Amnesty International’s commitment to freedom is questionable
Amnesty International has long been regarded as among the world’s leading human rights organizations. Having worked with Amnesty for some years in their campaign to free political prisoners, I know that they deserved this reputation.
So it is sad to see the group squander their credibility. Amnesty has been so captured by political ideology that, far from defending human rights, they have become advocates for violating them.
The latest example comes from Sweden, where Amnesty is no longer fighting for political prisoners but instead advocates for authoritarian ideology. Amnesty sponsored a film competition, but when some finalists produced a film that angered feminists, the film was pulled from Amnesty’s YouTube site. Amnesty denies that pressure from an Uppsala women’s shelter was responsible for suppressing the film, but the shelter itself is gloating about its political clout.
The film, created by four high school students and titled, The Right To Be a Father, is a powerful depiction of how children are taken from their fathers by Sweden’s feminist family courts. Separating children from their fathers is not only a bedrock principle of the war against “patriarchy,” but also the bread-and-butter of the lucrative child custody industry, so it is not surprising that the sisterhood would come down hard on the heresy that feminists violate human rights.
The film was nominated for the final stage of the competition. Amnesty posted it on YouTube, and the creators were invited to the film gala in Gothenburg. “But our film was never shown at the festival, and the day after it also disappeared from Amnesty’s YouTube channel,” says Sara Sivesson, one of the creators. Further, the students claim they obtained an email from the Uppsala feminists bragging, “Thanks to the protests Amnesty did not show the film at the festival and they also dropped it from their website.”
The matter was publicized by blogger Joakim Ramstedt, who alleges that his government health benefits were then revoked because of his blogging and that confidential information from his own custody case (he has not seen his five-year-old daughter for over a year) was leaked and posted on the internet in an effort to smear him. Sweden prides itself on protections for privacy and civil liberties, but this may be what we can all expect when a welfare state manages our lives.
Reposted from LewRockwell.com