Some
troubling connections contradict Amnesty’s image as a benevolent
defender of human rights and reveal key figures at the organization
during its early years to be less concerned with human dignity and
more concerned with the dignity of the US and UK’s image in the
world.
by
Alexander Rubinstein
Part
2 - A conflicted beginning
Amnesty’s
Benenson, an avowed anti-communist, hailed from a military
intelligence background. He pledged that Amnesty would be independent
of government influence and would represent prisoners in the East,
West, and global South alike.
But
during the 1960s the U.K. was withdrawing from its colonies and the
Foreign Office and Colonial Office were hungry for information from
human-rights activists about the situations on the ground. In 1963,
the Foreign Office instructed its operatives abroad to provide
“discreet support” for Amnesty’s campaigns.
Also
that year, Benenson wrote to Colonial Office Minister Lord Lansdowne
a proposal to prop up a “refugee counsellor” on the border of
present-day Botswana and apartheid South Africa. That counsel was to
assist refugees only, and explicitly avoid aiding anti-apartheid
activists.
“Communist
influence should not be allowed to spread in this part of Africa, and
in the present delicate situation, Amnesty International would wish
to support Her Majesty’s Government in any such policy,”
Benenson wrote. The next year, Amnesty ceased its support for
anti-apartheid icon and the first president of a free South Africa,
Nelson Mandela.
The
following year, in 1964, Benenson enlisted the Foreign Office’s
assistance in obtaining a visa to Haiti. The Foreign Office secured
the visa and wrote to its Haiti representative Alan Elgar saying it
“support[ed] the aims of Amnesty International.” There,
Benenson went undercover as a painter, as Minister of State Walter
Padley told him prior to his departure that “We shall have to be
a little careful not to give the Haitians the impression that your
visit is actually sponsored by Her Majesty’s Government.”
The New
York Times exposed the ruse, leading some officials to claim
ignorance; Elgar, for example, said he was “shocked by
Benenson’s antics.” Benenson apologized to Minister Padley,
saying “I really do not know why the New York Times, which is
generally a responsible newspaper, should be doing this sort of thing
over Haiti.”
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