Better stand alone

Gita Sahgal was suspended from her post as head of the gender unit of Amnesty International consequent to a Sunday Times article published in 7 February 2010. In this article Sahgal expressed her discomfort with the Amnesty International's collaboration with Moazzam Beg, a former inmate at Guantanomo Bay, in Amnesty's "Counter Terror With Justice" campaign. She is quoted to have said that for 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."

On the same day Sahgal issued a statement where she spelt out the essential basis of her discomfort: "The issue is a fundamental one about the importance of the human rights movement maintaining an objective distance from groups and ideas that are committed to systematic discrimination and fundamentally undermine the universality of human rights."

Like most controversies things have now moved down a degenerative communication spiral where the words of participants from the different viewpoints have led to the magnification of the other. There is a Facebook group "Amnesty International You Bloody Hypocrites Reinstate Gita Sahgal" (which I signed up to despite my reservations with the intemperate language in the name of the group). There is Salman Rushdie, from whom I agree temperance is a fond hope, who sees in Amnesty "a moral bankruptcy" and that the organization "deserve[s] our contempt." There have been some anguished individuals who in their messages have threatened withdrawing of support to Amnesty. Gita Sahgal on her part continues to maintain her dignified opposition to Amnesty's continued association with Moazzam Beg, holding that it will be something that Amnesty will regret in the future.

With the power of hindsight, it is clear that Amnesty's knee-jerk reaction to suspend Gita Sahgal, on full pay pending an independent enquiry on whether she violated her employment contract, has contributed to the snowballing of this issue. The interim Secretary General of Amnesty International, Claudio Cordone's waffling in the CBC Radio interview on how Moazzam Beg's appreciation of the Taliban government does not contradict Amnesty's documentation of the rights abuses perpetuated by the regime, does not do justice to the immensely important global role that has fallen on Amnesty and its commendable history of practice.

J K Rowling in her speech at the Annual Meeting of the Harvard Alumni Association in 2008, eloquently spoke about how her work at Amnesty had given her the mental strength to deal with her precarious situation as a single mother on the dole, "I … learned more about human goodness at Amnesty International than I had ever known before. Amnesty mobilises thousands of people who have never been tortured or imprisoned for their beliefs to act on behalf of those who have. … My small participation in that process was one of the most humbling and inspiring experiences of my life."

The uniqueness of human rights organizations in my mind is captured in this quote and in many such statements that have been repeated so many times and at so many situations that the significance seems to have eroded with the repetition. Human rights organizations have no constituency of their own, they have no cause of their own – they stand for everybody and anybody whose rights as a human being have been violated.

Many years ago I was present when a rights group was filing a case in the Supreme Court on a custodial death. The court clerk curiously asked us what crime had the dead victim committed. The case related to a day labourer, Ram Swarup, picked up at the morning labour haat under a nearby flyover to do some work (unpaid for) at the Inderpuri police station in Delhi. Ram Swarup was detained for the night, during which he was picked on by a few drunk policemen looking for some 'entertainment' and beaten to death. My impulse was to tell the court clerk the whole story and underscore Ram Swarup's innocence and total lack of involvement in any crime. Before I could say anything, the lawyer-activist who was filing the case told the clerk that the victim's "crime" was irrelevant; the police have no right to beat up anyone they have in their custody. On hindsight, I realised the wisdom of this response; the guilt or innocence of the victim is no grounds to view a violation by the state and its functionaries of its sworn duty to protect "the life and personal liberty" of each of its citizens. (The case for compensation was won; though as usual no murder proceedings were initiated against the concerned policeman.)

This broad conceptual canvas opens up the human rights agenda to the criticism of being "apolitical fence sitters" or the pejorative characterization as a "bleeding heart liberal". However if you look deeper into the universal definitions of the concept of human rights and review the activities of these organizations over time you see particularities emerging from their conceptual underpinnings and their practice.

The temptations of utilitarian outcomes
Nehru's formation of the Indian Civil Liberties Union in 1936 has been read as the origins of the human rights movement in India. Though short-lived it is seen by some to be the model of the formation of human rights organizations in the late 1960s and 1970s. At this time, the agenda of the movement was to "act as a watchdog monitoring the state". This liberal position fits in neatly with Max Weber's characterization of the state having "the monopoly on the legitimate use of violence." The state with its powerful apparatus and its immense almost patrimonial legitimacy is quite the personification of the biblical Goliath, in front of whom all non state violators are Davids (please read the David/Goliath story here not as a metaphor for oppressed/oppressor but of powerful/weak).

In the 1980s the human rights movement in India also started taking up issues of violations  emerging not just from the activities of the state but also from the socially and economically dominating sections of civil society. Thus patriarchy, caste oppression, religious and national chauvinism and class exploitation became contexts within which violations of human rights were investigated and reported. This has been characterised as the "democratic rights phase" of the human rights movement in India. There was also a felt need to prioritise issues that concerned collectives of people who were engaged in a struggle. The little gains occasioned by the human rights interventions were seen to more likely create a bigger impact if they could be leveraged by an organization engaged with the people in struggle.

This resultant agenda, despite its radical edge, emerges quite naturally from the broad sweeping concept of human rights. One can almost see it as a utilitarian approach at ensuring that limited possible interventions and small victories gained create the biggest impact where it is needed the most. However this issue has become complicated with Maoist violence coming up again in the media.

While sympathies quite clearly and naturally lie with the oppressed and the exploited, the human rights movement in India on the whole has not been able to articulate a clear and cohesive position on Maoist violence. The positions articulated by organizations and individuals in the movement vary from condemnations of particular acts of violence, to an argument that the right to armed rebellion is a democratic right. Seen in the context of the trajectory of developments in India this confusion stems from the human rights movement losing its essential bearings while taking on more radical positions.  

One for All, not just All for One!
What is the cause of confusion in the case of Moazzem Beg, Gita Sahgal and Amnesty International? The website of the organization founded by Moazzam Beg, clearly articulates his/their agenda: "Cageprisoners Ltd is a human rights organisation … that exists solely to raise awareness of the plight of the prisoners at Guantanamo Bay and other detainees held as part of the War on Terror" (emphasis added). This statement delineates a constituency, which despite being a valid one, is too restrictive for a human rights organization.

Fighting for the rights of illegal detainees of "War on Terror" is a cause dear to all human rights activists and organizations; and as a means of gathering support one should associate with all people concerned with this cause. One needs to also fight against the Islamophobia being fanned internationally as the accompaniment to the "War on Terror". Islamophobia has provided a context that has led to the acceptance of gross violations of all international law and global human rights conventions by the most powerful military power in the world, which proclaims itself the defender of democracy.

However there remains a difference of approach when a human rights organization takes up an issue and the way someone else does. The role played by sympathisers, colleagues, comrades and the professional responsibility of the legal counsel of a party is to fight for that specific cause. That is the constituency they serve. A human rights' intervention needs always to be a principled stance, emerging directly from a human rights perspective, where each intervention links and builds the universal nature of this perspective. This is why a human rights intervention should ensure a "victim" gets legal representation, but should be wary of taking up the role of permanent defence counsel.

Gita Sahgal bases her objection to Amnesty International associating with Moazzam Beg, on her viewing of him as a supporter of Taliban. Claudio Cordone dismisses her fears stating that there are no "specifics", "no accurate information" only "loose associations" and "innuendos and generalizations" and that there is nothing that has come up in the course of their association "that make us [Amnesty] believe that he [Moazzam Beg] has a violent or discriminatory agenda." The classical standoff!

To my mind the way out of this stand-off is to slightly amend Gita Sahgal's identified fundamental principle. Human rights organizations need to maintain a fundamental distance not just from those who are "committed to systematic discrimination and fundamentally undermine the universality of human rights" but also to people and organizations who do not explicitly display their commitment to these principles in all contexts and situations. Thus while there may or may not be evidence to show up Moazzem Beg's sins, from a human rights' perspective his virtues are too confined to a single cause. The issue is not just about him, but important for the future of the idea of human rights.

Moazzem Beg remains an eloquent voice that provides an eyewitness and victim's account of the horrors perpetuated at Guantanomo Bay. This voice will help spread the stories of these crimes and hopefully evoke a revulsion against those who order and carry out such acts and help prevent the re-occurrence of such illegal detention and inhuman torture. The space provided for this voice, however articulate and evocative, should ensure that it remains that of the victim. It is not necessarily that of a human rights activist. A human rights activist works towards establishing the universalist concepts of inalienable rights of all human beings – friend, foe, guilty, innocent, whether having opinions that are supported or opposed. While all of us hold positions that are dear to us, as human rights activists we need to take positions that go beyond a partisan approach. The identity of a partisan position and that of a human rights activist should not get blurred. It is the sad logic of our times that human rights activists are also a victim of atrocities the world over, but that is another story that needs repeated telling, but will serve only as a digression here.  

The liberal space, occupied by human rights groups, needs to be clearly delineated. It is from the position of conviction that human rights organizations engage with others and fight these causes. The lesson for us in Southasia, especially in India is: let the human right movement take up a more radical agenda, but not at the cost of diluting the human rights agenda. The lesson for human rights activists and "bleeding heart liberals" the world over: if in the process of engaging and connecting with others we encounter people who do not share our universalist positions, it is better we stand alone!

Joseph Mathai is a Delhi-based independent researcher with diverse interests and many years of involvement in environment, civil rights, pedagogy and politics.