Hate speech is a term with varied meaning and has no single, consistent definition. Cambridge Dictionary defines hate speech as "public speech that expresses hate or encourages violence towards a person or group based on something such as race, religion, sex, or sexual orientation". The Encyclopedia of the American Constitution
states that hate speech is "usually thought to include communications
of animosity or disparagement of an individual or a group on account of a
group characteristic such as race, color, national origin, sex,
disability, religion, or sexual orientation". Hate speech can include incitement based on social class or political beliefs. There is no single definition of what constitutes "hate" or
"disparagement". Legal definitions of hate speech vary from country to
country.
There has been much debate over freedom of speech, hate speech, and hate speech legislation. The laws of some countries describe hate speech as speech, gestures, conduct, writing, or displays that inciteviolence or prejudicial
actions against a group or individuals on the basis of their membership
in the group, or that disparage or intimidate a group or individuals on
the basis of their membership in the group. The law may identify
protected groups based on certain characteristics. In some countries, a victim of hate speech may seek redress under civil law, criminal law, or both. In the United States, what is usually labelled "hate speech" is constitutionally protected.
Early hate speech laws were enacted in the 1820s in France and 1851 in Prussia.
Starting in the 1940s and 50s, various American civil rights groups responded to the atrocities of World War II by advocating for restrictions on hateful speech targeting groups on the basis of race and religion. These organizations used group libel as a legal framework for
describing hate speech and addressing its harm. In his discussion of the
history of criminal libel, scholar Jeremy Waldron
states that these laws helped "vindicate public order, not just by
preempting violence, but by upholding against attack a shared sense of
the basic elements of each person's status, dignity, and reputation as a
citizen or member of society in good standing". A key legal victory for this view came in 1952 when group libel law was affirmed by the United States Supreme Court in Beauharnais v. Illinois. However, the group libel approach lost ground due to a rise in support
for individual rights within civil rights movements during the 60s. Critiques of group defamation laws are not limited to defenders of individual rights. Some legal theorists, such as critical race theorist
Richard Delgado, support legal limits on hate speech, but claim that
defamation is too narrow a category to fully counter hate speech.
Ultimately, Delgado advocates a legal strategy that would establish a
specific section of tort law for responding to racist insults, citing the difficulty of receiving redress under the existing legal system.
The rise of the internet and social media
has presented a new medium through which hate speech can spread. Hate
speech on the internet can be traced all the way back to its initial
years, with a 1983 bulletin board system created by neo-NaziGeorge Dietz considered the first instance of hate speech online. As the internet evolved over time hate speech continued to spread and create its footprint; the first hate speech website Stormfront was published in 1996, and hate speech has become one of the central challenges for social media platforms.
The structure and nature of the internet contribute to both the
creation and persistence of hate speech online. The widespread use and
access to the internet gives hate mongers an easy way to spread their
message to wide audiences with little cost and effort. According to the International Telecommunication Union, approximately 66% of the world population has access to the internet. Additionally, the pseudo-anonymous nature of the internet imboldens
many to make statements constituting hate speech that they otherwise
wouldn't for fear of social or real life repercussions. While some governments and companies attempt to combat this type of behavior by leveraging real name systems,
difficulties in verifying identities online, public opposition to such
policies, and sites that don't enforce these policies leave large spaces
for this behavior to persist.
Because the internet crosses national borders, comprehensive
government regulations on online hate speech can be difficult to
implement and enforce. Governments who want to regulate hate speech
contend with issues around lack of jurisdiction and conflicting
viewpoints from other countries. In an early example of this, the case of Yahoo! Inc. v. La Ligue Contre Le Racisme et l'Antisemitisme had a French court hold Yahoo!
liable for allowing Nazi memorabilia auctions to be visible to the
public. Yahoo! refused to comply with the ruling and ultimately won
relief in a U.S. court which found that the ruling was unenforceable in
the U.S. Disagreements like these make national level regulations difficult, and while there are some international efforts and laws
that attempt to regulate hate speech and its online presence, as with
most international agreements the implementation and interpretation of
these treaties varies by country.
Much of the regulation regarding online hate speech is performed
voluntarily by individual companies. Many major tech companies have
adopted terms of service which outline allowed content on their platform, often banning hate speech. In a notable step for this, on 31 May 2016, Facebook, Google, Microsoft, and Twitter, jointly agreed to a European Union
code of conduct obligating them to review "[the] majority of valid
notifications for removal of illegal hate speech" posted on their
services within 24 hours. Techniques employed by these companies to regulate hate speech include user reporting, Artificial Intelligence flagging, and manual review of content by employees. Major search engines like Google Search also tweak their algorithms to try and suppress hateful content from appearing in their results. However, despite these efforts hate speech remains a persistent problem online. According to a 2021 study by the Anti-Defamation League
33% of Americans were the target of identity based harassment in the
preceding year, a statistic which has not noticeably shifted downwards
despite increasing self regulation by companies.
A few states, including Saudi Arabia, Iran, Rwanda Hutu factions, actors in the Yugoslav Wars and Ethiopia have been described as spreading official hate speech or incitement to genocide.
After World War II, Germany criminalized Volksverhetzung ("incitement of popular hatred") to prevent resurgence of Nazism.
Hate speech on the basis of sexual orientation and gender identity also
is banned in Germany. Most European countries have likewise implemented
various laws and regulations regarding hate speech, and the European
Union's Framework Decision 2008/913/JHA requires member states to criminalize hate crimes and speech (though
individual implementation and interpretation of this framework varies by
state).
International human rights laws from the United Nations Human Rights Committee have been protecting freedom of expression, and one of the most fundamental documents is the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR) drafted by the U.N. General Assembly in 1948. Article 19 of the UDHR states that "Everyone has the right to freedom
of opinion and expression; this right includes freedom to hold opinions
without interference and to seek, receive and impart information and
ideas through any media and regardless of frontiers."
While there are fundamental laws in place designed to protect
freedom of expression, there are also multiple international laws that
expand on the UDHR and pose limitations and restrictions, specifically
concerning the safety and protection of individuals.
Article 19(3) of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights
(ICCPR) permits restrictions on the human right of freedom of
expression only when provided by law, and when necessary to protect
"rights or reputations of others", or for "protection of national
security or of public order (ordre public), or of public health or morals".
Article 20(2) of the ICCPR prohibits national, religious, or racial hatred that incites violence, discrimination, or hostility.
Most developed democracies have laws that restrict hate speech, including Australia, Canada, Denmark, France, Germany, India, Ireland, South Africa, Sweden, New Zealand, and the United Kingdom. The United States does not have hate speech laws, because the U.S. Supreme Court has repeatedly ruled that they violate the guarantee to freedom of speech contained in the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution.
Laws against hate speech can be divided into two types: those
intended to preserve public order and those intended to protect human
dignity. The laws designed to protect public order require that a higher
threshold be violated, so they are not often enforced. For example, a
1992 study found that only one person was prosecuted in Northern Ireland
in the preceding 21 years for violating a law against incitement to
religious violence. The laws meant to protect human dignity have a much
lower threshold for violation, so those in Canada, Denmark, France,
Germany and the Netherlands tend to be more frequently enforced.
Criticism of the concept
Several activists and scholars have criticized the practice of limiting hate speech. Kim Holmes, Vice President of the conservative Heritage Foundation and a critic of hate speech theory, has argued that it "assumes bad faith
on the part of people regardless of their stated intentions" and that
it "obliterates the ethical responsibility of the individual". Rebecca Ruth Gould, a professor of Islamic and Comparative Literature at the University of Birmingham, argues that laws against hate speech constitute viewpoint discrimination (which is prohibited by the First Amendment in the United States) as the legal system punishes some viewpoints but not others. Other scholars, such as Gideon Elford, argue instead that "insofar as
hate speech regulation targets the consequences of speech that are
contingently connected with the substance of what is expressed then it
is viewpoint discriminatory in only an indirect sense." John Bennett argues that restricting hate speech relies on questionable conceptual and empirical foundations and is reminiscent of efforts by totalitarian regimes to control the thoughts of their citizens.
Civil libertarians
say that hate speech laws have been used, in both developing and
developed nations, to persecute minority viewpoints and critics of the
government. Former ACLU president Nadine Strossen
says that, while efforts to censor hate speech have the goal of
protecting the most vulnerable, they are ineffective and may have the
opposite effect: disadvantaged and ethnic minorities being charged with
violating laws against hate speech. Journalist Glenn Greenwald says that hate speech laws in Europe have been used to censor left-wing views as much as they have been used to combat hate speech.
Miisa Kreandner and Eriz Henze argue that hate speech laws are
arbitrary, as they only protect some categories of people but not
others. Henze argues the only way to resolve this problem without abolishing
hate speech laws would be to extend them to all possible conceivable
categories, which Henze argues would amount to totalitarian control over
speech.
Michael Conklin argues that there are benefits to hate speech
that are often overlooked. He contends that allowing hate speech
provides a more accurate view of the human condition, provides
opportunities to change people's minds, and identifies certain people
that may need to be avoided in certain circumstances. According to one psychological research study, a high degree of
psychopathy is "a significant predictor" for involvement in online hate
activity, while none of the other 7 potential factors examined were
found to have a statistically significant predictive power.
Political philosopher Jeffrey W. Howard considers the popular
framing of hate speech as "free speech vs. other political values" as a
mischaracterization. He refers to this as the "balancing model", and
says it seeks to weigh the benefit of free speech against other values
such as dignity and equality for historically marginalized groups.
Instead, he believes that the crux of debate should be whether or not
freedom of expression is inclusive of hate speech. Research indicates that when people support censoring hate speech, they
are motivated more by concerns about the effects the speech has on
others than they are about its effects on themselves. Women are somewhat more likely than men to support censoring hate
speech due to greater perceived harm of hate speech, which some
researchers believe may be due to gender differences in empathy towards
targets of hate speech.
Cancel culture, also called call-out culture, is a
cultural phenomenon in which people criticize an individual thought to
have acted or spoken in an unacceptable manner, and call (typically over
social media) for the target to be ostracized, boycotted, shunned or fired.This shunning may extend to social or professional circles—whether on
social media or in person—with most high-profile incidents involving celebrities. Those subject are said to have been "canceled". While the careers of some public figures have been impacted by
boycotts—widely described as "cancellation"—others who complained of
cancellation successfully continued their careers.
The term "cancel culture" came into circulation in 2018 and has mostly negative connotations. Some critics argue that cancel culture has a chilling effect on public discourse, that it is unproductive, that it does not bring real social change, that it causes intolerance, or that it amounts to cyberbullying.Others argue that the term is used to attack efforts to promote accountability or give disenfranchised people a voice, and to attack language that is itself free speech. Still others question whether cancel culture is an actual phenomenon, arguing that boycotting existed long before the origin of the term "cancel culture".
Origins
The 1981 Chic album Take It Off includes the song "Your Love Is Cancelled", which compares a breakup to the cancellation of TV shows. The song was written by Nile Rodgers
following a bad date Rodgers had with a woman who expected him to
misuse his celebrity status on her behalf. "Your Love Is Cancelled"
inspired screenwriter Barry Michael Cooper to include a reference to a woman being canceled in the 1991 film New Jack City. This usage introduced the term to African-American Vernacular English, where it became more common.
By 2015, the concept of canceling had become widespread on Black Twitter to refer to a personal decision, sometimes seriously and sometimes in jest, to stop supporting a person or work.According to Jonah Engel Bromwich of The New York Times, this usage of the word "cancellation" indicates "total disinvestment in something (anything)". After numerous cases of online shaming
gained wide notoriety, the use of the term "cancellation" increased to
describe a widespread, outraged, online response to a single provocative
statement, against a single target. Over time, as isolated instances of cancellation became more frequent and the mob mentality more apparent, commentators began seeing a "culture" of outrage and cancellation.
In October 2017, sexual assault allegations against film producer Harvey Weinstein led to the cancellation of his projects, his expulsion from the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences,
and legal consequences, including a conviction on charges of rape and
sexual assault. These events contributed to the rise of the #MeToo
movement, where individuals shared their own allegations of sexual
assault, leading to the cancellation of the careers of those accused. In November 2017, comedian Louis C.K.
admitted to sexual misconduct allegations and, as a result, his shows
were canceled, distribution deals were terminated, and he was dropped by
his agency and management. After a period away from show business,
Louis C.K. returned to work in 2018 and won a Grammy award in 2022.
However, many people in the entertainment industry said that it was
inappropriate to support his career or award him a Grammy due to his
past misconduct.
Google
searches for the phrase "cancel culture" accelerated in 2020, while
searches including broader equivalent terms accelerated in 2021.
Conversations about "cancel culture" increased in late 2019. In the 2020s, the phrase became a shorthand nom de guerre employed by spectators to refer to what they perceived to be disproportionate reactions to politically incorrect speech. In 2020, Ligaya Mishan wrote in The New York Times:
"The term is shambolically applied to incidents both online and off
that range from vigilante justice to hostile debate to stalking,
intimidation and harassment. ... Those who embrace the idea (if not the
precise language) of canceling seek more than pat apologies and
retractions, although it's not always clear whether the goal is to right
a specific wrong or redress a larger imbalance of power." "Call-out culture" has been in use as part of the #MeToo movement. The #MeToo movement encouraged women and men to call out their abusers
on a forum where the accusations would be heard, especially against very
powerful individuals.
Academic, philosophical, and legal perspectives
An article written by Pippa Norris,
a professor at Harvard University, states that the controversies
surrounding cancel culture are between those who argue it gives a voice
to those in marginalized communities and those who argue that cancel
culture is dangerous because it prevents free speech and/or the
opportunity for open debate. Norris emphasizes the role of social media
in contributing to the rise of cancel culture. Additionally, online communications studies have demonstrated the
intensification of cultural wars through activists that are connected
through digital and social networking sites. Norris also mentions that the spiral of silence theory
may contribute to why people are hesitant to voice their minority views
on social media sites and fear that their views and opinions,
specifically political opinions, will be chastised because their views
violate the majority group's norms and understanding.
In the book The Coddling of the American Mind (2018), social psychologist Jonathan Haidt and Greg Lukianoff, president of the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression,
argue that call-out culture arises on college campuses from what they
term "safetyism"—a moral culture in which people are unwilling to make
tradeoffs demanded by the practical or moral concerns of others.Keith Hampton, professor of media studies at Michigan State University, contends that the practice contributes to political polarization in the United States but does not lead to changes in opinion. Cancel culture has been described by media studies scholar Eve Ng as "a
collective of typically marginalized voices 'calling out' and
emphatically expressing their censure of a powerful figure". Cultural studies scholar Frances E. Lee states that call-out culture leads to self-policing of "wrong, oppressive, or inappropriate" opinions. According to Lisa Nakamura, University of Michigan professor of media studies,
canceling someone is a form of "cultural boycott" and cancel culture is
the "ultimate expression of agency", which is "born of a desire for
control [as] people have limited power over what is presented to them on
social media" and a need for "accountability which is not centralized".
Some academics have proposed alternatives and improvements to
cancel culture. Clinical counsellor Anna Richards, who specializes in conflict mediation, has stated that "learning to analyze our own motivations when offering criticism" helps call-out culture work productively. Professor Joshua Knobe, of the Philosophy Department at Yale,
contends that public denunciation is not effective, and that society is
too quick to pass judgement against those they view as public offenders
or personae non gratae.
Knobe says that these actions have the opposite effect on individuals,
and that it is best to bring attention to the positive actions in which
most of society participates. Former U.S. Secretary of Labor Eugene Scalia wrote in a 2021 Harvard Journal of Law and Public Policy article that cancel culture is a form of free speech, and is therefore protected under the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. According to Scalia, cancel culture can interfere with the right to counsel, since some lawyers would not be willing to risk their personal and professional reputation on controversial topics. In 2023, American conservatives and anti-trans activists engaged in a boycott of Bud Light over its hiring of transgender TikTok personality Dylan Mulvaney. The incident is seen an example of cancel culture and consumer backlash. The Harvard Business Review
cited the incident as an example of an attempt to "resonate with
younger, more socially-conscious audiences", but that it "generated
downstream adjustments from retailers and distributors" that negatively
hurt the product's performance. It highlighted the incident as making
consumer brand marketing departments fearful of taking a stand on social
issues.
Ng defines cancel culture as "the withdrawal of any kind of
support (viewership, social media follows, purchases of products
endorsed by the person, etc.) for those who are assessed to have said or
done something unacceptable or highly problematic, generally from a
social justice perspective especially alert to sexism, heterosexism, homophobia, racism, bullying, and related issues." There are different perspectives on the morality of cancellations. On
the one hand, there is the view that cancel culture imposes punishments
that are not proportional to the offenses or alleged offenses. This is closely related to John Stuart Mill's criticism of public shaming; he argued in On Liberty
that society "practises a social tyranny more formidable than many
kinds of political oppression, since, though not usually upheld by such
extreme penalties, it leaves fewer means of escape, penetrating much
more deeply into the details of life, and enslaving the soul itself." Martha Nussbaum
similarly says that cancel culture represents the "justice of the mob",
but this alleged justice is not "deliberative, impartial or neutral."
On the other hand, there are those who defend the value of shaming as
constructive, if done right; people who defend this view maintain that
cancel culture often shames people counter-productively but that it can
be tweaked or altered in order to be a valuable tool for people's
improvement. For instance, holding people accountable for things that they have done
wrong can be a powerful way of correcting bad behavior, but it has to
be paired with a belief in the possibility of redemption. People who take this approach often agree with Plato that shame is an important feeling that can lead to moral improvements. Everyone in this debate agrees that it is important to avoid what
Nussbaum calls a "spoiled identity": to have a spoiled identity is to
have the public image of someone who is irredeemable and unwelcome in a
community.
Reactions
The expression "cancel culture" has mostly negative connotations and is used in debates on free speech and censorship.
Criticism
In a speech at the Obama Foundation's annual summit in 2020, former U.S. President Barack Obama criticized the role of "call-out culture" and "wokeness" among young activists on social media.U.S. President Donald Trump criticized "cancel culture" in a speech in July 2020, comparing it to totalitarianism
and saying that it is a political weapon used to punish and shame
dissenters by driving them from their jobs and demanding submission. He
was subsequently criticized as being hypocritical for having attempted
to cancel a number of people and companies in the past himself. Trump made similar claims during the 2020 Republican National Convention
when he stated that the goal of cancel culture is to make decent
Americans live in fear of being fired, expelled, shamed, humiliated, and
driven from society.
Pope Francis
said that cancel culture is "a form of ideological colonization, one
that leaves no room for freedom of expression", saying that it "ends up
cancelling all sense of identity". Patrisse Khan-Cullors, the co-founder of the Black Lives Matter
movement, states that social activism does not just involve going
online or going to a protest to call someone out, but is work entailing
strategy sessions, meetings, and getting petitions signed. British prime minister Rishi Sunak
included cancel culture, where one group "are trying to impose their
views on the rest of us", among the contemporary dangers of the modern
world.
Philosopher Slavoj Žižek
states that "cancel culture, with its implicit paranoia, is a desperate
and obviously self-defeating attempt to compensate for the very real
violence and intolerance that sexual minorities have long suffered. But
it is a retreat into a cultural fortress, a pseudo-'safe space' whose
discursive fanaticism merely strengthens the majority's resistance to
it." Lisa Nakamura, a professor at the University of Michigan, describes cancel culture as "a cultural boycott" and says it provides a culture of accountability. Meredith Clark, an assistant professor at the University of Virginia, states that cancel culture gives power to disenfranchised voices. Osita Nwanevu, a staff writer for The New Republic,
states that people are threatened by cancel culture because it is a new
group of young progressives, minorities, and women who have "obtained a
seat at the table" and are debating matters of justice and etiquette.
Dalvin Brown, writing in USA Today, has described an open letter signed by 153 public figures and published in Harper's Magazine as marking a "high point" in the debate on the topic. The letter set out arguments against "an intolerance of opposing views,
a vogue for public shaming and ostracism, and the tendency to dissolve
complex policy issues in a blinding moral certainty". A response letter, "A More Specific Letter on Justice and Open Debate",
was signed by over 160 people in academia and media. It criticized the Harper's
letter as a plea to end cancel culture by successful professionals with
large platforms who wanted to exclude others who have been "canceled
for generations". The writers ultimately stated that the Harper's
letter was intended to further silence already marginalized people.
They wrote: "It reads as a caustic reaction to a diversifying
industry—one that's starting to challenge diversifying norms that have
protected bigotry."
Criticism of "cancel culture" as a concept
A number of professors, politicians, journalists, as well as other citizens and activists have questioned the validity of cancel culture as an actual phenomenon. Connor Garel, writing for Vice, states that cancel culture "rarely has any tangible or meaningful effect on the lives and comfortability of the cancelled". Danielle Kurtzleben, a political reporter for NPR,
wrote in 2021 that overuse of the phrase "cancel culture" in American
politics, particularly by Republicans, has made it "arguably background
noise". Per Kurtzleben and others, the term has undergone semantic bleaching to lose its original meaning.
Historian C. J. Coventry
argues that the term is incorrectly applied, and that the label has
been used to avoid accountability for historical instances of injustice. Another historian, David Olusoga, made a similar argument, and argued that the phenomenon of cancellation is not limited to the left. Indigenous governance professor and activist Pamela Palmater writes in Maclean's magazine that "cancel culture is the dog whistle
term used by those in power who don't want to be held accountable for
their words and actions—often related to racism, misogyny, homophobia or
the abuse and exploitation of others."
Sarah Manavis wrote for the New Statesman
magazine, "For the better part of the last decade, we have given a
label to something that has existed for the length of human history.
Some might call it criticism, others might call it backlash."
Additionally, she observed that much opponents of so-called cancel
culture had drawn upon the arguments of Jon Ronson's book, So You've Been Publicly Shamed.
However, noting that Ronson himself remarked that the term 'cancel
culture' is "not useful at all" since it "encompass[es] wildly different
people and situations", Manavis wrote that "Ronson himself believes"
that the "public shaming of civilians" which Ronson wrote of in his book
"doesn't apply" to the social phenomena labelled as cancel culture. To
Manavis, the public shaming of "non-famous people" is not essentially
about lack of "free speech", but about "how little power normal people
have". To Manavis, "[s]ocial media can be intimidating when you have
thousands of people disagreeing with you," but the "right to free speech
is not the right to have your unfiltered thoughts published without
critique. It’s likely [that,] if you feel this way, you hold more power
than most of the world."
Consequence culture
Some media commentators including LeVar Burton and Sunny Hostin have stated that "cancel culture" should be renamed "consequence culture". The terms have different connotations: "cancel culture" focusing on the
effect whereby discussion is limited by a desire to maintain one
certain viewpoint, whereas "consequence culture" focuses on the idea
that those who write or publish opinions or make statements should bear
some responsibility for the effects of these on people.
American public opinion
A survey conducted in September 2020 on 10,000 Americans by Pew Research Center
asked a series of different questions in regard to cancel culture,
specifically on who has heard of the term cancel culture and how
Americans define cancel culture. At that time, 44% of Americans said that they have at least heard a
fair amount about the new phrase, while 22% have heard a great deal and
32% said they have heard nothing at all. 43% Americans aged 18–29 have heard a great deal about cancel culture,
compared to only 12% of Americans over the age of 65 who say they have
heard a great deal. Additionally, within that same study, the 44% of Americans who had
heard a great deal about cancel culture, were then asked how they
defined cancel culture. 49% of those Americans state that it describes
actions people take to hold others accountable, 14% describe cancel
culture as censorship of speech or history, and 12% define it as
mean-spirited actions taken to cause others harm. It was found that men were more likely to have heard or know of cancel culture, and that those who identify with the Democratic Party (46%) are no more likely to know the term than those in the Republican Party (44%).
A poll of American registered voters conducted by Morning Consult
in July 2020 showed that cancel culture, defined as "the practice of
withdrawing support for (or canceling) public figures and companies
after they have done or said something considered objectionable or
offensive", was common: 40% of respondents said they had withdrawn
support from public figures and companies, including on social media,
because they had done or said something considered objectionable or
offensive, with 8% having engaged in this often. Behavior differed
according to age, with a majority (55%) of voters 18 to 34 years old
saying they have taken part in cancel culture, while only about a third
(32%) of voters over 65 said they had joined a social media pile-on. Attitude towards the practice was mixed, with 44% of respondents saying
they disapproved of cancel culture, 32% who approved, and 24% who did
not know or had no opinion. Furthermore, 46% believed cancel culture had
gone too far, with only 10% thinking it had not gone far enough.
Additionally, 53% believed that people should expect social consequences
for expressing unpopular opinions in public, such as those that may be
construed as deeply offensive to other people.
A March 2021 poll by Harvard University's Center for American Political Studies and the Harris Poll
found that 64% of respondents viewed "a growing cancel culture" as a
threat to their freedom, while the other 36% did not. 36% of respondents
said that cancel culture is a big problem, 32% called it a moderate
problem, 20% called it a small problem, and 13% said it is not a
problem. 54% said they were concerned that if they expressed their
opinions online, they would be banned or fired, while the other 46% said
they were not concerned. A November 2021 Hill/HarrisX
poll found that 71% of registered voters strongly or somewhat felt that
cancel culture went too far, with similar numbers of Republicans (76%),
Democrats (70%), and independents (68%) saying so. The same poll found that 69% of registered voters felt that cancel
culture unfairly punishes people for their past actions or statements,
compared to 31% who said it did not. Republicans were more likely to
agree with the statement (79%), compared to Democrats (65%) and
independents (64%).
In a January 2022 Knight-Ipsos
study involving 4,000 participants, most Americans surveyed said that
some speech should be prohibited. Specifically, they stated that "a
variety of private and public institutions should prohibit racist
speech". However, most also noted that these same institutions should
not ban political views that are offensive. A March 2022 New York Times/Siena College
survey of 1,000 Americans found that 84 percent of adults said it is a
"very serious" or "somewhat serious" problem that some Americans do not
speak freely in everyday situations because of fear of retaliation or
harsh criticism. The survey also found that 46 percent of respondents
said they felt less free to talk about politics compared to a decade
ago, and that only 34 percent of Americans said they believed that all
Americans enjoyed freedom of speech completely.
Activists on the right have also attempted to and sometimes succeeded in canceling various people.
Historian Nicole Hemmer finds historical "cancel culture" on the right before the term was coined, in various movements. McCarthyism and the Lavender Scare of the 1940s and 1950s aimed to get people suspected of communist
sympathies or homosexuality fired from their government or
private-sector jobs, including the entertainment industry through the Hollywood blacklist. The Save Our Children
campaign in the late 1970s was a movement to legalize discrimination on
the basis of sexual orientation legal, and ban gay and lesbian people
from school employment. Conservatives angry at various comments were
able to secure the cancellation of Bill Mahr's show Politically Incorrect, and the resignation of Van Jones and Shirley Sherrod from the Obama Administration. Attempts to ban LGBTQ-related books (e.g. Heather Has Two Mommies, And Tango Makes Three) in the 1990s and 2000s have continued in the 2020s with groups like Moms for Liberty.
The right has also been criticized for supporting cancel culture in regards to Israel and Palestine. For example, during the Gaza war,
Republicans held Congress hearings in which they accused university
leaders of not doing enough to silence what they perceived as
antisemitic speech on campus. In another example, New York University withheld the diploma of graduating senior Logan Rozos, in retaliation for his criticism of US support for the genocide in Gaza during a graduation speech. Some activists who present themselves as defenders of free speech
engage in cancel culture directed at pro-Palestine activists, also known
as the Palestine exception to free speech. Other critics of cancel culture have also supported book bans in school and public libraries or censorship of school curriculums.
In the aftermath of the assassination of Charlie Kirk,
some conservatives who had previously criticized cancel culture pushed
for the firing of people who criticized Kirk after his death.Vice President J. D. Vance
called on Americans to report those allegedly celebrating Kirk's
killing to their employers and promised to use the federal government to
investigate and punish liberal organizations and donors. Adam Goldstein
of the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression
described the shift as a form of right-wing cancel culture, noting that
people were being targeted for simply quoting Kirk or failing to mourn
his passing adequately, comparing government involvement to McCarthyism. The New York Times
described the campaign as morphing into "a conservative version of the
cancel culture that only a few years ago was wielded by the American
left", and evidence of the rise of a "woke right". Some conservative voices also objected to the Trump administration's efforts to police speech surrounding Kirk's death, with The Wall Street Journal running an editorial saying: "The squeeze on Disney looks to be a case of cancel culture on the right."
The 2022 film Tár was interpreted by several critics as exploring themes regarding cancel culture.
The 2023 film Dream Scenario criticizes cancel culture. The film's creator, Kristoffer Borgli,
stated that he conceived the screenplay after reading about university
educators who were fired for expressing personal opinions.
A chilling effect is generally understood to be when an individual, organization, or group is prevented from exercising their legal rights, self-censoring
either the sharing of information or abstaining from doing an activity,
out of fear of repercussions and harm if they act. Outside the legal
context in common usage; any coercion
or threat of coercion (or other unpleasantries) can have a chilling
effect on a group of people regarding a specific behavior, and often can
be statistically measured or be plainly observed. For example, the news
headline "Flood insurance [price] spikes have chilling effect on some
home sales," and the abstract title of a two-part survey of 160 college students
involved in dating relationships: "The chilling effect of aggressive
potential on the expression of complaints in intimate relationships."
Law
In a legal context, a chilling effect is the inhibition or discouragement of the legitimate exercise of rights by the threat of legal sanction. A chilling effect may be caused by legal actions such as the passing of a law, the decision of a court, or the threat of a lawsuit;
any legal action that would cause people to hesitate to exercise a
legitimate right (freedom of speech or otherwise) for fear of legal
repercussions. When that fear is brought about by the threat of a libel lawsuit, it is called libel chill. A lawsuit initiated specifically for the purpose of creating a chilling effect may be called a strategic lawsuit against public participation (SLAPP). "Chilling" in this context normally implies an undesirable slowing.
For to distrust the judgement and
the honesty of one who hath but a common repute in learning and never
yet offended, as not to count him fit to print his mind without a tutor
or examiner, lest he should drop a schism or something of corruption, is
the greatest displeasure and indignity to a free and knowing spirit
that can be put upon him.
The term chilling effect has been in use in the United States since as early as 1950. The United States Supreme Court first refers to the "chilling effect" in the context of the United States Constitution in Wieman v. Updegraff in 1952.
The Lamont case, however, did not center around a law that
explicitly stifles free speech. The "chilling effect" referred to at
the time was a "deterrent effect" on freedom of expression, even when
there is no law explicitly prohibiting it. However, in general, the term
"chilling effect" is also used in reference to laws or actions that may
not explicitly prohibit legitimate speech, but rather impose undue
burden on speech.
Usage
In United States and Canadian law, the term chilling effects refers to the stifling effect that vague or excessively broad laws may have on legitimate speech activity.
However, the term is also now commonly used outside American legal jargon, such as the chilling effects of high prices or of corrupt police, or of "anticipated aggressive repercussions" in, for example, personal relationships.
A chilling effect is an effect that reduces, suppresses,
discourages, delays, or infringes on a person's ability to freely
express a view without fear on consequence.
An example of the "chilling effect" in Canadian case law can be found in Iorfida v. MacIntyre
in which a party challenged the constitutionality of a criminal law
prohibiting the publication of literature depicting illicit drug use.
The court found that the law had a "chilling effect" on legitimate forms
of expression and could stifle political debate on issues such as the
legalization of marijuana. The court noted that it did not adopt the same "chilling effect"
analysis used in American law but considered the chilling effect of the
law as a part of its own analysis.
In the international community, chilling effects typically are used
to refer to government or political censorship on democratic systems and
actors, including journalists/media, academic institutions, and
judicial functions.
Chilling Effects in international law cases can be separated into
"regulatory chill" or "chilling expressions" issues. The first refers
to when a government or nation refrains from passing legislation or
exercising their authority over their political territory in order to
avoid repercussions from international actors and/or foreign investors. Threats of sanctioning or pulling out from investment, or dismantling
trade deals are some of the ways regulatory chill can be achieved.
In 2011, the Australia government passed a law that required all
tobacco products to be sold in plain packaging in an effort to reduce
smoking by making cigarette packs less appealing. In November of that
year, tobacco company Phillips Morris Asia sued Australia on the basis
that the law harmed their business and broke trade agreement rules between Hong Kong and Australia. This type of lawsuit is known as investment arbitration.
At the same time, the New Zealand government was preparing to
pass similar legislation but delayed it for six and a half years while
waiting for the lawsuit to conclude, in fear it would also get sued by
tobacco companies for similar reasoning.
In 2015, Australia won the case when the Permanent Court of Arbitration
concluded that Phillip Morris had performed an “abuse of rights” and
ordered the company to assume the cost of the trial. Following this
verdict, New Zealand moved forward with their own packaging legislation.
In Poland, a set of disciplinary rules allowed the government to
question or punish judges for their court decisions or for requesting
guidance from the Court of Justice of the European Union. This system
was found to violate EU law in the 2021 CJEU ruling Commission v Poland
(C-791/19). The rules created a situation of pressure on judges to avoid actions
that might lead to disciplinary steps, which legal scholars describe as a
chilling effect. The risk of penalties, even without direct punishment, limited the independence of the judiciary and its authority.
Case studies
In 1999, Costa Rican journalist Mauricio Herrera-Ulloa
was found guilty on four charges of defamation for a series of seven
stories he published exposing a corruption scandal of Costa Rican
Ambassador Felix Przedborski. In response, Przedborski filed criminal defamation and civil lawsuits against Herrera-Ulloa and La Nación,
and in 1999, Herrera-Ulloa was convicted, ordered to pay damages, to
publish parts of the ruling after taking down the original stories, and
his name was also entered into the record of convicted felons.
In 2001, Herrera-Ulloa and La Nación’s publisher at the
time, Fernán Vargas Rohrmoser appealed to the Inter-American Commission
on Human Rights which found the court violated the journalist's right
to freedom of expression. The commission urged Costa Rica to overturn
the convictions, erase the criminal record, and restore the removed
online content but when the country failed to comply, the case was
brought before the Inter-American Court of Human Rights (IACtHR) in 2003
and eventually overturned in 2004.
Regarding Ömer Faruk Gergerlioğlu's
case in Turkey, the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for
Human Rights (OHCHR) said that Turkey's mis-use of counter-terrorism
measures can have a chilling effect on the enjoyment of fundamental
freedoms and human rights.
Chilling effects on Wikipedia users
Edward Snowden disclosed in 2013 that the US government's Upstream program was collecting data on people reading Wikipedia articles. This revelation had significant impact on the self-censorship of the readers, as shown by the fact that there were substantially fewer views for articles related to terrorism and security. The court case Wikimedia Foundation v. NSA has since followed.
Chilling effect of employer retaliation
Although speech may be constitutionally protected from being legally
sanctioned by the government, employers in the U.S., for example, are
generally free to fire employees who express opinions they disagree with
or find offensive. The threat of the loss of employment as a consequence of expressing an
opinion can have a chilling effect on speech, even on speech that occurs
outside the workplace.
Amnesty International (also referred to as Amnesty or AI) is an international non-governmental organization focused on human rights,
with its headquarters in the United Kingdom. The organization says that
it has more than ten million members and supporters around the world. The stated mission of the organization is to campaign for "a world in
which every person enjoys all of the human rights enshrined in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and other international human rights instruments". The organization has played a notable role on human rights issues due to its frequent citation in media and by world leaders.
Amnesty International is an international human rights
organisation that campaigns worldwide to protect individuals' and
groups' rights. It conducts research and runs information and education
efforts to highlight violations.
History
1960s
Amnesty International was founded in London in July 1961 by English barrister Peter Benenson, who had previously been a founding member of the UK law reform organization JUSTICE. Benenson was influenced by his friend Louis Blom-Cooper, who led a political prisoners' campaign. According to Benenson's own account, he was travelling on the London Underground on 19 November 1960 when he read that two Portuguese students from Coimbra had been sentenced to seven years of imprisonment in Portugal for allegedly "having drunk a toast to liberty". Researchers have never traced the alleged newspaper article in question. In 1960, Portugal was ruled by the Estado Novo government of António de Oliveira Salazar. The government was authoritarian in nature and strongly anti-communist, suppressing enemies of the state as anti-Portuguese. In his significant newspaper article "The Forgotten Prisoners", Benenson later described his reaction as follows:
Open
your newspaper any day of the week and you will find a story from
somewhere of someone being imprisoned, tortured or executed because his
opinions or religion are unacceptable to his government... The newspaper
reader feels a sickening sense of impotence. Yet if these feelings of
disgust could be united into common action, something effective could be
done.
Benenson worked with his friend Eric Baker – a member of the Religious Society of Friends who had been involved in funding the British Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament as well as becoming head of Quaker Peace and Social Witness. In his memoirs, Benenson described him as "a partner in the launching of the project". In consultation with other writers, academics and lawyers and, in particular, Alec Digges, they wrote via Louis Blom-Cooper to David Astor, editor of The Observer
newspaper, who, on 28 May 1961, published Benenson's article "The
Forgotten Prisoners". The article brought the reader's attention to
those "imprisoned, tortured or executed because his opinions or religion
are unacceptable to his government" or, put another way, to violations, by governments, of articles 18 and 19 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights
(UDHR). The article described these violations occurring, on a global
scale, in the context of restrictions to press freedom, to political
oppositions, to timely public trial
before impartial courts, and to asylum. It marked the launch of "Appeal
for Amnesty, 1961", the aim of which was to mobilize public opinion,
quickly and widely, in defence of these individuals, whom Benenson named
"Prisoners of Conscience".
In July 1961, the leadership had decided that the appeal would
form the basis of a permanent organization, Amnesty, with the first
meeting taking place in London. Benenson ensured that all three major
political parties were represented, enlisting members of parliament from
the Labour Party, the Conservative Party, and the Liberal Party. On 30 September 1962, it was officially named "Amnesty International".
Between the "Appeal for Amnesty, 1961" and September 1962 the
organization had been known simply as "Amnesty".
By the mid-1960s, Amnesty International's global presence was
growing and an International Secretariat and International Executive
Committee were established to manage Amnesty International's national
organizations, called "Sections", which had appeared in several
countries. They were secretly supported by the British government at the
time. The international movement was starting to agree on its core principles
and techniques. For example, the issue of whether or not to adopt
prisoners who had advocated violence, like Nelson Mandela,
brought unanimous agreement that it could not give the name of
"Prisoner of Conscience" to such prisoners. Aside from the work of the
library and groups, Amnesty International's activities were expanding to
helping prisoners' families, sending observers to trials, making
representations to governments, and finding asylum or overseas
employment for prisoners. Its activity and influence were also
increasing within intergovernmental organizations; it would be awarded
consultative status by the United Nations, the Council of Europe and UNESCO before the decade ended.
In 1966, Benenson suspected that the British government in
collusion with some Amnesty employees had suppressed a report on British
atrocities in Aden. He began to suspect that many of his colleagues were part of a British
intelligence conspiracy to subvert Amnesty, but he could not convince
anybody else at AI. Later in the same year, there were further allegations, when the US government reported that Seán MacBride, the former Irish foreign minister and Amnesty's first chairman, had been involved with a Central Intelligence Agency funding operation. MacBride denied knowledge of the funding, but Benenson became convinced that MacBride was a member of a CIA network. Benenson resigned as Amnesty's president on the grounds that it was
bugged and infiltrated by the secret services, and said that he could no
longer live in a country where such activities were tolerated.
1970s–1980s
Amnesty International's membership increased from 15,000 in 1969 to 200,000 by 1979. At the intergovernmental level Amnesty International pressed for the application of the UN's Standard Minimum Rules for the Treatment of Prisoners and of existing humanitarian conventions; to secure ratifications of the two UN Covenants on Human Rights
in 1976, and was instrumental in obtaining additional instruments and
provisions forbidding the practice of maltreatment. Consultative status
was granted at the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights in 1972.
Amnesty International established its Japan chapter in 1970, in
part a response to the Republic of China (Taiwan)'s arrest and
prosecution of Chen Yu-hsi, whom the Taiwan Garrison Command had alleged committed sedition by reading communist literature while studying in the United States.
In 1976, Amnesty's British Section started a series of fund-raising events that came to be known as The Secret Policeman's Balls series. They were staged in London initially as comedy galas featuring what The Daily Telegraph called "the crème de la crème of the British comedy world" including members of comedy troupe Monty Python, and later expanded to also include performances by leading rock musicians. The series was created and developed by Monty Python alumnus John Cleese and entertainment industry executive Martin Lewis working closely with Amnesty staff members Peter Luff
(assistant director of Amnesty 1974–1978) and subsequently with Peter
Walker (Amnesty Fund-Raising Officer 1978–1982). Cleese, Lewis and Luff
worked together on the first two shows (1976 and 1977). Cleese, Lewis
and Walker worked together on the 1979 and 1981 shows, the first to
carry what The Daily Telegraph described as the "rather brilliantly re-christened" Secret Policeman's Ball title.
During the mid-to-late-1980s, Amnesty organized two major musical
events took place to increase awareness of Amnesty and of human rights.
The 1986 Conspiracy of Hope
tour, which played five concerts in the US, and culminated in a daylong
show, featuring some thirty-odd acts at Giants Stadium, and the 1988 Human Rights Now! world tour. Human Rights Now!, which was timed to coincide with the 40th anniversary of the United Nations' Universal Declaration of Human Rights
(UDHR), played a series of concerts on five continents over six weeks.
Both tours featured some of the most famous musicians and bands of the
day.
In 1995, when AI wanted to promote how Shell Oil Company was involved with the execution of an environmental and human-rights activist Ken Saro-Wiwa
in Nigeria, it was stopped. Newspapers and advertising companies
refused to run AI's ads because Shell Oil was a customer of theirs as
well. Shell's main argument was that it was drilling oil in a country
that already violated human rights and had no way to enforce
human-rights policies. To combat the buzz that AI was trying to create,
it immediately publicized how Shell was helping to improve overall life
in Nigeria. Salil Shetty, the director of Amnesty, said, "Social media re-energises the idea of the global citizen". James M. Russell notes how the drive for profit from private media
sources conflicts with the stories that AI wants to be heard.
Amnesty International became involved in the legal battle over Augusto Pinochet, former Chilean dictator, who sought to avoid extradition to Spain to face charges after his arrest in London in 1998 by the Metropolitan Police. Lord Hoffman
had an indirect connection with Amnesty International, and this led to
an important test for the appearance of bias in legal proceedings in UK
law. There was a suit against the decision to release Senator Pinochet, taken by the then British Home Secretary
Jack Straw, before that decision had actually been taken, in an attempt
to prevent the release of Senator Pinochet. The English High Court refused[32] the application, and Senator Pinochet was released and returned to Chile.
2000s
After 2000, Amnesty International's primary focus turned to the challenges arising from globalization and the reaction to the 11 September 2001 attacks
in the United States. The issue of globalization provoked a major shift
in Amnesty International policy, as the scope of its work was widened
to include economic, social and cultural rights, an area that it had
declined to work on in the past. Amnesty International felt this shift
was important, not just to give credence to its principle of the
indivisibility of rights, but because of what it saw as the growing
power of companies and the undermining of many nation-states as a result
of globalization.
In the aftermath of 11 September attacks, the new Amnesty International Secretary General, Irene Khan,
reported that a senior government official had said to Amnesty
International delegates: "Your role collapsed with the collapse of the
Twin Towers in New York." In the years following the attacks, some believe that the gains made by human rights organizations over previous decades had possibly been eroded. Amnesty International argued that human rights were the basis for the
security of all, not a barrier to it. Criticism came directly from the Bush administration and The Washington Post, when Khan, in 2005, likened the US government's detention facility at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, to a Soviet Gulag.
During the first half of the new decade, Amnesty International turned its attention to violence against women, controls on the world arms trade, concerns surrounding the effectiveness of the UN, and ending torture. With its membership close to two million by 2005, Amnesty continued to work for prisoners of conscience.
In 2007, AI's executive committee decided to support access to
abortion "within reasonable gestational limits...for women in cases of
rape, incest or violence, or where the pregnancy jeopardizes a mother's
life or health".
Amnesty International reported, concerning the Iraq War,
on 17 March 2008, that despite claims the security situation in Iraq
has improved in recent months, the human rights situation is disastrous,
after the start of the war five years earlier in 2003.
In 2009, Amnesty International accused Israel and the Palestinian
Hamas movement of committing war crimes during Israel's January
offensive in Gaza, called Operation Cast Lead, that resulted in the deaths of more than 1,400 Palestinians and 13 Israelis. The 117-page Amnesty report charged Israeli forces with killing
hundreds of civilians and wanton destruction of thousands of homes.
Amnesty found evidence of Israeli soldiers using Palestinian civilians
as human shields. A subsequent United Nations Fact Finding Mission on the Gaza Conflict
was carried out; Amnesty stated that its findings were consistent with
those of Amnesty's own field investigation, and called on the UN to act
promptly to implement the mission's recommendations.
2010s
Amnesty International, 19 March 2011Japanese branch of Amnesty International, 23 May 2014
In July 2011, Amnesty International celebrated its 50 years with an animated short film directed by Carlos Lascano, produced by Eallin Motion Art and Dreamlife Studio, with music by Academy Award-winner Hans Zimmer and nominee Lorne Balfe.
In August 2012, Amnesty International's chief executive in India
sought an impartial investigation, led by the United Nations, to render
justice to those affected by war crimes in Sri Lanka.
Mid-2010s
Supporters of Amnesty International at Cologne Pride Parade 2014
On 18 August 2014, in the wake of demonstrations sparked by people protesting the fatal police shooting of Michael Brown,
Amnesty International sent a 13-person contingent of human rights
activists to seek meetings with officials as well as to train local
activists in non-violent protest methods. This was the first time that the organization has deployed such a team to the United States.
In the 2015 annual Amnesty International UK conference, delegates
narrowly voted (468 votes to 461) against a motion proposing a campaign
against antisemitism
in the UK. The debate on the motion formed a consensus that Amnesty
should fight "discrimination against all ethnic and religious groups",
but the division among delegates was over the issue of whether it would
be appropriate for an anti-racism campaign with a "single focus". The Jewish Chronicle noted that Amnesty International had previously published a report on discrimination against Muslims in Europe.
In August 2015, The Times
reported that Yasmin Hussein, then Amnesty's director of faith and
human rights and previously its head of international advocacy and a
prominent representative at the United Nations, had "undeclared private links to men alleged to be key players in a secretive network of global Islamists", including the Muslim Brotherhood and Hamas. The Times
also detailed instances where Hussein was alleged to have had
inappropriately close relationships with the al-Qazzaz family, members
of which were high-ranking government ministers in the administration of
Mohammed Morsi and Muslim Brotherhood leaders at the time. Ms Hussein denied supporting the Muslim Brotherhood and told Amnesty that "any connections are purely circumstantial".
In June 2016, Amnesty International called on the United Nations General Assembly to "immediately suspend" Saudi Arabia from the UN Human Rights Council. Richard Bennett, head of Amnesty's UN Office, said: "The credibility of
the U.N. Human Rights Council is at stake. Since joining the council,
Saudi Arabia's dire human rights record at home has continued to
deteriorate and the coalition it leads has unlawfully killed and injured
thousands of civilians in the conflict in Yemen."
In December 2016, Amnesty International revealed that Voiceless Victims, a fake non-profit organization which claims to raise awareness for migrant workers who are victims of human rights abuses in Qatar, had been trying to spy on their staff.
In October 2018, an Amnesty International researcher was abducted and
beaten while observing demonstrations in Magas, the capital of
Ingushetia, Russia.
On 25 October, federal officers raided the Bengaluru
office for 10 hours on a suspicion that the organization had violated
foreign direct investment guidelines on the orders of the Enforcement Directorate. Employees and supporters of Amnesty International say this is an act to intimidate organizations
and people who question the authority and capabilities of government
leaders. Aakar Patel, the executive director of the Indian branch
claimed, "The Enforcement Directorate's raid on our office today shows
how the authorities are now treating human rights organizations
like criminal enterprises, using heavy-handed methods. On Sep 29, the
Ministry of Home Affairs said Amnesty International using "glossy
statements" about humanitarian work etc. as a "ploy to divert attention"
from their activities which were in clear contravention of laid down
Indian laws. Amnesty International received permission only once in Dec
2000, since then it had been denied Foreign Contribution permission
under the Foreign Contribution Act by successive Governments. However,
in order to circumvent the FCRA regulations, Amnesty UK remitted large
amounts of money to four entities registered in India by classifying it
as Foreign Direct Investment (FDI).
The current Prime Minister of India, Narendra Modi, has been criticized by foreign medias for harming civil society in India, specifically by targeting advocacy groups. India has cancelled the registration of about 15,000 nongovernmental organizations under the Foreign Contribution Regulation Act (FCRA); the U.N. has issued statements against the policies that allow these cancellations to occur. Though nothing was found to confirm these accusations, the government plans on continuing the investigation and has frozen the bank accounts of all the offices in India. A spokesperson for the Enforcement Directorate has said the investigation could take three months to complete.
On 30 October 2018, Amnesty called for the arrest and prosecution of Nigerian
security forces claiming that they used excessive force against Shi'a
protesters during a peaceful religious procession around Abuja, Nigeria.
At least 45 were killed and 122 were injured during the event.
In November 2018, Amnesty reported the arrest of 19 or more rights activists and lawyers in Egypt.
The arrests were made by the Egyptian authorities as part of the
regime's ongoing crackdown on dissent. One of the arrested was Hoda
Abdel-Monaim, a 60-year-old human rights lawyer and former member of the
National Council for Human Rights. Amnesty reported that following the
arrests Egyptian Coordination for Rights and Freedoms (ECRF) decided to
suspend its activities due to the hostile environment towards civil
society in the country.
In February 2019, Amnesty International's management team offered to resign after an independent report found what it called a "toxic culture" of workplace bullying, and found evidence of bullying, harassment, sexism and racism, after being asked to investigate the suicides of 30-year Amnesty veteran Gaetan Mootoo in Paris in May 2018 (who left a note citing work pressures), and 28-year-old intern Rosalind McGregor in Geneva in July 2018.
In April 2019, Amnesty International's deputy director for
research in Europe, Massimo Moratti, warned that if extradited to the
United States, WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange
would face the "risk of serious human rights violations, namely
detention conditions, which could violate the prohibition of torture".
On 14 May 2019, Amnesty International filed a petition with the
District Court of Tel Aviv, Israel, seeking a revocation of the export
licence of surveillance technology firm NSO Group. The filing states that "staff of Amnesty International have an ongoing
and well-founded fear they may continue to be targeted and ultimately
surveilled" by NSO technology. Other lawsuits have also been filed against NSO in
Israeli courts over alleged human-rights abuses, including a December
2018 filing by Saudi dissident Omar Abdulaziz, who claimed NSO's
software targeted his phone during a period in which he was in regular
contact with murdered journalist Jamal Kashoggi.
In September 2019, European Commission President-elect Ursula von der Leyen created the new position of "Vice President for Protecting our European Way of Life", who will be responsible for upholding the rule-of-law, internal security and migration. Amnesty International accused the European Union of "using the framing of the far right" by linking migration with security.
On 24 November 2019, Anil Raj,
a former Amnesty International board member, was killed by a car bomb
while working with the United Nations Development Project. U.S.
Secretary of State, Mike Pompeo announced Raj's death at a briefing 26 Nov, during which he discussed other acts of terrorism.
2020s
In August 2020, Amnesty International expressed concerns about what
it called the "widespread torture of peaceful protesters" and treatment
of detainees in Belarus. The organization also said that more than 1,100 people were killed by
bandits in rural communities in northern Nigeria during the first six
months of 2020. Amnesty International investigated what it called "excessive" and
"unlawful" killings of teenagers by Angolan police who were enforcing
restrictions during the coronavirus pandemic.
In May 2020, the organization raised concerns about security flaws in a COVID-19 contact tracing app mandated in Qatar.
In September 2020, Amnesty shut down its India operations after
the government froze its bank accounts due to alleged financial
irregularities.
On 2 November 2020, Amnesty International reported that 54 people – mostly Amhara women and children and elderly people – were killed by the OLF in the village of Gawa Qanqa, Ethiopia.
In April 2021, Amnesty International distanced itself from a tweet by Agnès Callamard, its newly appointed Secretary General, asserting that Israel had killed Yasser Arafat; Callamard herself has not deleted the tweet.
In February 2022, Amnesty accused Israel of committing the crime of apartheid against the Palestinians, joining other human rights organizations that had previously accused Israel of the crime against humanity. In 2021, Human Rights Watch and B'tselem both accused Israel of apartheid for its treatment of the Palestinians in the occupied territories. An Amnesty report stated that Israel maintains "an institutionalized
regime of oppression and domination of the Palestinian population for
the benefit of Jewish Israelis". The Israeli Foreign Ministry stated that Amnesty was peddling "lies,
inconsistencies, and unfounded assertions that originate from well-known
anti-Israeli hate organisations". The Palestinian Foreign Ministry
called the report a "detailed affirmation of the cruel reality of
entrenched racism, exclusion, oppression, colonialism, apartheid, and
attempted erasure that the Palestinian people have endured".
In March 2022, Paul O'Brien, the Amnesty International USA
Director, speaking to a Women's National Democratic Club audience in the
US, stated: "We are opposed to the idea—and this, I think, is an
existential part of the debate—that Israel should be preserved as a
state for the Jewish people", while adding "Amnesty takes no political
views on any question, including the right of the State of Israel to
survive."
In December 2024, Amnesty concluded that Israel was committing genocide in Gaza in its war against Palestinian militants in the territory. In January 2025, Amnesty International suspended Amnesty Israel for
"evidence of endemic anti-Palestinian racism within AI Israel" within
the local branch and its failure to accept the conclusions of Amnesty's
reports on Israeli apartheid
and the allegations of genocide against Palestinians in Gaza. The
suspension is set to last for two years while a review panel decides on
whether to reinstate the Israel branch or permanently ban it.
Amnesty International Sections, 2012The Amnesty Canadian headquarters in Ottawa
Amnesty International is largely made up of voluntary members but
retains a small number of paid professionals. In countries in which
Amnesty International has a strong presence, members are organized as
"sections". In 2019 there were 63 sections worldwide.
Amnesty International is structured around three main components:
the Global Assembly, the International Board, and the International
Secretariat. The Global Assembly is the movement's highest
decision-making body, bringing together representatives from national
sections each year to vote on key strategic issues. One of its main
roles is to elect the International Board, a group of eight members
responsible for overseeing the organisation between Global Assembly
meetings. The International Secretariat, led by a Secretary General
appointed by the International Board, manages the daily operations of
the global movement. It provides most of Amnesty's research, coordinates
international campaign strategies, and issues urgent actions, which are
then adapted by national sections.
Amnesty International Sections, 2005 Algeria; Argentina; Australia;
Austria; Belgium (Dutch-speaking); Belgium (French-speaking); Benin;
Bermuda; Canada (English-speaking); Canada (French-speaking); Chile;
Côte d'Ivoire; Denmark; Faroe Islands; Finland; France; Germany; Greece;
Guyana; Hong Kong; Iceland; Ireland; Israel; Italy; Japan; Korea (Republic of); Luxembourg; Mauritius; Mexico; Morocco; Nepal; Netherlands; New Zealand; Norway; Peru; Philippines;
Poland; Portugal; Puerto Rico; Senegal; Sierra Leone; Slovenia; Spain;
Sweden; Switzerland; Taiwan; Togo; Tunisia; United Kingdom; United States of America; Uruguay; Venezuela
In the UK Amnesty International has two components which are registered charities under English law: Amnesty International Charity and Amnesty International UK Section Charitable Trust.
Principles
The core principle of Amnesty International is a focus on prisoners of conscience,
those persons imprisoned or prevented from expressing an opinion by
means of violence. Along with this commitment to opposing repression of
freedom of expression, Amnesty International's founding principles
included non-intervention on political questions, a robust commitment to
gathering facts about the various cases and promoting human rights.
One key issue in the principles is in regards to those
individuals who may advocate or tacitly support resorting to violence in
struggles against repression. AI does not judge whether recourse to
violence is justified or not. However, AI does not oppose the political
use of violence in itself since The Universal Declaration of Human Rights,
in its preamble, foresees situations in which people could "be
compelled to have recourse, as a last resort, to rebellion against
tyranny and oppression". If a prisoner is serving a sentence imposed,
after a fair trial, for activities involving violence, AI will not ask
the government to release the prisoner.
AI neither supports nor condemns the resort to violence by
political opposition groups in itself, just as AI neither supports nor
condemns a government policy of using military force in fighting against
armed opposition movements. However, AI supports minimum humane
standards that should be respected by governments and armed opposition
groups alike. When an opposition group tortures or kills its captives,
takes hostages, or commits deliberate and arbitrary killings, AI
condemns these abuses.
Amnesty International considers capital punishment
to be the ultimate, irreversible denial of human rights and opposes
capital punishment in all cases, regardless of the crime committed, the
circumstances surrounding the individual or the method of execution.
Objectives
Amnesty International's vision is of a world in which every person
enjoys all of the human rights enshrined in the Universal Declaration of
Human Rights and other international human rights standards.
In pursuit of this vision, Amnesty International's mission is to
undertake research and action focused on preventing and ending grave
abuses of the rights to physical and mental integrity, freedom of
conscience and expression, and freedom from discrimination, within the
context of its work to promote all human rights.
Statute of Amnesty International, 27th International Council meeting, 2005
Amnesty International primarily targets governments, but also reports on non-governmental bodies and private individuals ("non-state actors").
Amnesty International at the 2009 Marcha Gay in Mexico City, 20 June 2009
Amnesty International launched a free human rights learning mobile
application called Amnesty Academy in October 2020. It offered learners
across the globe access to courses both, online and offline. All courses
are downloadable within the application, which is available for both iOS and Android devices.
Amnesty reports disproportionately on relatively more democratic and open countries, arguing that its intention is not to produce a range of reports which
statistically represents the world's human rights abuses, but rather to
apply the pressure of public opinion to encourage improvements.
The demonstration effect
of the behaviour of both key Western governments and major non-Western
states is an important factor; as one former Amnesty Secretary-General
pointed out, "for many countries and a large number of people, the
United States is a model", and according to one Amnesty manager, "large
countries influence small countries." In addition, with the end of the Cold War,
Amnesty felt that a greater emphasis on human rights in the North was
needed to improve its credibility with its Southern critics by
demonstrating its willingness to report on human rights issues in a
truly global manner.
According to one academic study, as a result of these
considerations, the frequency of Amnesty's reports is influenced by a
number of factors, besides the frequency and severity of human rights
abuses. For example, Amnesty reports significantly more (than predicted
by human rights abuses) on more economically powerful states; and on
countries that receive US military aid, on the basis that this Western
complicity in abuses increases the likelihood of public pressure being
able to make a difference. In addition, around 1993–94, Amnesty consciously developed its media
relations, producing fewer background reports and more press releases,
to increase the impact of its reports. Press releases are partly driven
by news coverage, to use existing news coverage as leverage to discuss
Amnesty's human rights concerns. This increases Amnesty's focus on the
countries the media is more interested in.
Amnesty's country focus is similar to that of some other comparable NGOs, notably Human Rights Watch:
between 1991 and 2000, Amnesty and HRW shared eight of ten countries in
their "top ten" (by Amnesty press releases; 7 for Amnesty reports). In addition, six of the 10 countries most reported on by Human Rights Watch in the 1990s also made The Economist's and Newsweek's "most covered" lists during that time.
Funding
Amnesty International is financed largely by fees and donations from
its worldwide membership. It says that it does not accept donations from
governments or governmental organizations.
Criticism of Amnesty International includes claims about publishing
incorrect reports, associating with organizations with a dubious record
on human rights protection, selection bias, ideological and foreign policy bias, and the issue of institutional discrimination within the organization. Following the suicide of two staff members in 2019, Amnesty launched a
review of the workplace culture at the organization. The report found an
internal toxic work environment, including cases of bullying and
discrimination. Since the report multiple staff members around the world spoke about systemic abuse at Amnesty.
In February 2019, Amnesty International's management team offered to
resign after an independent report found what it called a "toxic
culture" of workplace bullying. Evidence of bullying, harassment, sexism and racism was uncovered after two 2018 suicides were investigated: that of 30-year Amnesty veteran Gaëtan Mootoo in Paris in May 2018; and that of 28-year-old intern Rosalind McGregor in Geneva in July 2018.
A 2019 externally commissioned report stated that bullying,
public humiliation and other abuses of power are commonplace and routine
practice by the management. It also claimed the us versus them culture
among employees and the severe lack of trust in the senior management at
Amnesty.By October 2019 five of the seven members of the senior leadership team
at Amnesty's international secretariat left the organization with
"generous" redundancy packages. After none of the managers responsible of bullying at Amnesty were held
accountable, a group of workers petitioned for Amnesty's chief Kumi Naidoo to resign. On 5 December 2019 Naidoo resigned from his post of Amnesty's Secretary General citing ill health.
2019 budgetary crisis
In May 2019, Amnesty International's Secretary General Kumi Naidoo
admitted to a hole in the organization's budget of up to £17m in donor
money to the end of 2020. In order to deal with the budgetary crisis,
Naidoo announced to staff that the organization's headquarters would
have cut almost 100 jobs as a part of urgent restructuring. Unite the Union,
the UK's biggest trade union, said the redundancies were a direct
result of "overspending by the organization's senior leadership team"
and have occurred "despite an increase in income". Unite, which represents Amnesty's staff, feared that cuts would fall
heaviest on lower-income staff. It said that in the previous year the
top 23 highest earners at Amnesty International were paid a total of
£2.6m– an average of £113,000 per year. Unite demanded a review of
whether it is necessary to have so many managers in the organization.
Amnesty's budgetary crisis became public after the two staff
suicides in 2019. A subsequent independent review of workplace culture
found a "state of emergency" at the organization after a restructuring
process. Following several reports that labelled Amnesty a toxic
workplace, in October 2019 five of the seven high-paid senior directors
at Amnesty's international secretariat in London left the organization
with "generous" redundancy packages. This included Anna Neistat, who was a senior manager directly
implicated in the independent report on the suicide of Amnesty's West
Africa researcher Gaëtan Mootoo in the organization's Paris office. The
size of exit packages granted to former senior management caused anger
among other staff and an outcry among Amnesty's members, and led to the resignation of Naidoo in December 2019.
2020 secret payout
In September 2020, The Times reported that Amnesty International paid £800,000 in compensation over the workplace suicide of Gaëtan Mootoo and demanded his family keep the deal secret. The pre-trial agreement between London-based Amnesty's International
Secretariat and Motoo's wife was reached on the condition that she keeps
the deal secret by signing NDA. This was done particularly to prevent
discussing the settlement with the press or on social media. The
arrangement led to criticism on social media, with people asking why an
organization such as Amnesty would condone the use of non-disclosure
agreements. Shaista Aziz, a co-founder of the feminist advocacy group
NGO Safe Space, questioned on Twitter why the "world's leading human
rights organisation" was employing such contracts. The source of the money was unknown. Amnesty stated that the payout to
Motoo's family "will not be made from donations or membership fees".
2021 accusation of systemic bias
In April 2021, The Guardian reported that the workers of Amnesty International alleged systemic bias and use of racist language by senior staff.
The internal review at Amnesty's international secretariat, the
report of which was published in October 2020 but not released to the
press, recorded multiple examples of alleged racism reported by
workers—racial slurs, systemic bias, problematic comments towards
religious practices, being some of the examples.
The staff at the Amnesty International UK based in London also made claims of racial discrimination. The report also documented use of the ethnic slur "nigger" with any objection from employees about its use being downplayed. Vanessa Tsehaye, the Horn of Africa Campaigner based in the UK, has refused to comment as of April 2021.
2022 report on systemic racism
In June 2022, a 106-page independent investigation by the management
consultancy firm Global HPO Ltd (GHPO) concluded that Amnesty
International UK (AIUK) exhibits institutional and systemic racism. This
report was fully accepted by Amnesty International and Amnesty
International UK published the findings of the inquiry in April 2022. GHPO's independent investigation found that AIUK "has failed to embed
principles of anti-racism into its own DNA and faces bullying issues
within the organisation."
GHPO's report includes recommendations for improvement actions to
be taken by the organization. The alghemeiner reports that AIUK stated
it "accepted all the recommendations," and that the "press' insistence
on describing Amnesty as a 'leading human rights group' is furthermore
problematic given the anti-Jewish racism that the NGO has displayed for
years."
In 1990, when the United States government was deciding whether or not to invade Iraq, a Kuwaiti woman, only identified to Congress by the first name Nayirah, testified to congress that when Iraq invaded Kuwait,
she stayed behind after some of her family left the country. She said
she was volunteering in a local hospital when Iraqi soldiers stole the incubators
with children in them and left them to freeze to death. Amnesty
International, which had human rights investigators in Kuwait, confirmed
the story and helped spread it among the Western public. The
organization also inflated the number of children who were killed by the
robbery to over 300, more than the number of incubators available in
the city hospitals of the country. Her testimony aired on ABC's Nightline and NBC Nightly News reaching an estimated audience between 35 and 53 million Americans. Seven senators cited Nayirah's testimony in their speeches backing the use of force. President George Bush repeated the story at least ten times in the following weeks. Her account of the atrocities helped to stir American opinion in favour of participation in the Gulf War. It was often cited by people, including the members of Congress who voted to approve the Gulf War,
as one of the reasons to fight. After the war, it was found that the
testimony was entirely fabricated and that "Nayirah" was in fact the
daughter of a Kuwaiti delegate to America with a leading role in the
pro-war think tank responsible for organizing the hearing.
Israel
In 2010 Frank Johansson, the chairman of Amnesty International-Finland, called Israel a nilkkimaa, a derogatory term variously translated as "scum state", "creep state" or "punk state". Johansson stood by his statement, saying that it was based on Israel's
"repeated flouting of international law", and his own personal
experiences with Israelis. When asked by a journalist if any other
country on earth that could be described in these terms, he said that he
could not think of any, although some individual "Russian officials"
could be so described.
In April 2021, Amnesty International distanced itself from a tweet written in 2013 by its new Secretary General, Agnès Callamard,
which read: ""NYT Interview of Shimon Perres [sic] where he admits that
Yasser Arafat was murdered"; Amnesty responded by saying: "The tweet
was written in haste and is incorrect. It does not reflect the position
of Amnesty International or Agnès Callamard."Callamard herself has not deleted the tweet.
On 11 March 2022, Paul O'Brien, the Amnesty International USA
Director, stated at a private event: "We are opposed to the idea — and
this, I think, is an existential part of the debate — that Israel should
be preserved as a state for the Jewish people", while adding "Amnesty
takes no political views on any question, including the right of the
State of Israel to survive." He also rejected a poll that found 8 in 10 American Jews were
pro-Israel, saying: "I believe my gut tells me that what Jewish people
in this country want is to know that there's a sanctuary that is a safe
and sustainable place that the Jews, the Jewish people can call home." On 14 March 2022, all 25 Jewish Democrats in the House of Representatives
issued a rare joint statement rebuking O'Brien, saying that he "has
added his name to the list of those who, across centuries, have tried to
deny and usurp the Jewish people's independent agency" and "condemning
this and any antisemitic attempt to deny the Jewish people control of
their own destiny." On 25 March 2022, O'Brien wrote to the Jewish congressmen: "I regret representing the views of the Jewish people."
Amnesty International designated Alexei Navalny a prisoner of conscience in 2012. However, in February 2021, it stripped Navalny of the status, due to
lobbying about videos and pro-nationalist statements he made in
2007–2008 that allegedly constituted hate speech.Amnesty's decision was described by western media as "a huge victory
for Russian state propaganda" which undermined Amnesty's support of
Navalny's release. The designation of Navalny as a prisoner of conscience was reinstated
in May 2021. Amnesty apologized for making the decision and stated that
"by confirming Navalny's status as prisoner of conscience, we are not
endorsing his political programme, but are highlighting the urgent need
for his rights, including access to independent medical care, to be
recognized and acted upon by the Russian authorities".
United Kingdom and the Commonwealth
During the early history of Amnesty International, as it is now proven by various documents, it was secretly supported by the Foreign Office.
In 1963, the FO instructed its operatives abroad to provide "discreet
support" for Amnesty's campaigns. In the same year, Benenson wrote to
Minister of State for the Colonies Lord Lansdowne a proposal to prop up a "refugee counsellor" on the border between the Bechuanaland Protectorate and apartheid South Africa.
Amnesty intended to assist people fleeing across the border from
neighbouring South Africa, but not those who were actively engaged in
the struggle against apartheid. Benenson wrote:
I
would like to reiterate our view that these [British] territories should
not be used for offensive political action by the opponents of the
South African Government (...) Communist influence should not be allowed
to spread in this part of Africa, and in the present delicate
situation, Amnesty International would wish to support Her Majesty's
Government in any such policy.
The year after, the AI dropped Nelson Mandela
as a "prisoner of conscience", because he was convicted of violence by
the South African Government. Mandela had also been a member of the South African Communist Party.
In a trip to Haiti, the British FO had also assisted Benenson in
his mission to Haiti, where he was disguised because of fear of the
Haitians finding out that the British government sponsored his visit.
When his disguise was revealed, Benenson was severely criticized by the
media.
In the British colony of Aden, Hans Goran Franck, the chairman of Amnesty's Swedish section, wrote a report on allegations of torture
at an interrogation centre run by the colonial government. Amnesty
refused to publish the report; according to Benenson, Amnesty
general-secretary Robert Swann had suppressed it in deference to the
Foreign Office. According to co-founder Eric Baker, both Benenson and Swann had met Foreign Secretary George Brown
in September and told him that they were willing to hold up publication
if the Foreign Office promised no more allegations of torture would
surface again. A memo by Lord Chancellor Gerald Gardiner, a Labour Party politician, states that:
Amnesty
held the Swedish complaint as long as they could simply because Peter
Benenson did not want to do anything to hurt a Labour government.
Benenson
then travelled to Aden and reported that he had never seen an "uglier
situation" in his life. He then said that British government agents had
infiltrated Amnesty and suppress the report's publication. Later,
documents surfaced implicating Benenson had connections to the British
government, which started the Harry letters affair.He then resigned, claiming that British and American intelligence agents had infiltrated Amnesty and subverted its values. After this set of events, which were dubbed by some the "Amnesty Crisis of 1966–67", the relationship between Amnesty and the British Government was
suspended. AI vowed that in future, it "must not only be independent and
impartial but must not be put into a position where anything else could
even be alleged" and the Foreign Office cautioned that "for the time
being our attitude to Amnesty International must be one of reserve".
2010 CAGE controversy
Amnesty International suspended Gita Sahgal, its gender unit head, after she criticized Amnesty in February 2010 for its high-profile associations with Moazzam Begg, the director of Cageprisoners, representing men in extrajudicial detention.
"To be appearing on platforms with Britain's most famous supporter of the Taliban, Begg, whom we treat as a human rights defender, is a gross error of judgment," she said. Sahgal argued that by associating with Begg and Cageprisoners, Amnesty was risking its reputation on human rights. "As a former Guantanamo detainee, it was legitimate to hear his
experiences, but as a supporter of the Taliban it was absolutely wrong
to legitimize him as a partner," Sahgal said. She said she repeatedly brought the matter up with Amnesty for two years, to no avail. A few hours after the article was published, Sahgal was suspended from her position. Amnesty's Senior Director of Law and Policy, Widney Brown, later said
Sahgal raised concerns about Begg and Cageprisoners to her personally
for the first time a few days before sharing them with the Sunday Times.
Sahgal issued a statement saying she felt that Amnesty was
risking its reputation by associating with and thereby politically
legitimizing Begg, because Cageprisoners "actively promotes Islamic
Right ideas and individuals". She said the issue was not about Begg's "freedom of opinion, nor about
his right to propound his views: he already exercises these rights fully
as he should. The issue is ... the importance of the human rights
movement maintaining an objective distance from groups and ideas that
are committed to systematic discrimination and fundamentally undermine
the universality of human rights." The controversy prompted responses by politicians, the writer Salman Rushdie, and journalist Christopher Hitchens, among others who criticized Amnesty's association with Begg.
After her suspension and the controversy, Sahgal was interviewed
by numerous media and attracted international supporters. She was
interviewed on the US National Public Radio
(NPR) on 27 February 2010, where she discussed the activities of
Cageprisoners and why she deemed it inappropriate for Amnesty to
associate with Begg. She said that Cageprisoners' Asim Qureshi spoke supporting global jihad at a Hizb ut-Tahrir rally. She stated that a best-seller at Begg's bookshop was a book by Abdullah Azzam, a mentor of Osama bin Laden and a founder of the terrorist organization Lashkar-e-Taiba.
In a separate interview for the Indian Daily News & Analysis, Sahgal said that, as Quereshi affirmed Begg's support for global jihad on aBBC World Service programme, "these things could have been stated in his [Begg's] introduction" with Amnesty. She said that Begg's bookshop had published The Army of Madinah, which she characterized as a jihad manual by Dhiren Barot.
2011 Irene Khan payout
In February 2011, newspaper stories in the UK revealed that Irene Khan
had received a payment of £533,103 from Amnesty International following
her resignation from the organization on 31 December 2009, a fact pointed to from Amnesty's records for the 2009–2010 financial
year. The sum paid to her was more than four times her annual salary
(£132,490). The deputy secretary general, Kate Gilmore, who also resigned in December 2009, received an ex-gratia payment of £320,000. According to the Daily Express,
Peter Pack, the chairman of Amnesty's International Executive Committee
(IEC), initially stated on 19 February 2011: "The payments to outgoing
secretary general Irene Khan shown in the accounts of AI (Amnesty
International) Ltd for the year ending 31 March 2010 include payments
made as part of a confidential agreement between AI Ltd and Irene Khan" and that "It is a term of this agreement that no further comment on it will be made by either party."
The payment and AI's initial response to its leakage to the press led to a considerable outcry. Philip Davies, the Conservative MP for Shipley, criticized the payments, telling the Daily Express:
"I am sure people making donations to Amnesty, in the belief they are
alleviating poverty, never dreamed they were subsidising a fat cat
payout. This will disillusion many benefactors." On 21 February 2011, Peter Pack issued a further statement, in which he
said that the payment was a "unique situation" that was "in the best
interest of Amnesty's work" and that there would be no repetition of it. He stated that "the new secretary general, with the full support of the
IEC, has initiated a process to review our employment policies and
procedures to ensure that such a situation does not happen again." Pack also stated that Amnesty was "fully committed to applying all the
resources that we receive from our millions of supporters to the fight
for human rights".
On 25 February 2011, Pack sent a letter to Amnesty members and
staff. In 2008, it stated, the IEC decided not to prolong Khan's
contract for a third term. In the following months, IEC discovered that
due to British employment law, it had to choose between three options:
offering Khan a third term; discontinuing her post and, in their
judgement, risking legal consequences; or signing a confidential
agreement and issuing a pay compensation.
2019 Kurdish hunger strike
In April 2019, 30 Kurdish activists, some of whom are on an indefinite hunger strike, occupied Amnesty International's building in London in a peaceful protest, in order to speak out against Amnesty's silence on the isolation of Abdullah Öcalan in a Turkish prison. The hunger strikers have also spoken out about "delaying tactics" by
Amnesty, and being denied access to toilets during the occupation,
despite this being a human right.Two of the hunger strikers, Nahide Zengin and Mehmet Sait Zengin, received paramedic treatment and were taken to hospital during the occupation. Late in the evening of 26 April 2019, the London Met police arrested 21 remaining occupiers.
Ukraine
On 4 August 2022, during the 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine, Amnesty International published a report accusing the Armed Forces of Ukraine
of endangering civilians through their combat tactics, particularly
stating that Ukraine had set up military bases in residential areas
(including schools and hospitals) and launched attacks from populated
civilian areas. Oksana Pokalchuk, leader of Amnesty Ukraine, said that the report "was compiled by foreign observers, without any assistance from local staff". She resigned from her post and left the organization following the publication of the report.
Human rights lawyers Wayne Jordash and Anna Mykytenko argued that
the 4 August report contained "little to none of the military or
humanitarian context essential to any reasoned view of what was (or was
not) necessary in the prevailing military context" and that the report
was "short on facts and analysis and long on intemperate accusation". RUSI
researcher Jack Watling stated that "you need to balance military
necessity with proportionality, so you need to take reasonable measures
to protect civilians but that must be balanced with your orders to
defend an area", thus the report's suggestions that Ukrainian forces
should relocate to a nearby field or forest "demonstrated a lack of
understanding of military operations and damages the credibility of the
research". RUSI researcher Natia Seskuria called the report "out of touch with
current reality" and stated that the Ukrainian army can legitimately
house in the towns they defend, even if they have civilians nearby,
because the Ukrainian authorities constantly call for evacuations from
frontline towns, and forced relocations of civilian population would
violate international humanitarian law. Marc Garlasco,
a United Nations war crimes investigator specializing in civilian harm
mitigation, said that "Ukraine can place forces in areas they are
defending" and "there is no requirement to stand shoulder to shoulder in
a field – this isn't the 19th century", and expressed concern that the
report could endanger Ukrainian civilians by giving Russian forces an
excuse to "expand their targeting of civilian areas".
Journalist Tom Mutch stated that he had participated in and
reported on an evacuation of civilians in one of Amnesty's cases, which
he contrasted with Amnesty's statement that it was "not aware that the
Ukrainian military who located themselves in civilian structures in
residential areas asked or assisted civilians to evacuate nearby
buildings". The Kyiv Independent
editorial team strongly criticized the report, pointing out flaws in
reasoning and stating that the "Amnesty [International] could not
properly articulate who the main perpetrator of violence in Ukraine
was".
The report sparked outrage in Ukraine and the West. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy
accused Amnesty of trying to "amnesty the terrorist state and shift the
responsibility from the aggressor to the victim", while Ukraine's Minister of Foreign Affairs, Dmytro Kuleba, stated that the report creates "a false balance between the oppressor and the victim". The report was praised by several Russian and pro-Russian figures, including the Russian embassy in London, causing further criticism against the organization.
On 12 August, Amnesty International reported that "the
conclusions were not conveyed with the delicacy and accuracy that should
be expected from Amnesty" and said that "this also applies to the
subsequent communication and reaction of the International Secretariat
to public criticism". The organization condemned "the
instrumentalization of the press release by the Russian authorities" and
promised that the report will be verified by independent experts.
The criticism resulted in AI calling an internal review committee composed of independent international humanitarian law
(IHL) experts to review the report, whose conclusions were not
published by AI but nonetheless obtained by New York Times. The review
concluded that while AI was right to include Ukraine in its analysis in
general, as IHL applies to all sides of a conflict, its conclusions in
respect to Ukraine were biased and not sufficiently substantiated by
available evidence, and the vague language of the report could leave an
impression, even if this was not intended and not supported by evidence,
that "Ukrainian forces were primarily or equally to blame for the death
of civilians resulting from attacks by Russia". To the contrary, the
review concluded that on the basis of the evidence that AI had collected
it was "simply impossible to assert that generally civilians died" as
result of negligence of Ukrainian army, while "imprudent language" of
the report suggested this.
Awards and honours
In 1977, Amnesty International was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for "having contributed to securing the ground for freedom, for justice, and thereby also for peace in the world".
In 1984, Amnesty International received the Four Freedoms Award in the category of Freedom of Speech.
A Conspiracy of Hope was a short tour of six benefit concerts
on behalf of Amnesty International that took place in the United States
during June 1986. The purpose of the tour was not to raise funds but
rather to increase awareness of human rights and of Amnesty's work on
its 25th anniversary. The shows were headlined by U2, Sting and Bryan Adams and also featured Peter Gabriel, Lou Reed, Joan Baez, and The Neville Brothers. The last three shows featured a reunion of The Police.
At a press conference in each city, at related media events, and
through their music at the concerts themselves, the artists engaged with
the public on themes of human rights and human dignity. The six
concerts were the first of what subsequently became known collectively
as the Human Rights Concerts – a series of music events and tours staged
by Amnesty International USA between 1986 and 1998.
The organization's logo combines two recognizable images inspired by the proverb, "Better to light a candle than curse the darkness." The candle represents the organization's efforts to bring light to the
fact that political prisoners are held all over the world and its
commitment to bring the prisoners hope for fair treatment and release.
The barbed wire represents the hopelessness of people unjustly put in
jail.
The logo was designed by Diana Redhouse in 1963 as Amnesty's first Christmas card.
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