Amnesty International Denounces Double Standards On Human Rights

Amnesty International has criticized countries around the world for adopting "shameless" double standards on human rights and for failing to unite around consistently applied rights and universal values.

“The West’s robust response to Russia’s aggression against Ukraine contrasts sharply with a deplorable lack of meaningful action on grave violations by some of their allies including Israel, Saudi Arabia and Egypt,” the London-based human rights watchdog said in its annual report published on March 28.

The UN Human Rights Council established a Special Rapporteur on the human rights situation in Russia and an independent fact-finding mission to investigate abuses committed by Iranian security forces in their clampdown on more than six months of anti-government protests.

But the council “voted not to further investigate or even discuss the UN’s own findings of potential crimes against humanity in Xinjiang, China, and discontinued a resolution on the Philippines,” Amnesty International said.

On Iran, the group said the authorities “responded to the unprecedented uprising against decades of repression with unlawful force through live ammunition, metal pellets, tear gas and beatings.”

“Thousands of people were arbitrarily detained and/or unfairly prosecuted solely for peacefully exercising their human rights,” it added.

Women, members of the LGBT community and ethnic and religious minorities “suffered intensified discrimination and violence,” and enforced disappearances, torture and other ill-treatment were “widespread and systematic.”

The authorities imposed and/or carried out “cruel and inhuman” punishments such as flogging and amputation, and increasingly used the death penalty, while trials remained “systematically unfair.”

“It is easy to feel hopeless in the face of atrocities and abuses but throughout the last year, people have shown we are not powerless,” said Agnès Callamard, Amnesty International’s secretary general.

“We’ve witnessed iconic acts of defiance, including Afghan women marching against Taliban rule and Iranian women walking unveiled in public or cutting their hair to protest compulsory veiling laws.”