Welcome to hardtalk. Thank you for having me. Im sure you would agree that amnesty S International reputation depends upon impartiality, independence, the rigour of your research. Mm hm. How do you think amnesty s reputation stands across the world right now . Look, based on the various travels i am doing in africa, latin america, asia, our reputation stands very high and firm. People from very remote areas, all the way to political leaders know that they can count on us if its needed. I was very recently in peru meeting with Indigenous People who had confronted state violence, mothers and fathers who had lost their sons. Who was there with them for months after the event, for weeks at a time . Amnesty international. We went there and we kept being there for them. I was in taiwan two weeks ago. Amnesty international has been in taiwan since the 1980s. We fought the white terror government. We are now in taiwan as an established ngo, but also an ally for the Civil Society more generally
people will tell you, no, that does not matter. what matters is impartiality. what matters is the capacity of amnesty international to stand firm and to denounce violations by whoever they are done and wherever they are happening. our landscape is the world. it is not the uk policy, it is not the us policy, and it is not even the ukrainian policy. it is the ukrainian people. this is why i have repeated that, yes, we made mistakes with this report, but we are also moving strongly into wanting to hold the russian government to account, wanting to contribute to holding the russian government to account. for us right now, the priority must bejustice for the ukrainian people. this is where we are devoting our time and energy right now, not engaging into intellectual discussion as to what impartiality means. impartiality means we need to support the ukrainian people and we need to support the ethiopian
we did not act properly. we did not contextualise properly in the name of what we believed, or what my colleagues believed, what i believed was the right thing to do, which was to protect the people that were near the location of those militaries. the ukrainian government responded. if i may, the ukrainian government responded with this. the minister of defence, alexi resnikoff, who s been on this programme several times, he said that attempt to question the right of ukrainians to resist genocide was a perversion. and i come back to this problem you ve got. your credibility and your reputation is your currency. on the other hand, you have also mentioned impartiality as being a key. and i want to insist on the fact that, absolutely, many of the critiques that have been made at that report are accurate and appropriate, and we are taking the steps to address it. that does not mean that the key
violations for four years. we ve produced this report in february 20.last year on apartheid, calling on the state of israel to be fair. to be fair, notjust one report. many reports accuse israel of systemic apartheid in everything from the operation of its security forces in the occupied territories, to its more recent use of surveillance technologies. you characterise it consistently as apartheid. but listen to the impact your reports have had inside israel. for example, former senior figure in the government there, yair lapid. he says, amnesty doesn t call syria, where the regime s murdered half a million of its own citizens, an apartheid state, or iran, or other murderous regimes around the world. it is only israel. look, this is not the first time amnesty international has used apartheid. we ve also demonstrated apartheid
the last few years? far more than we did on israel. no. you know, we are focusing on israel at apartheid because this is a massive human rights violation that must be denounced. i was in israel myself to launch this report. i have to tell you, i have never been in an environment where i confronted so much hopelessness. and the absurdity of how apartheid is worked. ..worked itself, in the context of the occupied territories, and israel is mind boggling. all right. ijust want. you ve made that point. let s move on, because we don t have much time left, and we don t want to just focus on particular countries. i want to make a broader point. amnesty international was founded to fight the repressive abuses of governments around the world. you characterise it as defending prisoners of conscience, fighting against torture