The story covered yesterday by Hunter about the much-criticized Amnesty International report on Ukraine’s supposed violations of the Laws if War just keeps getting worse.
A new critique from Ukrainian sources reported on Yahoo!news today demonstrates that much of the material that formed the basis of the AI report was actually obtained by “interviews” with Ukrainians evacuated to Russian controlled filtration camps and prisons in the illegally occupied Donbas and Crimea!
And if that weren’t bad enough on its face, only those actually “willing” to provide information were interviewed — even though that was often a prerequisite for evacuees seeking to leave these camps, and the camp/prison administrators (and even FSB agents in some cases) were allowed to check the content of those interviews before being turned over to AI. Seriously?!?
Why on Earth AI would be willing to flush its well-deserved reputation as a global human rights monitor down the proverbial toilet by putting their official seal of approval on what can only be described as naked Russian propaganda is beyond mystifying. Is their misplaced desire to appear “even-handed” when it comes to distinguishing between war criminals and their victims now overriding the far more fundamental search for truth?
Since the principal author of the report, Donatella Rovera, and AI’s secretary general, Agnes Callamard, seem intent on doubling down over this truly odious piece of factoid finding, AI’s executive board needs to do some serious soul-searching if they ever want to reclaim any shred of the moral authority they have so cravenly squandered.