Farrukh Dhondy

“They say ‘count your blessings’I counted my losses — The former were noughtsThe latter were crosses”.From Half Empty Glass by BachchooFeb.20 : Gita Sahgal is a brave woman and a friend. She is the gender equality officer of Amnesty International and I presume devoted her time to seeing that women prisoners get as fair a deal as men. She has been suspended by Amnesty for speaking out.

Amnesty calls it a dismissal, a sacking, but in deference to their own well-known principle of wanting everyone who is accused of something to have a fair trial, a fair hearing and a settlement commensurate with universal and liberal justice, I call it a “suspension” because even as this is being written I am sure Amnesty’s big wigs will see sense and reinstate Ms Sahgal on a full salary pending an independent investigation. If such an investigation is called I volunteer my biased services as one of the enquirers. If it isn’t called Amnesty can rely on me picketing their offices with placards demanding that Ms Sahgal be fairly treated and her very convincing case be heard by this institution which has, since it was founded in 1961, been the voice of those around the world who are unjustly treated. Why was Ms Sahgal sacked? Because she spoke up about what she saw as a contradictory and damaging posture adopted by Amnesty when it began to associate itself on public platforms with the views of one Muazzam Begg, a former prisoner at Guantanamo Bay. Mr Begg was released from Guantanamo in 2005 after an international campaign on his behalf. He proceeded to write his autobiography. In it he relates how he, a British Muslim, became involved in Islamist politics and ran a bookshop whose aim was to disseminate Islamic and Islamist writings. He gave active support to the Muslims of Bosnia in their conflict with Serbs and in that struggle found himself, presumably, on the same side as the United Nations which sent in troops to protect the Muslim population from Serbian militias. He then went with his young family to Afghanistan and admits giving money to Islamist combatants, but denies being an active fighter in the Taliban or in Al Qaeda. Mr Begg writes about moving to Afghanistan in 2001 and setting up a school. After 9/11 and the subsequent Allied attack on Afghanistan and the Taliban regime, Mr Begg fled with his family to Pakistan where he was picked up and later incarcerated and made to wear the infamous orange jumpsuits in Guantanamo.On his release he was instrumental in forming an organisation called Cageprisoners which campaigns on behalf of Muslims detained without trial, for the most part prisoners held by America or the regimes that are deemed to be in alliance with it. Nothing that Mr Begg recalls in his autobiography and nothing in the opinions he expresses in the press about his opposition to British foreign policy and his advocacy of talking to the Taliban transgress any British law. He insists that his incarceration in Guantanamo was a case of mistaken identity and that he has never been an active combatant against the Allied troops.Mr Begg also asserts that his experience in Afghanistan proved to him that the Taliban were the best regime in Afghanistan’s recent history and that they imposed order and honesty on chaos and corruption. Ms Sahgal would agree, I think, that Mr Begg is perfectly free to express such opinions. She has also contributed her work and energy without question to the release of prisoners in Guantanamo and elsewhere. So how did her dismissal come about? Since his release in 2005, Mr Begg has spoken alongside Amnesty on many a platform. He is a living embodiment of Amnesty’s cause as he was imprisoned without trial or legal conviction. Last month he went as representative of Cageprisoners to Downing Street along with an Amnesty delegation to petition Prime Minister Gordon Brown and call for the closing of the Guantanamo detention camp. The meeting proved to be the turning point for Ms Sahgal. Amnesty was becoming publicly associated with the platform of Cageprisoners and with Mr Begg’s support for the Taliban and aspects of terrorist Islamism. Cagerisoners makes no secret of the fact that it champions the cause of people such as Khalid Sheikh Mohammed who was responsible for the murder of Daniel Pearl and is said to be the mastermind behind the attack on the Twin Towers. It openly supports others such as Abu Hamza, a criminal properly tried and convicted of instigating terror and sending suicide bombers to their deaths while living comfortably off the British state’s social security system and Abu Qatada, another hate preacher with lunatic views about killing “infidels”. While Ms Sahgal agrees wholeheartedly that Amnesty should represent people no matter what their political complexion, it should have no truck or association with a political platform that advocates one sort of polity, especially one of terror, the murder of “infidels” or the suppression of, say, women or other races and religions.Ms Sahgal represented this concern to her colleagues and the directors of Amnesty. “To be appearing on platforms with Britain’s most famous supporter of the Taliban, whom we treat as a human rights defender, is a gross error of judgment”, she wrote. Amnesty, opposing her judgment, suspended her.Ms Sahgal has now had threats over the phone and fears for her safety and that of her family. Amnesty, which has two-and-half million supporters, among them actors and the like who feel gratified by lending their names to liberal causes, is now divided over the issue that Ms Sahgal has raised. A second senior official, Sam Zarifi, Amnesty’s Asia Pacific Director, responsible for its operations in Pakistan and Afghanistan, has written a memo which has been leaked to the Western press. It supports Ms Sahgal’s stance and warns Amnesty against blurring the lines between representing people who are denied the due process of justice and endorsing their political views. To the liberal consciousness which predominates in Amnesty, the distinction becomes clearer when the dramatis personae change. Suppose, for instance, the Grand Dragon of the Ku-Klux Klan were imprisoned without trial in Guantanamo Bay by the Obama administration, Amnesty could represent him, but once he was released there would be absolutely no need to endorse or associate themselves with the Grand Dragon’s views about Afro-Americans or Jews.

Farrukh Dhondy