're monitoring closely but not
actively working on. Amnesty International does not consider Julian Assange
to be a Prisoner of Conscience."
Going further back, it refused to grant the status to perhaps the twentieth
century's most famous political prisoner, Nelson Mandela. It justified its
decision on the basis that the African National Congress leader refused to
renounce armed struggle against Apartheid and advocated violence - a
decision that garnered it decades of opprobrium.
Yet Navalny himself has also advocated violence. In a political video, he
described the Muslim people of the Northern Caucasus as an "infestation of
cockroaches." While bugs can be killed with a slipper, in the case of human
infestations, "I recommend a pistol" he said, before mimicking shooting one.
Far more violent figures than Mandela or Navalny have also earned Amnesty's
"prisoner of conscience" label, including Venezuelan politician Leopoldo
Lopez. Lopez was a leader of a U.S.-backed coup in 2002 and organized a
campaign of insurrectionary violence in 2014 that included bombing schools
and universities, poisoning water supplies and shooting journalists. 43
people were left dead, with the government estimating the damage caused at
$15 billion, around the same as the destruction wrought by the 2020 Beirut
explosion. In 2019, the organization's Americas director stated that
"International justice is the only hope for victims of human rights
violations in Venezuela. It is time to activate all available mechanisms to
prevent further atrocities," implying that she supported the U.S.-led
campaign to overthrow the government.
Connections to Western power
Unfortunately, Amnesty has a long history of collaborating with Western
intelligence agencies to bolster regime change abroad. One cofounder of the
organization, Peter Benenson, had deep ties to the British Foreign and
Colonial Offices. Benenson worked for years propping up the Apartheid regime
of South Africa and other white supremacist societies - all while secretly
being paid by the U.K. government.
A second cofounder, Luis Kutner, was an FBI asset whose intelligence was
used in the agency's murder of Black Panther Fred Hampton. He also did
secret work to undermine the anti-imperialist Congolese Prime Minister
Patrice Lumumba, whose murder has been strongly linked to American and
Belgian intelligence services. Kutner would also go on to form the group
"Friends of the FBI" - a supposedly private organization designed to combat
criticism of the bureau from civil libertarians and from genuine human
rights groups and activists.
The connections to Western power continue into the modern era. For example,
Susan Nossel, a government official who worked closely with Hillary Clinton,
Madeleine Albright, Samantha Power and Susan Rice on the concept of
humanitarian intervention, became Executive Director of Amnesty
International USA in 2012 (and has since also held senior positions at other
organizations like Human Rights Watch and PEN International). 2012 was also
the year that Amnesty launched a billboard campaign praising NATO for its
supposedly fine work helping women in Afghanistan. "NATO: keep the progress
going" the ads said, leading to worldwide pushback.
Ultimately, Amnesty does continue to do important work and provide crucial
reports documenting abuses around the world. However, it does so while
maintaining all too close a relationship with Western governments, who
themselves are the major sources of human rights abuses worldwide. These
limitations lead the organization to rush to the defense of dissidents in
enemy nations but ignore or downplay their peers in the West. The Navalny
case is the latest example of that in action.
