It's always a pleasure to read Jonathan Power's independent-minded column in Taipei Times. Here he applies the same qualities of intelligence and thoughtfulness to a history of Amnesty International, 40 years old last year.
The most surprising feature of Amnesty's early history was that its gambit of bombarding governments with letters pointing to the fate of individual political prisoners actually worked.
Presumably the governments felt that they had more to gain from the favorable publicity any releases would generate than they had from continuing to hold the prisoners, quite often minor figures whose cases had effectively been forgotten.
Amnesty was at the beginning a characteristically British set-up -- "parochial, low-key, frugal, committed to working across ideological, religious and racial boundaries" -- but it quickly became amazingly successful on the international scene.
With currently 357 full-time staff, and an annual income of ?19.5 million, it still may not be one of the world's bigger NGOs, but with its worldwide army of volunteer helpers it has had an influence out of all proportion to its nominal size.
Power's main thesis is that Amnesty's evolution from an organization devoted to securing freedom for prisoners of conscience to one that also expresses opinions on wider issues of international justice has been inevitable. Its shock press release in 1999 criticizing NATO's intervention in Kosovo (an action intended to defend the population from human rights violations) symbolizes both this wider engagement in world affairs, and a continuing determination to stand apart from all governments, even democratic ones.
Amnesty's course has not been without its hiccups. The first hurdle was the conflict with its founder, lawyer Peter Benenson, over his apparent acceptance of British government funding for the organization's work in central Africa. The dispute led to his resignation in 1967.
Next came the organization's involvement with the government of what was West Germany in the early 1980s over conditions in which the Baader-Meinof gang were being held. Amnesty, Power feels, was inappropriately drawn into defending members of a terrorist group that shared none of its aims or principles, and who were being held in conditions that, by world standards, were acceptable in the circumstances.
Fledgling organizations inevitably come up against problems of definition. Whether Amnesty should adopt someone who had advocated violence as a prisoner of conscience was one such issue. This had to be decided on in 1964 in the case of Nelson Mandela, held in detention by the South African authorities. He had originally been adopted by Amnesty two years earlier when facing charges of organizing strikes, but his later support for violent forms of opposition posed a problem. Amnesty decided to poll all its members. The result was a decision simply to protest against the conditions in which he was being held, a compromise that subsequently proved useful in other, parallel cases.
A whole chapter of the book is devoted to China. Power's view is that human rights in China, though improved, remain very poor, and that the West has been too anxious to placate Beijing for trade purposes. China needs trade with the West far more than the West needs trade with China, he asserts, pointing out that China currently accounts for only 1.7 percent of all Western exports.
He also considers fallacious the idea that improved economic conditions in China will result in better human rights. Hitler, Mussolini and Franco, he points out, not to mention a host of South American dictators, presided over economies far more advanced than China's. Increased wealth on its own will not necessarily result in freedom.
Power also believes that China is no superpower waiting in the wings. He cites fashions in Western political circles that touted Brazil as the next superpower in the 1970s, and Japan in the 1980s. China, he argues, has as many flaws as these countries have, and like them will not emerge as a world giant in the forseeable future. He quotes General de Gaulle's celebrated dictum on Brazil, and applies it to China: "It has great potential, and always will."
His conclusion is that a balanced mix of approaches to China represents the West's best policy. "... the continuous drumming and tattoo of human rights lobbying, at the same time as trading, commercial and educational links are being strengthened. Over time this might work."
India, Power thinks, is more likely to assume a superpower role in Asia, in part exactly because it does have in place an infrastructure of democratic and legal rights on which a modern high-tech state can be built.
Sri Lanka is a country where Amnesty has had a measure of success, leading to the government outlawing the use of torture by the army, investigating and prosecuting violators even in times of conflict.
Elsewhere the book focuses on Guatemala (Amnesty's most difficult area of operation), the Pinochet case, the UK's history in Northern Ireland, and Nigeria. Power has long been a personal friend of former Amnesty prisoner of conscience Olusegun Obasanjo, now Nigeria's president, and there is a long interview with him.
China is again prominent in Power's final chapter, an upbeat personal credo in which he argues that the world is a far better place now than it was even a few decades ago. Both China and Russia, he insists, are today essentially inward-looking, and not planning any international military conflict.
Moreover, democracy, and with it a concern for human rights, has extended in the last half century to two thirds of the world's countries. He cites the New York-based Freedom House when claiming that there now exists the largest number of politically free countries in the history of mankind. And thanks to what he calls "transformation in Nigeria and Indonesia," the majority of the world's Muslims, far from advocating sectarian terror, now live in countries with democratic systems.
This, then, is a cogent and thoughtful, if necessarily selective, analysis. The book has a brief introduction by Paul McCartney. The two were at school together in Liverpool, UK, in the late 1950s, just a few years before Amnesty International was launched.
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