United We Stand – Glass talks to Salil Shetty Secretary General of Amnesty international

United We Stand – Glass asks Amnesty International how their uniting of voices is bringing about remarkable results around the world

AMNESTY International is one of the largest and most powerful bodies promoting unity, equality and human rights in the world. They describe themselves best with their own mantra: “We are independent of any political ideology, economic interest or religion. No government is beyond scrutiny. No situation is beyond hope.” The organisation was founded by British lawyer Peter Benenson, who was outraged after reading about two Portuguese students who had been imprisoned for raising a toast to freedom. Benenson wrote a deeply moving article for the British newspaper The Observer in which he called upon ordinary people to stand up against this barbarism.

The article was reprinted around the world and set in motion a powerful new idea, that individuals, once united, could become an unstoppable force for justice and freedom. In setting out his mission statement he said, “Only when the last prisoner of conscience has been freed, when the last torture chamber has been closed, when the United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights is a reality for the world’s people, will our work be done.”

At a time of huge social rebellion against the materialism and individualism that the capitalism of the 50s had encouraged, Benenson’s idea of a global fraternity struck a chord with a vocal, politically active generation.

Today, Amnesty International boasts seven million members globally, all of whom are active in anything from signing petitions to writing letters to governments, attending peaceful protests, volunteering or making donations. In a bid to find out more, Glass speaks to Secretary General Salil Shetty about the mechanisms behind the vision.

Sherif Elsayed-Ali, Head of Refugee & Migrants’ Rights at Amnesty International, and Salil Shetty, Secretary
General of Amnesty International at a press conference in Beirut, Lebanon, for the launch of an
Amnesty International report on the global refugee crisis June 2015.

Amnesty International focuses on using public pressure to force governments to allow citizens their basic human rights and freedom, would that be accurate?
The way we describe ourselves is that we are a global movement of over seven million people, campaigning for human rights. We actually believe that the world would be a better place if, together, we take any injustice personally. The idea of taking injustice personally is very important for us because often people think that it is not their problem because somebody else is affected, but if everybody thinks that, it does not help anyone in the end.

What are the main tools you use for trying to implement change or bring about reactions?
We have a number of important tools at Amnesty International to achieve change. First and foremost is to get evidence from the ground. So if there is a violation, we have our own researchers who go there and investigate the facts. Because we are all about truth and power we have to make sure that the truth is based on hard facts and hard evidence. Often cases are contested by governments or corporations so we need to be very sure of our facts. We have to be independent, impartial and accurate.

Number two is the campaigning – media based campaigning and public mobilisation. We are a membership-based movement, so people on the ground campaign alongside people in parliament, whoever and whatever the case is about. The third is advocacy, it is when we speak face to face. It is not just about public, raising funds, or campaigning – we also have direct dialogues with leaders and policy makers, so we can persuade them face to face. Our work is a kind of a combination between media, campaigning and advocacy.

Amnesty International’s Secetary General, Salil Shetty (kneeling on left), light candles with victims and their families in Bhopal in November 2014 to mark the 30th anniversary of the Bhopal disaster by Union Carbide India Limited (UCIL).

How effective do you think the organisation is in achieving their aims?
Everybody is always trying to be more effective, so by no means I can say that we are at the maximum of our effectiveness because it is a constant, never-ending struggle to try to be more effective. In terms of results, because we have existed since 1961, we are a 54-year-old organisation, so there is a very long list of things that I can talk to you about where I feel we have had success. I think if I have to choose, one of the most important signature issues of Amnesty where our voice has been the loudest is the campaign to end the death penalty and state execution.

And one way of seeing our results is that when we started in 1961 there were only nine countries who were not executing people or using the death penalty. Only nine! Today the number is 140. There are only 190 countries in the world so I would say that it is quite a spectacular achievement. Of course we cannot say that only Amnesty is responsible; there are many factors, but there is no question that Amnesty is probably the most important campaigning voice in this space.

But our main goal is to fight for the release of political prisoners, or prisoners of conscience as they are also known. Amnesty is against prisoners of conscience – this is basically where governments do not like the opposition or any form of dissent and so use their authority to lock people up. So Amnesty has worked for decades for the release of people who have been imprisoned for no other reason except for their beliefs, their religion, their expression, etc. Of course, Amnesty does not support any kind of advocacy using violence for their beliefs. But as long as it is non-violent, Amnesty fights for their release.

You asked what effective changes have been made; there are thousands that have been released thanks to Amnesty campaigns. You may be aware of one of the big campaigns that we are fighting for Raif Badawi, the Saudi blogger who has been ordered to be flogged every week and to be locked up for 15 years. All of that because he wrote a blog on free thought. So there are many cases we are fighting for, and I would say that we have been very successful in releasing political prisoners. I think a massive example, one of the main successes we’ve had, was the Protective Edge campaign.

What it does is regulate the flow of arms, the stealing of conventional arms. Until now the world did not have an organisation at the same kind of level as the UN, which was preventing arms from reaching those who use them for human rights violations. To have such a regulation is a big achievement because – think of what happens in countries where people do not respect human rights. So for the first time we realised it, not only Amnesty, but we are one of the main partners.

One last example is the use of torture. It is one of the most used methods of the century, so Amnesty is fighting torture in front of the UN. We have a Stop Torture campaign running and every week, every month we have somebody who talks about the use of torture. You are probably aware that in 1997 we won the Nobel Peace Prize for our fight for human rights, and that was one of the key reasons.

That is one of the political fighting spaces: the political fighting space is where Amnesty is best known, but we also work in the economic domain. For example, very recently we were able to push Shell to give a compensation of £55 million in the Bodo Oil Spill case, where the oil spilt by Shell has led to massive human rights violations like environmental pollution which caused loss of lives and numerous health issues.

An Amnesty International vigil for Raif Badawi in Vienna, Austria. January 2015. The Saudi Arabian government sentanced Raif Badawi to 10 years in prison and 1,000 lashes in May 2014. He was convicted of insulting Islam through his writings and on his website, which was set up to encourage public debate

I didn’t actually realise that Amnesty was so far reaching in its work. For your strategies of lobbying and campaigning, this is where you rely on your members around the world to write to governments, to force them to release political prisoners. How effective is this? Because surely that government doesn’t really care of what other people think of them and that is why they behaved in such a terrible way to start with?
That is really the essence of Amnesty: you want to have people to gather around and make noise. If you have millions of people coming together, ordinary people coming together to make extraordinary changes – and I am personally shocked, because I have the privilege of visiting these prisoners who are locked up – it is astonishing what a difference it makes. Not only the morale and the hope that it creates for the political prisoners themselves, but it really instils a certain amount of protection, so even the prison guards who torture and beat their prisoners are much more careful. When they see that Amnesty supports those prisoners, they know that they are being watched globally. But I mentioned earlier that tens of thousands of prisoners have been released thanks to Amnesty campaigning.

You would be surprised that when you put pressure on a country that you think does not care at all – taking the case of Raif Badawi in Saudi Arabia, that they have actually stopped the flogging of Raif Badawi, they only flogged him the first weeks and then they stopped – it is not only because of the Amnesty campaign but no doubt it has made a huge difference knowing they are being watched.

We have some iconic cases also: I am sure you have heard of Aung San Suu Kyi, Bomoh Miang, etc. Aung San Suu Kyi was a prisoner of conscience for a very long time, and everybody said that the Burmese military would not care about the Amnesty campaign, but she was released and we do believe that the Amnesty campaign worked. She has been very vocal since then in thanking Amnesty for the consistent support and what a difference it made in her case.

Donatella Rovera, Amnesty International’s Senior Crisis Response Advisor, talking to refugees in Iraq. August , 2014

Do you think that even the worst dictatorships that do not seem to care at all what anyone thinks, that even they, deep down, do care that the world is watching them?
I am not saying that it works all the time because obviously each case is different. But I think the example that I gave is a good example. There have been countries which we felt did not really care about humanity, but our campaigns did make a difference. Because even now, in the case of Al Jazeera in Egypt – the journalist that the military arrested and Amnesty is campaigning for – you would think that the military in Egypt would not care but I think it does put pressure on them.

What do you think it is that makes them respond to that pressure? Because obviously they do not have to, there is no obligation, they could just ignore everything. A lot of these countries are already alienated from the rest of the world anyway. So why is it that they submit under the pressure?
China is a good example. You think that now they are an economic power they should not care about anything, but the facts are that more and more Chinese companies are starting to operate in Africa and other parts of the world. China is becoming a very important player on the global stage, so in the past when they were completely closed you could say that it did not a make a real difference but once they start engaging with the rest of the world, they do care about their reputation. It is not something that you can completely ignore. I am not saying that as soon as we start a campaign they are going to defend humanity, but I think sustained pressure helps.

Amnesty International members and supporters take action on the International Day in Support of
Victims of Torture, in London, June 26, 2015

Everybody has a breaking point.
Yes, it is not a bulletproof system. This is why it is important that we keep up the pressure. It’s easy to feel like this is not going anywhere, but I think the system is biased. We are not in and out, we keep pushing and spreading our reach. We know we have staff all over the world so that we are much closer to every issue. We have more people from a local context, because the thing that happened was that in a developing country people were saying that we only had a western point of view. Now we have offices and staff from that context.

What would you like to see achieved by the end of your tenure at Amnesty?
I feel extraordinarily proud that Amnesty International played such an important role in achieving a global Arms Trade Treaty. We campaigned for it for twenty years and we were accused of being unreal dreamers. That supposedly unachievable treaty came into force in 2014 and can ensure that weapons are not sold to those who may use them to carry out mass atrocities – a hugely important treaty, obviously. But it is still a long way from being implemented, as we can see every day. I hope that we see governments doing much more to ensure that the treaty becomes real in the years to come.

What I would like to have achieved is for Amnesty International to establish a strong ground presence in the global South with a growing membership and constituency – thus strengthening every aspect of our global human rights work.

by Nicola Kavanagh

From the Glass Archive – Issue 24 – Pride

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