GIHA Accuses Amnesty International of Racial Bias and Prejudice

December 5, 2003

 

Mr Ignacio Saiz
Deputy Program Director – Americas region
Amnesty International Secretariat
International Secretariat
1 Easton Street
London
WC1X 0DW, UK

Dear Mr Saiz:

Thank you for your emailed reply to our request for an investigation into Amnesty International Guyana.

The initial emailed response we received from AI Researcher Mr Piers Bannister indicated that AI would treat our concerns with urgency. He wrote to us on September 19, 2003: “… we are aware that the allegations in your letter are of a serious nature and I want to assure you that they will be receiving our attention in the immediate future. Obviously we will be discussing the matter with our colleagues in Guyana and once that has been completed we will address your concerns in writing.”

We are puzzled as to why Mr Bannister replied as he did when we are now being told that:
a) GIHA is at odds with AI’s protocol and bureaucratic system and that we have misdirected our request; and that
b) AI’s focus is to correct and prevent abuses committed by government parties, eg. the police.

Mr Bannister indicated that the AI Secretariat will be discussing a matter with colleagues in Guyana, that of ethnic violence against Indians, which you now say is not AI’s concern at all!

This is all most disconcerting, and is even moreso when it is noted that in the Amnesty International’s Statute, your work, as defined in the Statute’s “Vision and Mission” is “to promote all human rights”, and that AI’s work is “focused on preventing and ending grave abuses of the rights to physical and mental integrity, freedom of conscience and expression, and freedom from discrimination….”

The Statute’s “Core Values” state that AI seeks “effective action for the individual victim…the universality and indivisibility of human rights, impartiality and independence…”; and in its “Methods”, state that AI “addresses governments, intergovernmental organizations, armed political groups, companies and other non-state actors” and goes on to say that AI “seeks to disclose human rights abuses accurately, quickly and persistently….”

Nowhere does the AI Statute concur with your statement that the “focus of Amnesty International’s work is to correct or prevent the violation of human rights committed by government parties, e.g. the police.”

Your statement of AI’s focus does, however, conform fully with the prejudiced views of the violations and abuses in Guyana as expressed by AI in all its statements and releases. These are always mostly concerned with extra-judicial killings. Since your statement conflicts directly with AI’s mission, vision, core values and methods as expressed in the organisation’s Statute, it appears to be an attempt to cover up the biases that are openly practised by AI as it pertains to abuses in Guyana, the very biases of which we complained and for which we sought an investigation.

According to AI’s Statute, the group aims to create a “world in which every person enjoys all of the human rights enshrined in the Declaration of Human Rights and other international human rights standards.” AI’s Statute is therefore in full agreement with GIHA that the human rights of every single Indian Guyanese must be respected, honoured and defended by AI as much and as stoutly as AI defends every other individual in the world from human rights violations.

Your letter, however, attempts to belittle our serious concerns with the triteness that GIHA has misdirected its call for an investigation by asking that AI Guyana be investigated. The Guyanese public always believed that the statements made by AI locally came from your local office following the guidelines and the spirit of the organization. However, we stand corrected and now understand that AI Guyana is actually irrelevant to issues of abuse and violence in Guyana!

We are now aware that it is AI’s International Secretariat that has to be investigated for its ethnic bias and prejudice in Guyana.

In the spirit and declarations of intent embodied in AI’s Statute, GIHA now demands a full investigation into the blatant and obvious racism practiced by AI’s International Secretariat’s North American/Caribbean Research and Action Team which you state is responsible for the organisation’s statements and releases about human rights abuses in Guyana.

The ethnic violence in Guyana is nothing new and it is an international scandal that a body that has established itself as a champion for human rights around the world should be so obviously ignorant of abuses and violations that have been going on for over forty years in a country. Indian Guyanese are being granted refugee status in North America because of ethnic violence and AI is unaware of these abuses? If you cannot, as yet, draw any firm conclusions on this issue, it is because AI is prejudiced in its approach to human rights abuses and denigrates the very mission, vision, and core values of its own Statute.

That an international human rights body can stand accused of racism and prejudice is surely an abomination.

GIHA does not view any correspondence as important as this one with the AI Secretariat as informal chitchat or simple acknowledgement of any matter, and the entire correspondence between GIHA and AI will be posted on our website, www.gihagy.com, for full, public and global scrutiny.

We await the AI Secretariat’s investigation into its International Secretariat’s biased reporting of the human rights abuses and violations as practiced in Guyana by Africans on Indians.

Sincerely,

Ryhaan Shah
President

Cc: Chairperson, Amnesty International’s International Council
Secretary General, Amnesty International Secretariat