Recently, in an on-line forum discussion on johnquiggin.com, claims by Amnesty International that the Syrian Government of President Bashar al-Assad had engaged in human rights abuses were #comment-246556">cited.
In fact, in 1990 Amnesty International peddled the infamous 'incubator babies' lie (see Appendix below for embedded 2:47min broadcast) and has repeatedly been complicit in violations of human rights far greater than those claimed violations of human rights to which it had objected.
The death toll in Iraq since the invasion of 1991 that was facilitated by the 'incubator babies' has been estimated be as high as 3.3 million including 750,000 children. This seems consistent with another estimate of the death toll since the 2003 invasion of 1,455,590. Other estimates give death tolls from these wars of at least several hundreds of thousands.
So, in the case of Iraq, Amnesty International's actions have resulted in a count of deaths of several orders of magnitude greater than those it had alleged to have occurred and had objected to.
Since the first Iraq War, Amnesty International has similarly provided a propaganda cover for other acts aggression by the the United States and its allies. These include the invasion of Libya in 2011, the terrorist war against Syria from March 2011, in which as many as 195,00 may have died, and the coup in Ukraine and the regime's subsequent war against the ethnic Russians of East Ukraine. In the case of Ukraine, whilst Amnesty has acknowledged that the Ukraine regime has violated human rights, it has also fabricated claims of human rights abuses by the East Ukraine self-defence forces against the very people upon whom they rely for support. See Violence and Atrocities: Amnesty International and the War in Ukraine (23/7/14) by Vladislav Gulevich and Amnesty International Diverts Attention Away from Ukrainian Armed Forces Responsibility for War Crimes (10/9/14) by David Garrett.
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James Sinnamon
Mon, 2014-10-27 00:08
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Amnesty complicit in 100s of 1000s of deaths since 1990
This is a #comment-246590">contribution to a discussion about Gough Whitlam on johnquiggin.com .
JD @ #32 #comment-246556">wrote:
Have you forgotten that by peddling the Kuwaiti 'incubator babies' lie in 1990 Amnesty International national facilitated over two decades of war and sanctions against Iraq? This caused the deaths of many hundreds of thousands of Iraqis. One estimate had put the total death toll since 1990 as high as 3,300,000 including 750,000 children.
I have put together some information at candobetter.net/AboutAmnestyInternational. Be sure to watch Canadian peace activist Barrie Zwicker demolish the 1990 'incubator babies' lie used to justify that war. Please feel welcome to post further comments to that page or to here.
JD wrote:
88% of the 74% eligible voters voted on 3 June 2014 for Bashar al-Assad - a far greater endorsement than that given to any of the Western 'leaders' hostile to the Syrian government.
Can't you see that if at the elections of 3 June 2014, the Syrian people gave President Bashar al-Assad a far greater endorsement than has been given to any of the 'leaders' of Western governments hostile to Syria that we should be even more skeptical of Amnesty's claims that that government is brutally repressing its people?
One reason for al-Assad's popularity is the government programs, including free education, including tertiary education.
Of course, this is what Gough also tried to do. However, Paul Keating, who pretends to bear the mantle of Gough's legacy, started the privatisation of tertiary education with the introduction of HECS, the Higher Education 'Contribution' Scheme in 1989 (as I have been advised elsewhere on this blog). Let's not forget that Keating and Hawke also sent our armed forces to participate in the illegal war against Iraq in 1991 and implemented the illegal sanctions that caused so many deaths that I referred to above. As a result of that and the subsequent war of 2003, 1.3 million Iraqis fled to Syria according to Wikipedia.
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