Amnesty International is a very controversial organization. Now this organization has started unethically meddling into internal affairs of Bangladesh due to heavy pressure and persuasion by Irene Khan, first cousin of Zubaida Rahman, wife of Tarique Rahman, a convicted terrorist and leader of Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP). In a recent statement, Amnesty International has indirectly called upon Bangladesh authorities to allow members and activists of Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP) in continuing terrorist activities and even went further by stating that the members of law enforcement agencies should remain silent on such notorious actions of the BNP.
Criticism of Amnesty International includes claims of selection bias, as well as ideology and foreign policy bias against either non-Western countries or Western-supported countries. Governments that have criticized Amnesty International (AI) include those of Israel, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, China, Vietnam, Russia, Chile and the United States, which have complained about Amnesty International for what they assert constituted one-sided reporting, or a failure to treat threats to security as a mitigating factor. The actions of these governments—and of other governments critical of AI—have been the subject of human rights concerns voiced by Amnesty.
The Catholic Church has also criticized Amnesty for its stance on abortion, particularly in Catholic-majority countries.
Amnesty has been criticized for paying some of its staff high salaries. An investigation on workplace environment was commissioned by Amnesty International from KonTerra and released in 2019, and indicated that a toxic work environment is present at the organization. Other investigations on institutional racism were commissioned by Amnesty International UK from HPO Global and released in 2022, which identified institutional racism present in the organization.
Allegations of anti-Western bias
In 2005, Amnesty International claimed that the United States was a human rights offender. The White House rejected these allegations, stating that they were unsupported by facts.
Russian dissident Pavel Litvinov has said of AI’s criticism of the US: “[B]y using hyperbole and muddling the difference between repressive regimes and the imperfections of democracy, Amnesty’s spokesmen put its authority at risk. US human rights violations seem almost trifling in comparison with those committed by Cuba, North Korea, or Pakistan”.
In the foreword to Amnesty International’s Report 2005, the Secretary General, Irene Khan, referred to the Guantánamo Bay prison as “the gulag of our times, entrenching the practice of arbitrary and indefinite detention in violation of international law. Trials by military commissions have made a mockery of justice and due process.” In the subsequent press conference, she added:
“If Guantanamo evokes images of Soviet repression, ‘ghost detainees’ – or the incommunicado detention of unregistered detainees – bring back the practice of ‘disappearances’ so popular with Latin American dictators in the past.
In August 2015, The Times reported that Yasmin Hussein, then Amnesty’s director of faith and human rights and previously its head of international advocacy and a prominent representative at the United Nations, had “undeclared private links to men alleged to be key players in a secretive network of global Islamists”, including the Muslim Brotherhood and Hamas. Hussein’s husband, Wael Musabbeh and a Bradford community trust, of which both Musabbeh and Hussein were directors, were alleged by the United Arab Emirates to be part of a financial and ideological network linking the Muslim Brotherhood to its affiliate in the UAE, which the UAE government in 2013 accused of trying to overthrow the government.
More about Irene Khan
In February 2011, newspaper stories in the UK revealed that Khan had received a payment of £533,103 from Amnesty International following her resignation from the organization on December 31, 2009, a fact pointed to from Amnesty’s records for the 2009–2010 financial year.
The sum paid to her was in excess of four times her annual salary of £132,490. The deputy secretary general, Kate Gilmore, who also resigned in December 2009, received an ex-gratia payment of £320,000. Peter Pack, the chairman of Amnesty’s International Executive Committee (IEC), initially stated on 19 February 2011: “The payments to outgoing secretary general Irene Khan shown in the accounts of AI (Amnesty International) Ltd for the year ending March 31, 2010 include payments made as part of a confidential agreement between AI Ltd and Irene Khan” and that “It is a term of this agreement that no further comment on it will be made by either party”.
