Amnesty International’s reputation is at stake, confirms Ruud Bosgraaf, spokesman for Amnesty Netherlands. “Reliability and credibility, that is our capital. We are now suffering damage on those points, especially if the errors are not corrected. We want maximum openness.”
The Dutch branch of the global human rights organization distances itself from the international administration in London. In a press release published Tuesday Amnesty Netherlands expresses great concern about the concealment of criticism of Amnesty. “To ensure that the broken confidence in Amnesty’s work can be restored, immediate clarification of all outstanding questions is necessary.” With approximately 260,000 members, Amnesty Netherlands is one of the largest departments.
Read also:“You can’t just say that a Ukrainian tank is too close to a school”
The reason for the current dissatisfaction with the leadership in London is into a disclosure The New York Times from April 28. This shows that the board wanted to keep a critical investigation of a controversial Amnesty publication secret. For an organization that calls on governments for transparency and administrative integrity, the issue is especially painful.
The case started with an extensive press release dated August 4, 2022. In five pages, Amnesty claimed that the Ukrainian army puts its own citizens in unnecessary danger by using schools and hospitals as military bases, and by launching attacks against the Russian army from locations where many civilians live. Civilian buildings therefore become military targets.
According to Amnesty, Ukraine thus violates international law of war, because all parties in an armed conflict must make every effort to separate military targets from densely populated areas. Agnès Callamard, Amnesty’s Secretary General since April 2021, was firm: “We have established a pattern where the Ukrainian army endangers civilians and violates the laws of war when they operate in populated areas.”
Read also: Why did Amnesty use AI images, and not real photos of the protests?
Surprise and anger
Internationally, and especially in Ukraine, the press release was met with surprise and anger. Not because Ukraine was treated critically. If Ukrainian soldiers are guilty of war crimes, they should be prosecuted, just like Russian soldiers. Because the allegation was insufficiently substantiated. There was no underlying research, just the press release. The Ukrainian section of Amnesty had not been consulted, and the Ukrainian government had very little rebuttal. President Zelensky said Amnesty “is trying to shift responsibility from aggressor to victim”.
Three days after the press release Amnesty said We deeply regret the “disturbance and anger our press release has caused.” At the same time, the report said, “we fully support our findings.” A week later, Amnesty announced an investigation by independent experts.
Amnesty Netherlands has since asked the board in London several times to share this research with the national chapters. That didn’t happen; like the rest of the world, Amnesty members were unable to read the report until then The New York Times made it public last week. The report was already ready on February 2, 2023. Why didn’t Amnesty come out with it themselves? An Amnesty spokesperson in London says the “intention was to share all findings once the full internal learning process was complete.” And does Amnesty still support the press release? The answer is evasive: “We are working to integrate the lessons from the experts’ report into our future working method.”
Also read about the reactions in Ukraine to Amnesty’s accusations
The research of five experts in the field of humanitarian law, little remains of Amnesty’s accusations. In nineteen pages they make it clear that Amnesty’s press release falls short in several respects. The working method is unclear, the legal terms are vague, the formulations are too strong. The (unintentional) suggestion that the Ukrainian army is responsible for civilian deaths in Ukraine stems from sloppy language.
In addition to the legal investigation, Amnesty also conducted an internal investigation into its own working methods and communication. According to the spokesman in London, this second study is almost ready and will then be published.
Read also this opinion piece on Russia and Ukraine
The Ukraine issue is the second case in a short time that Amnesty has played into the hands of the Kremlin. In February 2021, Amnesty stripped opposition politician Alexey Navalny of prisoner of conscience status for allegedly promoting violence. In May 2021, that decision was reversed, with an apology to Navalny. Unlike in that case, there are no indications in the press release about the Ukrainian army that Russian propaganda played a role. Another difference is that the Navalny error was quickly corrected, while the Ukraine error has been covered up and is therefore getting bigger.
Also read this article on violation of the laws of war in Ukraine
A version of this article also appeared in the May 4, 2023 issue.