ANOTHER TOP RESIGNATION AT AMNESTY INTERNATIONAL
August 10, 2022 -Durt Fibo

This morning, Par Vestberg, the co-founder of Amnesty International’s Swedish branch, announced his resignation, saying “I have been a member of Amnesty International for almost sixty years. It is with a heavy heart that I end my long and fruitful cooperation due to Amnesty’s statements regarding the war in Ukraine.”

Friday (Aug. 5) the head of Amnesty’s Ukrainian office, Oksana Pokalchuk, very publicly and wrathfully quit the organization, accusing the “big bosses” of systematically ignoring her office’s critique of the draft report on Ukraine, and finally deriding Amnesty as no more than an “instrument of Russian propaganda”.

The day of Pokalchuk’s departure, AI Secretary-General Agnes Callamard responded by spitting venom at the world, tweeting: “Ukrainian and Russian social media mobs and trolls: they are all at it today attacking Amnesty investigations. This is called war propaganda, disinformation, misinformation. This won’t dent our impartiality and won’t change the facts.” Unfortunately for Callamard and Donatella Rovera, their facts were ruinously sifted through spurious interviewing and reporting procedures basically directed by Russian forces in the areas of investigation (See yesterday’s AMNESTY INTERNATIONAL’S GOOD CONDUCT PASS August 9, 2022 -Durt Fibo).

Supporting the many people who claimed the AI Ukraine report was so flawed as to be useless (if not completely egregious), immediately after Pokalchuk resigned, United Nations war crimes investigator Marc Garlasco that same Friday accused Amnesty International of “getting the law wrong” and pointed out that Ukraine had all along been taking constant steps to protect civilians, such as helping them relocate, in the midst of a colossal barbaric military attack on the nation.

The past four days have seen hourly outpourings of opprobrium directed at Amnesty International, all of it channeled and building to the expected explosive headline: “Amnesty International Secretary General Agnes Callamard resigns.” Perhaps it will burst before this week ends.