Amnesty International used to be an honourable organization looking out for the rights of political prisoners and shining a light upon the worst human rights abuses.

Today, it is an organization that effectively works as a PR agency for the worst kind of retrograde religious supremacists, spends much of its donors' resources focusing on the world's most democratic nations and now looks out for the interests of war criminals instead of their victims. Canadian Minister of Immigration Jason Kenney speaks for many beyond the northern frontier as he dismantles AI's latest hypocritical stand:

Finally, you claim to be “concerned about the fact that these cases have been so widely publicized” given the “reputational harm” it may cause these men and the hypothetical risk it may impose on them or their relatives.  No doubt such exquisitely burnished sympathy does you credit.  However, as a former AI member, may I suggest that ostentatious hand-wringing over the good name of war criminals and human rights violators may sit uneasily with those AI members who, perhaps naively, believe your compassion should be reserved for their victims.
 

 

The Canadian public understandably wants war criminals and human rights violators kept out of Canada.  When they sneak in or escape before they can be sent home, the public wants us to find them and remove them.  Not coincidentally, this is also what the law requires.  Your calls for more time, more process, more deference and more protection for war criminals and serious human rights violators, by contrast, come across as self-congratulatory moral preening.  I have listened to your concerns, and, frankly, I prefer the common sense of the people and the law.    
 

Sincerely,
 

 

The Hon. Jason Kenney, M.P., P.C.