Where does Amnesty International stand on women’s rights after suspending Gita Sahgal for criticising links with Moazzam Begg?
Posted on February 10, 2010
Filed Under Equality, Global, Human Rights, London, Opinion Comment, War Conflict, Women's Group | Comments Off
The Sunday Times last week carried an article in which the head of Amnesty International’s gender unit, Gita Sahgal, was quoted criticising the organisation for its close association with Moazzam Begg. At issue, she says, are his alleged sympathies with the Taliban in Afghanistan and, through the Guantánamo prisoners campaign Cageprisoners, his work on behalf of detained al-Qaida activists.
In his defence, a copy of a letter sent to the Sunday Times posted on the Cageprisoners site, Begg distances himself from the Taliban by drawing attention to his criticism of their human rights abuses, while saying that he has “advocated for engagement and dialogue with the Taliban well before our own government took the official position of doing the same”. Begg also claims the Sunday Times gave a partial and misleading account of Cageprisoners’ activity and its relationship with Amnesty.
Ironically enough, Amnesty has been campaigning to alert public opinion to the dangers of “reconciliation with the Taliban”.
Sahgal herself has a long history of activism on human rights, women’s rights and the dangers posed to both by religious fundamentalism. While Sahgal wholeheartedly supported the Amnesty campaign against the illegal detention and torture of Muslim men at Guantánamo, she raised pertinent anxieties about Amnesty’s close engagement with Begg internally several times without success. She pointed out the obvious but significant fact that being a victim of human rights violations does not automatically make you a defender of human rights, the dangers in eliding the two and the need for Amnesty to maintain a distance from individuals whose attitude to the Taliban could undermine otherwise excellent work done by Amnesty on violence against women.
Part of a longer article by Rahila Gupta at http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2010/feb/09/amnesty-sahgal-rights-row
For more articles go to http://www.human-rights-for-all.org/
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