In the shared kitchen of a cheap hotel called Hotel Gut in Kramatorsk, the administrative centre of Ukraine’s war-torn Donetsk oblast, an angry argument is developing in late May.
Its focal point is 50-year-old Amnesty International staffer Donatella Rovera, who just arrived (along with a small entourage) to write a report on war crimes.
She had a pretty public disagreement with a team of Western reporters who are covering the front line from a distance of around 20 kilometres.
They are concerned about the precise content of Rovera, an Islingtonian with flame-colored hair”report.” ,’s
Members of Hotel Gut’s resident press corps are persuaded she wants to use Amnesty’s platform to argue that the Ukrainian forces attempting to halt Vladimir Putin’s invading army are also the actual bad guys in this nasty fight since they are raping and pillaging their way across the area.
Why so? Rovera, however, never stops griping that nearby, in an abandoned college building, Ukrainian troops seek sanctuary from the constant shelling.
She seems to believe that this is a war crime since it puts people at danger. Others are opposed.
There is an uprising of voices.
Tom Mutch, a New Zealand war journalist active in the conflict in May, now remembers that the woman “continued repeating that sending military in a civilian area breaches international humanitarian law.”
“This is absolutely untrue.” But she resisted accepting that she may be mistaken when others attempted to explain why.
Strangely, in the eyes of spectators, Rovera continued by asserting that Ukraine was compelled by the Geneva Convention to move its forces from metropolitan centres (which Russia is attempting to take) to “forested regions” nearby.
According to American writer Caleb Larson, “She appeared to have no concept how combat works or how rules are administered.”
This isn’t the 18th century, when you would gather your forces on an open plain and face off. I couldn’t believe Amnesty was putting this information out there.
Larson writes that Rovera had “the most amazing ego” along with “deep stupidity” as hostilities intensified, at one point seemingly confusing heavy artillery with the sound of adjacent mortar fire.
She then began teaching security personnel for a news organisation who had served in the French Foreign Legion and Royal Marines about how she was better informed since she had travelled to more war areas than they had. Astonishingly patronising.
Canadian Neil Hauer, a third witness, came to the conclusion that Rovera had travelled to Donetsk with the goal of writing a report that was negative of Ukraine.
He claims that it was evident from their chats that she had goals. “It was just amazing to see.” A degree of conceit, disdain, and arrogance that would be hard to duplicate.
Those worries have come true in full two months later. Rovera’s journey to Kramatorsk yielded results, which Amnesty celebrated by issuing a “extended press release” on August 4.
It included the startling assertion that Ukraine had purposefully “placed people in harm’s way by building bases and operating military systems in populous residential areas, including in schools and hospitals.”
The UN paper said as fact that such military strategies “violate international humanitarian law” and in essence blamed a government attempting to oppose an invading force of using its civilians as human shields.
Additionally, it charged Ukraine with improperly evacuating citizens from several metropolitan locations.
On a number of fundamental factual issues, the allegations seem to be incorrect.
Yet the Kremlin applauded loudly its shameful anti-Western posture, sending diplomats to a UN conference with the report in hand and the Russian Mission in Geneva tweeting that the “findings” support bombing cities and towns.
In their report, they said that “when a civilian [home] is exploited for military reasons, it becomes a suitable target for a precision attack.”
It’s understandable why a massive political controversy is now intensifying and Amnesty is being pressured by many people to rescind the report and provide an apology.
Volodymyr Zelensky, the president of Ukraine, accused the human rights organisation of trying to “transfer blame from the attacker to the victim,” while Dmytro Kuleba, the minister of international affairs, claimed Rovera’s report “distorts facts and strengthens Russia’s misinformation operations.”
The head of Amnesty’s Ukraine office, Oksana Pokalchuk, resigned in disgust in the meantime, accusing senior management of a flagrant failure to take “proper steps to protect the interests of the people for whom the organisation works and the entire human rights movement,” and referring to the report as a “tool for Russian propaganda.”
At least 60 members of Amnesty Norway have resigned, and protests have been conducted outside the organization’s headquarters in Prague. In a statement released last night, the Canadian branch said that the report’s writers “failed on multiple fronts.”
Per Wastberg, a co-founder of Swedish Amnesty in 1963 and a member of the Nobel literature committee, has also announced his resignation, stating, “I have been a member for nearly 60 years.”
I’m calling it quits on a protracted and beneficial collaboration because of Amnesty International’s remarks about the conflict in Ukraine.
The main claim of Amnesty’s study, that Ukraine is violating international law, has been refuted by a number of legal experts as being untrue.
They remind out that participants to a war are required to strive to safeguard civilians under a 1977 addition to the Geneva Convention.
The legislation specifies that, given the military environment, they may only do this “to the utmost degree practicable.”
Senior research fellow at the Royal United Services Institute Jack Watling is one of the professionals who mentions this crucial point.
The study from Amnesty International, he said last week, “demonstrates a deficient comprehension of the rules of armed conflict.”
Amnesty International “got the law wrong,” according to Marc Garlasco, a United Nations war crimes investigator who specialises in minimising civilian injury.
He explains: “Ukraine is allowed to station military in places it is defending, particularly in urban conflict.” There isn’t a strict rule against it. Amnesty International erred greatly.
Truth Hounds, an NGO that looks into war crimes, and its legal expert Dmytro Koval adds: “International law really provides a broad variety of choices that enable placement of military personnel in cities.”
The Russian military will undoubtedly be encouraged to assault civilian targets by this revelation. It will result in the death of people. so on.
When the Daily Mail questioned Amnesty about its response to these and other criticisms as well as which specific law it believed Ukraine had broken, Amnesty remained silent.
In fact, it seemed to be unable to locate a legal professional to speak in its favour.
A spokeswoman stated: “Our analysis concentrated on sites kilometres distant from the conflict and where other choices existed for the military, not on the frontlines or urban warfare.”
Agnes Callamard, the organization’s secretary general, is now busy shooting the messenger despite demands for her resignation.
She made an astonishingly dim-witted statement in which she haughtily accused “social media mobs and trolls” of criticising Amnesty’s efforts.
It’s strange, not to mention quite hurtful, to characterise the several legal experts who have called the study shoddy and erroneous, as well as the entirely honourable Amnesty supporters and staff who are now quitting in protest.
However, this is not the first time Callamard’s group has defended the Kremlin in recent months.
Alexei Navalny, the imprisoned Russian dissident who is arguably the most famous political prisoner in the world, had his status as a “prisoner of conscience” scandalously removed by Amnesty back in February after a coordinated campaign by pro-Russian trolls pointing out that he had previously made racist and homophobic remarks.
It took Amnesty three months to do a remorseful U-turn.
The Navalny incident, according to some detractors, illustrated how today’s liberal institutions are being threatened by wokery and cancel culture.
Others saw it as proof of the Kremlin’s continued ability to weaponize the Left’s useful idiots, who now run Amnesty and almost all similar charities.
So how did it get to this point? What caused a once-respected behemoth of human rights to become a propaganda juggernaut for Vladimir Putin?
In fact, this catastrophe has been in the works for years. Because Amnesty may be linked to the collapse of the Berlin Wall for its plunge into what one critic last week called as a “moral bankruptcy.”
After London attorney Peter Benenson read a Sunday newspaper article about two Portuguese students who had been jailed for seven years for making a toast to freedom, he famously launched the organisation in 1961 to aid “prisoners of conscience.”
He made the decision to organise a group of like-minded letter-writers who would constantly write to governments on behalf of those who were imprisoned or mistreated because of their political or religious beliefs.
Amnesty, which adopted a candle enclosed in barbed wire as its logo because “it is better to light a candle than to curse the darkness,” quickly established chapters all over the globe.
Absolute political neutrality, which required local branches to sponsor three political prisoners—one from a NATO member nation, one from a Warsaw Pact nation, and one from the Third World—was part of what made it so popular.
But when the Cold War came to an end, the number of imprisoned dissidents dramatically decreased.
Like many nonprofit organisations, Amnesty spent the Blair administration attempting to fill the void by committing to a broad range of more general concerns.
Most of which had absolutely nothing to do with its original mandate. They were all leftist.
For instance, it started advocating for abortion and opposing the death penalty in the 2000s.
Amnesty announced its own war on poverty in 2011 as well. It endorsed decriminalising prostitution in 2015 (to the dismay of anti-trafficking campaigners, including actress Meryl Streep).
Today, it advocates for a variety of hot-button issues, including police brutality, corporal punishment, and the deportation of refugees, as well as climate change and the arms trade.
Its yearly report on human rights abuses throughout the globe now exhibits an odd, though painfully inevitable, antipathy for the West.
It devotes three pages to detailing UK human rights abuses, but just two to the situation in North Korea, perhaps the most restrictive government in the whole world.
The United States get six pages, while communist Cuba receives two and Saudi Arabia’s head-choppers just four.
Despite this, the Amnesty brand is very profitable, bringing in £300 million a year from its 10 million supporters.
It had 544 workers in the latest year for which figures are available, 288 of them in the UK, 158 of whom made more than £60,000, and 17 of whom had six-figure wages. The general’s salary was £223,791.
The Left has long held the majority of the top positions in the UK. Kate Allen, a former Labour councillor and 20-year spouse of Ken Livingstone, served as its director from 2000 until last year.
And sometimes, Amnesty’s obsessive adherence to Leftist ideals has resulted in significant PR issues.
For instance, Gita Sahgal, the director of Amnesty’s women’s rights section, was suspended in 2010 after she criticised the organization’s support for Cage, an Islamist lobby group formed by Moazzam Begg, a former Guantanamo detainee she labelled “Britain’s most renowned supporter of the Taliban.” In recent years, Amnesty’s backing of Julian Assange has drawn criticism (a man accused of rape).
A odd PR statement that was released in reaction to abortion restrictions in the U.S. earlier this year angered several people since it echoed the trans lobby’s talking points and claimed that “It’s not only women who may get pregnant.”
It’s women, girls, and the millions of other people who are capable of becoming pregnant.
Naturally, the Middle East has been its most problematic area of operation, where it has often been accused of anti-Semitism a la Corbyn due to its apparent enmity against Israel.
A 200-page report by the lobbying organisation Jewish Human Rights Watch accused it of having a “obsession” with Israel that was “clearly driven by an unnatural bias, deep hostility, and antisemitism” in 2019.
The report was released following a commotion in which Amnesty had erroneously claimed that Israel had fired rockets at a Palestinian human rights office (in fact, it had been accidentally hit by Islamic militants).
It made the case that since Amnesty abolished its long-standing policy prohibiting employees from working in their home countries in 2002, its ranks had come to be predominated by activists, many of whom were hopelessly biassed.
The document tracked the social media activity of employees working in the region.
In support of this, it displayed a recent tweet from Sahar Mandour, Amnesty International’s “researcher” on Lebanon, that read: “F*** Israel; long live Palestine!”
A tweet praising Islamic militants as “martyrs” with the line “There is nothing better than to enter paradise with a machine gun on your shoulder” was circulated by Hind Khoudary, a former “research consultant” for Amnesty.
Nadine Moawad, the Middle East “communications manager” for Amnesty, also called for “the full disbanding of the Israeli State.”
In 2012, Kristyan Benedict, who was the group’s campaigns manager at the time, tweeted about three Jewish MPs: “Louise Ellman, Robert Halfon, and Luciana Berger walk into a bar.
Each orders a round of B52s [long-range bomber jets] #Gaza.” This was due to the partisan climate in the UK at the time.
Despite the fact that the article was generally seen as anti-Semitic, he was later elevated to the position of crisis response manager.
Amnesty courted controversy once again six months ago when it released a report labelling Israel a “apartheid state.” The group’s paper was harshly criticised by members of its own personnel who thought it was full of factual inaccuracies, similar to their more recent work on Ukraine.
Molly Malekar, a local executive director, called it a “punch in the gut,” and Yariv Mohar, a senior colleague, said it made him feel “shocked and angry.”
Now, of course, Amnesty, the ostensible champion of human rights, is accused of disseminating similarly careless and reckless content that supports Vladimir Putin, a guy whose soldiers are actively committing genocide.
The aforementioned Donatella Rovera recently featured as a “expert witness” in a CBS programme that incorrectly stated that just 30% of the weaponry the West gave to Kyiv were making it to the front lines while debate flared over the allegations of Ukrainian “war crimes.”
She lamented, “We have no means of knowing where these weapons go.” The broadcaster was compelled to retract the 30% figure because it was false.
A few weeks prior, Rovera complained on Twitter that “taxpayers in Europe, the USA, and other countries” are now “paying hundreds of billions of dollars in military and humanitarian aid while western companies profit,” a line that might have been lifted from the Kremlin’s PR playbook as well as that of hard-Left cranks Stop The War.
Again, Mr Putin was surely nodding in satisfaction. Consequently, a once-honorable organisation that was established to restrain the excesses of totalitarian states has found itself repeatedly repeating their perverted propaganda.