Britannia Radio

The human wrongs industry spits out one of its own

SUNDAY, 14TH FEBRUARY 2010

The true intolerant, illiberal, unjust face of the ‘human rights’ industry has been on graphic display in recent days in the case of Gita Sahgal. Last week Sahgal, head of Amnesty’s gender unit, spoke of her concerns about Amnesty’s relationship with Cageprisoners, an organisation headed by Moazzam Begg, a former Guantanamo internee. Since his release in 2005, Begg has spoken alongside Amnesty at a number of events and accompanied it to a meeting at Downing Street. Saghal wrote to Amnesty’s leaders:

‘To be appearing on platforms with Britain’s most famous supporter of the Taliban, whom we treat as a human rights defender, is a gross error of judgment.

Her views have been endorsed by Amnesty’s Asia Pacific director Sam Zarifi, who has said in an internal email to his staff:

‘We should be clear that some of Amnesty’s campaigning ... did not always sufficiently distinguish between the rights of detainees to be free from torture and arbitrary detention, and the validity of their views’.

As a result of her concerns being made public, however, Saghal was suspended by Amnesty from her job. And now the Sunday Times reports:

To say the past week has been a difficult one for Sahgal would be an understatement. She fears for her own and her family’s safety. She has —temporarily at least — lost her job and found it almost impossible to find anyone to represent her in any potential employment case. She rang round the human rights lawyers she knows, all of whom have declined to help citing a conflict of interest. ‘Although it is said that we must defend everybody no matter what they’ve done, it appears that if you’re a secular, atheist, Asian British woman, you don’t deserve a defence from our civil right firms,’ she says wryly.

The point is that her real crime has been to expose the extraordinary sympathy by white ‘liberals’, committed to ‘human rights’, for Islamic jihadists -- who are committed to the extinction of human rights. This love-in by white ‘liberals’ for theocratic totalitarianism is then further reflected by the totalitarian manner in which they themselves deal with anyone who opposes them. That’s why, despite her long career as a committed ‘human rights’ activist, Saghal now finds that ‘human rights’ lawyers will not defend her rights against Amnesty’s behaviour. So Sahgal now finds herself out in the cold.

Thus the human wrongs industry spits out one of its own -- a microcosm of the frightening harm and injustice it continues to wreak upon the western world which, under cover of the mind-bending rhetoric of 'human rights', it is helping deliver to its enemies.