NGO Amnesty International faces criticism after report implicating Ukrainian army
Despite the outcry raised by its report accusing the Ukrainian army of endangering civilians in its resistance to the Russian invasion, the NGO Amnesty International is staying the course, led by the tireless Agnès Callamard.
The publication last week of an Amnesty statement accusing Ukraine of installing military infrastructure in populated areas, in violation of international humanitarian law, sparked one of the most explosive controversies for a major NGO in recent years. .
Critics have been unleashed, around the world and in Ukraine, where President Volodymyr Zelensky has accused Amnesty International of putting “the victim and the aggressor on an equal footing”. This statement even caused internal divisions, leading in particular to the resignation of the head of Amnesty in Ukraine, Oksana Pokaltchouk, on the grounds that he was involuntarily serving “Russian propaganda”.
But the French Agnès Callamard, secretary general of Amnesty since March 2021, has seen others. As the UN’s special rapporteur on extrajudicial executions, she was notably threatened with death by a Saudi official for her investigation into the assassination of Saudi journalist and dissident Jamal Khashoggi in Istanbul in 2018.
“We fully maintain our conclusions”said Friday Mme Callamard to AFP, ensuring that the research had been conducted with the same seriousness “that all the work of Amnesty International”. They also overlap with the findings of several media or international organizations such as the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR), she recalled.
In a report on June 29, the OHCHR lamented that “Russian forces and affiliated armed groups, like Ukrainian forces, have taken up positions either in residential areas or near civilian infrastructure from where they have launched military operations without taking measures to protect civilians. civilians present, as required by international humanitarian law”.