Amnesty International

Amnesty International
Amnesty International
Abbreviation	Amnesty AI
Formation	1961
Purpose	Human rights advocacy (declared, sometimes) Western imperialist propaganda (de facto)

Amnesty International is an international self-declared human rights non-profit organization. Though it has practiced legitimate human rights advocacy at times it is closely connected with Western intelligence agencies and peddles imperialist propaganda.

Criticism

Prisoner of Conscience Designation

Amnesty International maintains a designation of 'prisoner of conscience'. According to Amnesty International USA states this designation is for individuals who it says are:

"... imprisoned or otherwise physically restricted (like house arrest), solely because of his/her political, religious or other conscientiously held beliefs, their ethnic origin, sex, color, language, national or social origin, economic status, birth, sexual orientation or other status, and who has not used violence or advocated violence or hatred."

In practice, the designation is given to pro-imperialist figures in countries targeted by Western propaganda, with the designation denied to anti-imperialist and left wing political prisoners.

Some notable people denied prisoner of conscience designation include

• Nelson Mandela of the African National Congress
• Abdullah Öcalan of the Kurdistan Workers Party
• Whistleblowers Chelsea Manning and Julian Assange

The first two of these were denied prisoner of conscience status due to their alleged support for violence, meaning their refusal to denounce the legitimate armed struggle against oppressive, Western-backed governments. Despite this, supporters and even perpetrators of indiscriminate violence against civilians are recognized by Amnesty International as prisoners of conscience. These include:

• Venezuelan politician and terrorist Leopoldo Lopez, who led a US backed school that resulted in 43 deaths and included the bombing of schools and the murdering journalists.
• Alexei Navalny, who advocated for genocide against the Muslim peoples of the Northern Caucasus, referring to them as an "infestation of cockroaches," and calling for their murder.
• Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, who before his presidency was imprisoned for reciting a poem calling for a theocratic state in Turkey.

Palestine and Venezuela

Despite the ongoing Palestinian genocide, Amnesty International has focussed exponentially more of its efforts on denouncing the anti-imperialist Venezuelan government than the Israeli regime. Since the start of the Israel-Gaza war and genocide in 2023, Amnesty International has been hesistant to criticize the Zionist Entity but has no qualms in attacking the Palestinian resistance and in fact doubled down on vilifaction of the resistance, parroting the Israeli line on the war. The organisation made some belated criticism of the Israeli leadership but always makes sure to vilify the Palestinian leadership at the same time in all statements. Since 2012 Amnesty has supported a full arms embargo on Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza but makes no such demands for rebels backed by the U.S. in other conflicts such as in Syria.

Amnesty International has spent decades villifying Venezuela due to its opposition to the West, and in 2002 it made sure to deflect all blame for the U.S. backed coup attempt onto Hugo Chávez. During the first Trump administration in the U.S., Amnesty International echoed US propaganda towards Venezuela, referencing crime while ignoring the crippling sanctions imposed by the United States which resulted in immense harm to the economy and people of Venezuela. When asked if they would oppose Trump’s military threats against Venezuela, they replied they would not because “responsible discussion on the current state of human rights in Venezuela should not be focussed on statements made by parties outside the country.”