Dr. Bahaa Helmy
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Dr. Bahaa Helmy Writes: Amnesty International Is Not Neutral

Dr. Bahaa Helmy Writes: Amnesty International Is Not Neutral

Amnesty International is run through an International Secretariat based in London, and the organization has two entities: Amnesty International Limited, a company, and the Amnesty International Charity in England and Wales. It is unclear who the founding partners of the said company are. The organization's mission is based on preventing human rights violations and ensuring compliance with international standards and laws, and on mobilizing public opinion to pressure governments that violate these rights. It aims to stop violence against women and to resist terrorism and torture, it is concerned with the rights of refugees, it calls for the abolition of the death penalty, and it received the Nobel Peace Prize in 1977. Among the organization's most prominent principles is that it is neutral in nature and independent of governments, political ideologies, economic interests and religious beliefs, and that it is funded by donations from its members and supporters. Amnesty International believes that this independence gives great weight to the accuracy and balance of its reports, that all its reports are based on research verified by its International Secretariat in London, and it expresses its belief in, and ability to, correct errors if they are proven to have occurred in the information it issues. Reality, however, indicates that Amnesty International violates international human rights standards, is not neutral, violates the principles on which it was founded, and serves as a cover for the Nusra Front, with a blatant defense of terrorism, in addition to practicing discrimination between human beings. We will address some of the facts and evidence that prove this by reviewing two subjects: first, the Amnesty International report issued in March on the occasion of the Egyptian judiciary's rulings against some terrorists; and second, the indicators of the discrimination it openly practices against the rights of Egyptian victims of terrorism on its website under the name of Islamophobia. The Amnesty International report was issued in March 2020 commenting on death sentences against 37 convicts, and the organization acknowledged that these sentences were against people who had committed serious crimes and deadly attacks. However, it expressed its grave concern about the trial on the basis of what was contained in a report by “the Egyptian Front for Human Rights” of statements by some of the defendants that they had been subjected to enforced disappearance and torture. It should be noted that the convicted terrorists carried out more than 54 terrorist attacks that led to the martyrdom of many officers and citizens, the attempted bombing of the Dakahlia Security Directorate, the assassination of the Minister of Interior, the bombing of the Cairo Security Directorate and other attacks claimed by the group Ansar Bayt al-Maqdis, which pledged allegiance to the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant (ISIS) and called itself Sinai Province in 2014. On examining the Amnesty International report, it emerged that it relies on unverified information issued by a fictitious body called the Egyptian Front for Human Rights, whose address is Kounicova Street in the city of Brno in the Czech Republic.

It falsely and fraudulently claims to be an independent European organization concerned with Egyptian human rights, whereas it is a website issued by the media of the terrorist group abroad. As for the information and data published on Amnesty International's website under the heading of Islamophobia, it includes the terrorist incidents that took place in the world targeting citizens and places of worship in the United States of America and Europe, without any reference to the terrorist operations that targeted places of worship and killed hundreds of innocent Egyptians. Here we ask the Amnesty International Secretariat in London: is the terrorist attack on the Al-Rawda mosque in Sinai, which killed 305 worshippers, including 27 Egyptian children, and the destruction of churches and the killing of worshippers in them, not comparable to the Quebec mosque incident in Canada, in which 6 people were killed and 14 others injured, which is announced on your website? What is the reason for not including the terrorist incidents carried out by the terrorist group in Egypt? Does this not point to discrimination against Egyptian victims of terrorism? Where is the organization's credibility, and where is the role of its Secretary-General and its legal experts and their responsibility for verifying the information and data issued in the organization's reports? The organization's legal and moral responsibility obliges it to announce the correction of the errors in its report, given its reliance on the information of a fictitious and suspicious body, and to swiftly remove the clear and evident forms of discrimination and include the terrorist incidents against innocent Egyptians among the terrorist operations the world has witnessed; otherwise the organization will face demands to strip it of the Nobel Peace Prize as an organization that is not neutral and has deviated from the path of human rights.