Amnesty International was originally founded for the purpose of bringing the plight of numerous people worldwide who were suffering human rights violations to the attention of the general public. AI carried out marvellous work for such people, for example, writing to prisoners of conscience and wrongfully convicted and innocent prisoners throughout the world. They lobbied governments for the release of such prisoners, and for the changing of unjust laws.
However, about two years ago Amnesty International announced that the organisation would adopt a new policy supporting abortion and completely ignoring the abortion victim, the unborn baby. Thousands of their former supporters turned away from Amnesty as a result of this anti-life bias. It would appear that the founding aims and principles of Amnesty are now being abandoned in favour of many ‘causes’ which are totally against life and family.
In Ireland, the latest ‘cause’ being supported by Amnesty is that of the agenda to legalise the equation of homosexual unions with marriage, and the adoption of children by homosexuals and lesbians. Writing in an Irish newspaper recently a correspondent, John Waters, says of this move: ‘I often wonder what its [Amnesty’s] founders would have thought about this. I wonder, too, if people who stuff cash into the boxes of Amnesty’s street collectors are aware of the implications of what has occurred. … Twenty years ago, the idea of Amnesty lecturing the Irish Government in partisan terms on a matter on which there is democratic controversy would have been inconceivable. The old-style Amnesty considered human rights too vital to be mixed up with everyday political argumentation within democratic societies.’
Despite the moral demise of present-day Amnesty, however, it is good to know that the original aims of the organisation, which was founded by Peter Benenson (see photo) in the 1960s, survive within a small, but growing, dedicated group who can be contacted at the following address: benensonsociety@hotmail.com Why not write to them?
