Comment: In a September 2016 report, Amnesty International claimed that the Sudanese government was waging chemical warfare against its own people. Western media ran with it as fact, but African media found it to be highly dubious and based on hearsay. The following Sudanese report reflects on Amnesty International's history as a propaganda arm of the British government.


amnesty international
The UK Supreme Court issued a verdict on 4th of July 1995 that "Amnesty is banned from using British broadcasting." The court ruling came 32 years after the establishment of the international organization.

However, despite the court verdict, Amnesty is still using the international service of the British Broadcasting Corporation, which is funded by the British Government, namely the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Amnesty, illegally, broadcasts programs directed at its international audience while its domestic British audience neither listens to nor watches it. Additionally, the organization intensively uses British printed media.

BBC International Service has never been far from this debacle. Amnesty International has frequently used the service to diffuse political propaganda and deliver its messages against political opponents all over the world, using both radio and TV. It has been a regular practice that Amnesty, under aegis of the British Foreign Office, intensifies its campaign. It may not be a surprise to many that the list of British Government opponents is the same list of Amnesty opponents.

The court's ruling against Amnesty was well received by British newspapers; the Daily Telegraph, the Times, and the Independent published stories and op-eds in their 5th July August 1995 issues, while the Independent published a legal op-ed on 1st of August 1995, in which it endorsed the supreme court's ruling against Amnesty.

The court ruling against Amnesty was a "death certificate" for the organization as a "human rights organization". Amnesty, a political organization, was established in 1963 during the cold war era. Its HQ is in London, UK, while it has 8,000 branches in 70 countries around the world. It receives support from the UK and British NGOs, Western countries and Western NGOs as well. This is why the UK and its European allies hastily support, and even adopt, reports made by the organization. So, when Amnesty published its 29th September 2016 report accusing the Sudanese government of using chemical weapons in Darfur, many Western NGOs accepted the report's findings and became part of the campaign against Sudan.

As Amnesty enjoys "observer status" at the United Nations, it receives support from the international body. It also a declared political partnership with the British Foreign Office during the tenure of Foreign Minister Robin Cook.

Following the collapse of communism and end of cold war, Amnesty immediately shifted its "political compass" from communism onto those countries calling for independence of political decision-making. This demonstrates that Amnesty is little more than a British Foreign Office tool to serve its own agenda; the agenda of the organization is exactly similar to the agenda set by British diplomacy. The recent report of Amnesty on Darfur is just part of the negative British role against Sudan.

The recently disclosed type of nexus between Amnesty and the British Government reveals that the former was originally a clandestine intelligence organ affiliated with the latter. Amnesty is a British clone of the American National Endowment for Democracy, which preceded Amnesty in working under the umbrella of the US State Department. Therefore, Amnesty is not just a pressure group; it is, in essence, a British intelligence organization and forms part of the British government's decision-making system.