Respect for Amnesty International is long gone

From J-Wire, December 16, 2013 by J-Wire Staff:             

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Amnesty International Australia has been accused of allowing its Facebook page to be used as a medium for grossly racist and bigoted posted comments.

From Amnesty’s web site

In response to an Amnesty petition against Israeli settlements, one comment from “Kath Kim”, which continues to appear on Amnesty Australia’s Facebook page after five days, reads “May god send another Hitler and rid the world from the cancer called the Jews”.

An offending comment

Another comment is from “Yani Haigh” and reads “That lot have been making up stories about their suffering for 5,000 years.  The whole Jewish cult is based on stories about how they are the most suffering ‘people’ on the planet”. Further posted comments from the same person mistranslate, misrepresent and denigrate the Talmud.  Some of these comments also continue to appear on the AI Oz Facebook page after five days.
Other posted comments denigrate Muslims and Arabs.
ECAJ Executive Director, Peter Wertheim, has slated Amnesty Australia for “its laxity in failing to properly monitor and moderate the comments posted on its Facebook page”.

“It is a very poor reflection on Amnesty Australia, as an organisation that professes to be dedicated to advancing human rights, that it is allowing its Facebook page to be used as a medium for inciting racism and even genocide”, Wertheim said. “Amnesty Australia has failed in its responsibility to be pro-active and check for, and weed out, grossly racist comments within a short time after they are posted, and not leave them up on their Facebook page for days at a time.”

“Amnesty Australia also needs to face up to the troubling question of what it is about the content of its Facebook page, and the general political line it takes, that makes racists and bigots feel that it provides them with a sympathetic home.  There was once a time when Amnesty was widely respected because it focused solely on freeing prisoners of conscience, regardless of politics, but those days are long gone”.